Alcademics.com

Spicy Mulled Negroni Recipe

Here is a hot drink that will both warm up your body and make your mouth tingle with added spiciness from black pepper and Tabasco. 

I tried a lot of versions of this drink before settling on the below recipe. My first thought was to skip the water and use regular wine rather than vermouth, letting the mulling spices work their magic on it. However that didn't work for me, possibly because I bought a really terrible bottle of red wine. 

I also went back and forth on using ground spices versus whole, but found there was just too much gunk in the bottom of the glass when using ground cinnamon and pepper. As a result I let it simmer longer than with ground spices. (A fine strainer didn't work well to keep them out of the glass and a coffee filter gummed up, likely because of all the sugar/honey.)

I'm guessing this recipe would work just find with pre-packaged mulling spices you can buy in stores. Just add black pepper and Tabasco to the mix if you want it spicy.

I was surprised that despite the sweetened vermouth and Campari, it could still take that much honey syrup, but I found that using orange blossom honey really paired nicely with the Negroni and honey is always great in hot drinks. 

Anyway, here goes. 

 

Spicy Mulled Negroni
By Camper English

1.5 ouces Gin
1.5 ounces Campari
1.5 ounces Sweet Vermouth
1.5 ounces Orange Blossom Honey Syrup (equal parts honey and water)
2 ounces Water
2-3 dashes Tabasco Pepper Sauce
1 stick Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Black Peppercorns
1/8 tsp Fresh Ground Nutmeg
Orange peel, for garnish 

Simmer all ingredients except gin and orange peel over low heat for about 15 minutes. Add gin and pour into a heat-proof glass. Zest orange peel and drop into glass. 

 

This recipe was developed with support from Tabasco. 

The Fizzy Mary with Carbonated Garnish

The Fizzy Mary combines the enriching vegetables and hair-of-the-dog booziness of the typical Bloody Mary with stomach-soothing fizz created by Nitrous Oxide. The drink has a wonderful tingle on the lips and better yet, the nitrous bubbles will go right to your head.

After a few experiments I found I liked the Fizzy Mary best charged with whipped cream canisters (nitrous charges), while the garnish I preferred carbonated (soda chargers).

I ended up using the Perlini cocktail carbonating system for the liquid and the iSi whipped cream canister for the garnishes, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use one tool for both.


Fizzy Mary

You will need:
Perlini cocktail carbonating system or iSi whipped cream canister
Cream (nitrous) chargers

Ingredients:
2 parts Your Favorite or Homemade Bloody Mary Mix (I use Low-Sodium V8 juice)
1 part Vodka
5 dashes Tabasco Pepper Sauce

To the Perlini shaker add ingredients and ice. Charge with a whipped cream canister (NO2), then shake drink. Allow to settle for at least 30 seconds before opening cap. Strain into a wine or Collins glass. Note that the nitrous increases the perception of sweetness, so extra Tabasco or lemon juice will help tame it. Add carbonated garnish.

Note: If making a Fizzy Mary in an iSi whipped cream dispenser, mix ingredients well before adding to siphon, then do shake only lightly, avoiding splashing the top part of the siphon to prevent gunking it up. Release pressure slowly, then open the canister and pour and strain the contents into your glass.

 

Carbonated Bloody Mary Garnish

You will need:
iSi whipped cream canister or Perlini carbonating cocktail system
Soda (carbon dioxide) chargers

Ingredients:
Various garnishes
Vodka
Tabasco pepper sauce

Note, you’ll leave these garnishes to carbonate overnight, so remember to begin a day before you need them.

Possible garnishes include cherry tomatoes, lemon wedges, olives, cocktail onions, cucumbers, pickles, tofu cubes, pickled vegetables etc. The more porous the better. Non-porous vegetables like pepperonchini, celery, carrots, green peppers, etc., will not carbonate well.

I added vodka and Tabasco sauce to my charger to infuse the veggies while carbonating. When you eat the carbonated garnish, it tingles in the mouth and the Tabasco enhances the sensation.

Add garnishes to an iSi whipped cream dispenser. Fill with vodka and many dashes of Tabasco up to the level of the fruit. Charge the canister with a Carbon Dioxide charger. Gently shake the canister and place in refrigerator.

Leave to carbonate in the refrigerator overnight. Open canister directly before serving. Carbonation doesn’t last more than a half hour or so, longest in the tomatoes and only 15 minutes or so in less porous veggies.

On the Modernist Cuisine website, they do a shorter-time version (two hours) by using extra CO2 canisters, but I didn't find this so useful for tofu or tomatoes. 

Note: another way to carbonate garnishes (and probably the Bloody Mary as well) is to use dry ice and a Nalgene bottle. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks fun.

Here are some other pictures. I didn't mean for them to be artsy; I'm just terrible with white balance. 

 

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This recipe was developed with support from Tabasco. 

A Buck With a Bonus

During Portland Cocktail Week, Mindy Kucan (now of Portland's Hale Pele) was making a version of a Rye Buck that I thought was very tasty, so I asked her for the recipe.

A buck, as you might know, is any spirit plus ginger beer and a squeeze of citrus.

To the standard formula she added BG Reynold's Don's Mix, which is a syrup of grapefruit and cinnamon. I remember it being spicy and refreshing to boot. 

Rye Buck a la Mindy Kucan
1.5 oz Knob Creek Rye
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz BG Reynolds Don's Mix
1.5 oz Ginger Beer

Shake and strain into collins glass. Top with Ginger Beer and garnish with a lime wedge studded with 3 cloves.

 

Lesser Classic Cocktails in a New Book

The new book Let's Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition: A Compendium of Impish, Romantic, Amusing, and Occasionally Appalling Potations from Bygone Eras by Lesley M. M. Blume is a humorous, illustrated book that lists recipes for lesser-known vintage drinks like the Laughing Soup, Gloom Lifter, and Battery Charger. 

I wrote about it here on FineCooking.com and included the recipe for the Leave-It-To-Me Cocktail.

A lot of the recipes in the book call for apricot brandy, a combination of sweet/dry vermouth and bitters, orange juice, eggs, absinthe, and grenadine. Not all together. So in some ways you can see why they're lesser-known vintage cocktails compared to the Manhattan and Negroni. 

So one wouldn't neccesarily want to make all the recipes in it- many are a bit close to each other in formulation- but it's a really cute book with nice illustrations and a good sense of humor all the way around. It should make a good gift book this year. 

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The Double Rainbow Cocktail in a New Recipe Book

In 2010 I created the Double Rainbow Cocktail, a simple drink I named after the YouTube video. It contains vodka, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, grapefruit bitters, and soda water, and has a lemon peel garnish. 

Anyway, now it's in a mini cocktail book called The Cocktail Hour: Vodka. 

It's a 3"x5" book of about 30 recipes plus a few infusions, with black and white illustrations. It's part of a series - there is a rum and a gin book too. 

Just thought I'd let you know. 

Book Review: Destination Cocktails

The new book Destination Cocktails by James Teitelbaum features reviews of 350 bars in 40 countries. 

It's amazingly up-to-date, and even lists some bars surely to be on the radar that weren't open yet when the book came out, like Portland's Hale Pele, or that still haven't opened yet, like San Francisco's Trick Dog.

As I wrote in my FineCooking.com column:

The book would certainly be of interest to any cocktail fan planning to do a bit of traveling (unlike bar reviews on the internet, the book sticks to just the best places) in the US or abroad, or to read as an intellectual exercise, learning about the current global state of the cocktail bar. 

It isn't a cocktail book, but there are a few cocktail recipes in it. I included one in my blog post on Fine Cooking. It contains, bourbon, Pimm's, Cherry Heering, lime juice, and bitters. Check it out. 

 

A Shandy from Maine

Over at FineCooking.com, I posted a recipe for a rather simple Shandy variation using ingredients from Maine. 

 

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It comes from a new book Drinking in Maine, which features cocktails with ingredients from Maine. 

The recipe is here.

Honey and Hot Sauce

Tim Philips of Australia created this simple and delcious drink for the Diageo Happy Hour at Tales of the Cocktail this year. 

It is tequila, manuka honey syrup, lime juice, and a few dashes of Tabasco. The key is getting the delcious, earthy manuka honey. 

The recipe is on FineCooking.com here.