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Cheesy or Sexy?

Behold the Wisconsin Cheese Cupid.

This site helps pair (Wisconsin) cheese with red and white wines, beer, and spirits including scotch and brandy. It's cute and all, but the best thing about the site is that each cheese and beverage is introduced in a sexy voice.

"Brandy. Coincidentally, Brandy is also my middle name."

"Scotch. Can I persuade you with a glass of scotch my friend?"

She even makes this sentence sound like she's narrating a romance-by-phone commercial:
"Butterkäse always plays nice with a ham sandwich."

I kind of love it.

Bar-Bary Coast

Wolfgang Weber from the Spume blog and Wine & Spirits Magazine has started a Google map of "classic" (in one way or another) eateries and drinkeries along the Barbary Coast Trail in San Francisco.

I've never walked the trail myself but now that he's turned it into a bar crawl I'm much more likely to give it a try.

The map is editable If you happen to know of any classic spots along the path that aren't labeled yet I think you can add them.

SF Bartender News: Good for Him, Bad for Us

San Francisco has lost three great bartenders in the last year- Josey Packard, Joe Parilli, and Thomas Waugh. (Lost as in, moved to other cities, not like swallowed in an earthquake.) Well, we're about to lose one more- Kevin Diedrich.

Kevin works at Clock Bar, Bourbon & Branch, where he makes a lot of ingredients for the bar, and also did much of the heavy lifting opening and running Cask. I have no idea when he has time to sleep.

I guess he'll sleep on the plane, because he just accepted a 6-8 month position running the bar program at Michael Minas's Bourbon Steak in the Four Seasons in Washington, DC. He leaves next week.

That's terrific for him, but a big bummer for us. He'll be working his final two shifts at Clock Bar this Wednesday and Thursday.  Come wish him well in his new job, and maybe cry a little in your drinks. Let's hope to elicit enough sympathy that he decides to move back when the job is over.

Best of luck, Kevin.

Phoney Cocktails

 

A while back I wrote about UK bar star Simon Difford's latest book Cocktails Made Easy, in which all of the 500 drinks in the book can be made with a set of 14 basic spirits and liqueurs.

Now he's gone and made the recipes available on an iPhone application and it includes the drink ratings and all the pretty pictures to boot.

The app costs $2.99 or 1.79 Euros for our friends abroad, and can be found by searching the app store for "Cocktails Made Easy" or clicking here.

Fancy Finds

I checked out the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco this weekend, so see what was new and fancy. The huge exhibition took over both the North and South halls of the Moscone Center. There were hundreds and hundreds of tables, the majority of which seemed to be hawking olive oil and vinegar, with a lot of mustard, jam, specialty salts, cheeses, honey, and barbecue sauces.

Since there were so many sauces, it was difficult to spot the booze products but I did my best. Here are some things I found:

• Aloe juice and water- there were many stands selling this. I think I've only had one cocktail with aloe juice in it before, a couple years ago at a Chopin Vodka event. I think they sell it at my local Latin grocery, so I'm not sure if this is something new at all.
• The Volcano vaporizing kit was a big attraction at the end of an aisle. They were promoting it as a way to vaporize things like herbs and essential oils and infuse them into things like fruit. We talked about potential cocktail applications, like bubbling orange flower water into a Ramos Gin Fizz. Then we pretty much realized that it's a vaporizer for smoking weed. Further confirmation is found here. 
• This company has a series of reduction sauces like blueberry merlot, mission fig, and pomegranate- also known as grenadine. Consider the possibilities...
• There were a couple of brands of cherries in sauce or maraschino style cherries that I would definitely like to see as alternatives to the typical low-end cocktail cherries and super expensive Luxardo ones.
• ModMix makes organic cocktail mixers, including a Bloody Mary Mix with real wasabi. Then you could use soy-wasabe pickled green beans as garnish.
• Lemon ginger beer sounds intriguing. As does prickly pear and mesquite syrups. 
• I got to try to Dry Soda juniper berry flavor. It was delicious.

Inaguration Party Like It's 1829

Eric Felten has a hilarious (as usual) story about Andrew Jackson's inauguration party in the Wall Street Journal.

The unruly bunch pushed into the White House, clods standing on the silk-upholstered furniture in muddy boots to get a glimpse of the new president (who was trying not to be crushed by his well-wishers). "The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant," wrote Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, appalled. When the stewards finally delivered buckets full of Orange Punch, the crowd lunged for the pails, overturning furniture, smashing the glassware, and -- perhaps worst of all -- spilling the punch itself. Quick-thinking waiters lugged the remaining barrels of punch out onto the White House lawn, enticing Jackson's admirers to take the party outside.

The story also includes an updated recipe for the Orange Punch served at the party. Read it here.

Glossy Booze: Mid-January Edition

Glossy Booze is a round-up of stories appearing in magazines sent to my house.

In Playboy (January), Scott Beattie continues his media onslaught with a recipe for his Pelo de Perro (that's hair of the dog) from his book. There's also a nice two-page spread on champagne, including a few cocktails.

 Sunset has a story on how to pair wine with vegetables, which is a nice change from the meat/fish thing.

Men's Journal also has a Scott Beattie cocktail recipe, this time the the Huck Yu. Beattie's book may have been listed in every single magazine I subscribe to.

In the February issue of the same magazine, there's a blurb about rye whiskey and (ri)1 in particular, as well as three beers to pair with chili.

Best Life (February) has a big story on the Fountain Jet soda maker. I have one that I love, and now they come in festive colors!

In Bon Appetit, Andrew Knowlton lists a Hot Toddy recipe called The Laureate from Daniel Hyatt of The Alembic. Here is the recipe online. There is also a large feature on natural wines.

Oh, and another San Francisco drink recipe is here as well. I'm pretty sure the Catch-22 cocktail was not actually created by Elizabeth Faulkner who is credited indirectly the story (and directly online), but by bartender Jackie Patterson.

In Esquire (February) David Wondrich lists the best cheap booze in several categories- brandy, rum, blended scotch, gin, and bourbon. I'm sure it will be online in a week or two so I'll link to it then.

Queen of the Syrups

My interview with Jennifer Colliau of Small Hand Foods was published in the San Francisco Chronicle today. She makes pineapple gum syrup for the Pisco Punch served all around town, plus orgeat and other syrups. Some highlights:

Q: Do you have a lot of experience cooking at home?

A: Oh yeah, with my style of cooking, I consider myself a confectioner. When I was a kid I made every recipe in the "Joy of Cooking" Candies and Confections chapter. I was like 9 years old going to drugstores looking for glycerin to make saltwater taffy. I was totally committed.

Q: Why do you think bartenders are seeking out these ingredients?

A: There are all these super-geeky bartenders, myself included, and the drinks we drink are so dry and not juicy and so austere. And we drink like old men. So you really start to pay attention to these tiny little things, like texture. There's this resurgence in egg white cocktails and gum syrup and paying attention to weight and body in the mouth.

Q: Are there any cocktail trends you're sick of?

A: Having variations of the same drink just by muddling different fruit in them. Some people are like, "What kind of mojitos do you have?" and we say, "Just the one - the mojito."

Read the story here.