Thinking of a clever name for an alcoholic Shirley Temple isn't easy. Shirley Tempest, Shirley Temptress, Dirty Shirley, Shirley Temple of Doom - they're all taken, and most of the recipes are for vodka, Sprite, and grenadine. Thanks, but no. Well, I have a different recipe. The typical Shirley Temple... Read more →
I went to Capo's in San Francisco's North Beach to try out the cocktails. The initial cocktail menu was quite a bit longer, but they edited it to be shorter and more whiskey-centric. There are currently just five cocktails on the menu: The Chicago Cocktail, the Silencer (Americano variation), Suicide... Read more →
I've been attempting to do something interesting with pomegranate seeds as part of this Pomegranate Project I'm working on. But it hasn't been going well so far. My default ways to mess with an ingredient are: 1. Freeze it. 2. Dehydrate it. So I tried that, both with PAMA and... Read more →
By looking over the camper_clips tag on Alcademics for 2012, I picked out a few of my favorite stories (on other websites) that I wrote over that last year. They are below. East Bay Sees a Cocktail Renaissance in the San Francisco Chronicle Liquid Smoke in the LA Times Magazine... Read more →
In my latest piece for Details.com, I round up some eggnogs that look weird enough to be interesting, including aged eggnog, smoky eggnog, one that sounds like you'd eat it at brunch, a super boozy one, and one made with two kinds of mushroom. Ones that didn't make the cut... Read more →
On FineCooking.com, I posted a recipe from Amber West of Central 214 in Dallas. It contains Ron Abuelo 12 rum, Pierre Ferrand Ambre cognac, Grand Marnier, honey syrup, and lemon juice. Get the recipe here. Read more →
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... Read more →
We all know that grenadine is supposed to be a syrup made of pomegranate juice and sugar, often with orange flower water added in. But most commercial grenadines are little more than red food coloring and sweetener. We might think that artificially-flavored cocktail ingredients like grenadine all came to be... Read more →