“A Time-Tested Favorite from Venezuela”

So wrote Charles H. Baker, traveler, raconteur, and possibly the ultimate fan of exotic tippling.

Yesterday I posted the details from an e-mail exchange I recently had with New York bartender and writer St. John Frizell over at Blogging Tales of the Cocktail. That exchange came at a time when I’ve been in a bit of a lull between drink explorations. These periods are always kind of troubling for me: nothing sounds all that exciting, and even the old palate refreshers seem to have lost their allure.

As I’ve mentioned before, though, when these periods of libational ennui set in, one of the best cures I’ve found is a little time with the books of Mr. Baker. His drinks can be interesting variations on tried-and-trues, and sometimes they can be just plain odd, but on occasion you come across a recipe that has to be tried to be believed. I’ve had disappointments before, but with this most recent expedition in which I turned up the “Maracaibo Kay Francis Cocktail,” I was fortunate to come across something pretty pleasant.

Baker credits Señor F. Garcia Bode, “Master- of-Mahogany-&-Mix at Cafe Plaza, at West Boliver 13,” with creation of this drink. It is, at first glance, an odd one: Spanish brandy and Spanish anisette in equal parts, with another part of strong black tea. But, it’s one of those odd combinations that may just work, the tannins in the tea taking the sweet edge off the anisette, and the sharp anise note breathing some life into the brandy. I tried this with cognac in place of Fundador, based on the contents of my liquor cabinet, but I’m fortunate to have a bottle of Anis del Mono on hand; it has a bright crispness that I like in an anisette, plus it’s relatively cheap, so if you come across a bottle I recommend you lay in a supply. For tea, I just used a bag of PG Tips — I’m more of a coffee guy, and it was the only black tea I could find in the kitchen cabinet — and while it certainly did the trick, I may swing by the tea shop later to pick up something a little more adventurous.

Anyway, this is a rut-buster for sure. As Baker wrote, “Try this one when some well-traveled soul drops-in, to vary the old usual Cocktail routine.” Sound advice indeed.

Kay Francis Cocktail

• 1 oz Fundador brandy [or cognac]
  
• 1 oz Anis del Mono [or other decent anisette]
  
• 1 oz strong black tea

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Twist lemon or orange peel on top, then discard peel.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks by Paul
2 Comments »

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of rum. Today, the editors at the San Francisco Chronicle let me overindulge this interest; read my rum-fuelled babblings right here:

Rum’s Ship Comes In
With bartenders and consumers exploring its many facets, the previously low-rent liquor is gaining new respect

And a word to the wise — try the Coin Toss, recipe kindly provided by Phil Ward from Death & Company.

Tags: General by Paul
5 Comments »

Fresh off cleaning up my own site for the first time in years, I was thinking it might be time to take a fresh look at Mixology Monday, especially considering that we’re now entering the third year of this monthly cocktail event.

Way back in April 2006, eight of us got together online to swap recipes and share experiences on cocktails with pastis. Now, we’re regularly drawing around 30 bloggers each month (including most of the original crew), and we’ve covered everything from aperitifs to winter warmers to cocktails that require careful supervision.

Not imagining this event would be so popular or go on so long, we started out on a fairly simple basis; I’ve moderated the sessions and kept the archives, and Darcy created a logo that we’ve updated each month as we’ve progressed. Recently, though, some of this has started to feel unwieldy, and I think it’d be a good idea to start our third year with a light facelift.

Here’s what I’m proposing:

A MxMo logo design contest - the folks who run The Session beer-blogging event and Wine Blogging Wednesdays have spiffy logos that stand up to the tests of time (their graphics are to the right for examples). It’d be great to have something that doesn’t need to be updated for each event, so we don’t have to bug Darcy every month to come up with a new graphic. The new logo can be inspired by the old one, or totally new — let’s see what you’ve got.

Entries should be PNG, GIF or JPG files, smaller than 20KB and with no dimension larger than 175px. Send entries to me by May 1, by either e-mail to paul [at] cocktailchronicles [dt] com, or by pasting a link for an image in the comments below. Once the entries are in, a winner will be selected by online voting, with polls open from May 2 through May 9; the winning logo will be announced here on May 10, and will make its debut for the May Mixology Monday on May 12.

Hosting that event is Trader Tiki, and his chosen theme is Rum. In recognition of this theme, and to help sweeten the contest pot, the winning designer will receive a hardcover copy of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, signed by Wayne Curtis. Wayne has kindly agreed to play along with this event, and if you haven’t read his fascinating work on the original American spirit, you’re really missing out. So fire up the Photoshop (or Adobe Illustrator or whatever the hell it is you design people use) and show us what you’ve got.

Second, since digging through my archives to find the Mixology Monday links and calendar has become a real pain in the ass, I’m taking a page from the wine bloggers and setting up an independent site that will be focused exclusively on Mixology Mondays; it’ll have links to past events, a calendar to upcoming events, and whatever other relevant stuff I can think of to put on there. This won’t be up until June, but by announcing it here it’ll give me the motivation to actually do it. Tentative URL is mixologymonday.net, which right now just bounces over to my site; if I can get the squatter (*cough* Jimmy *cough*) who snagged mixologymonday.com to give it up, I’ll host it there instead.

Anyway, onward with the third year of Mixology Monday. Thanks to everyone who’s helped and participated in the past — special thanks to Darcy for keeping up with the logo for so long — and let’s look ahead to mixing with rum in May.

Tags: Mixology Monday by Paul
7 Comments »

Two years.

I hadn’t pointed it out earlier — thanks to all the other things I’ve been wrangling with lately, I kind of forgot — but this month marks the second anniversary of the launch of Mixology Monday (this month hosted by the wonderful Anna at Morsels & Musings). I’ll save the misty sentimentality for another post, but for now, let’s just mark the occasion by noting that bloggers keep coming to these things — more than ever, at last glance — and we’ve somehow managed to keep this little drink-blogging celebration in the air for two years without it plummeting to the ground.

If only the same could have been said for the de Havilland Comet.

With a rush of hoopla and hubris that, in hindsight, harks back to that surrounding the Titanic, the Comet — the world’s first commercial passenger jetliner — entered service in 1952, making its maiden BOAC commercial flight from London to Johannesburg in May of that year. It sharply cut flight times, was a model of passenger comfort that can only be dreamed of in today’s era of nonexistent legroom and cattle-car conditions, and was so popular that the Queen Mother was an early passenger, becoming the first member of the British royal family to fly in a jet aircraft.

Celebrating this launch — according to David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails — was this sidecar relation, put together by Eddie “King Cocktail” Clarke at the Albany Club in London, and featuring the South African tangerine-and-herb liqueur, Van der Hum. Tart and fruity, these Comets go down fast.

Just like the winged ones did. Less than a year after commencing service, Comets started dropping out of the sky — metal fatigue, it turned out, a problem remedied in later models (and avoided by competing aircraft manufacturers), but by then the damage was done: the Comet’s reputation had taken a hit, and sales never completely recovered.

Fortunately, this Comet is still around:

Comet (adapted from Killer Cocktails, by David Wondrich)

• 2 ounces cognac
• 1 ounce yellow grapefruit juice (good luck finding yellow — I had to settle for pink)
• 1/2 ounce Van der Hum
• 1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake well with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Thanks for two years of Mixology Mondays, everyone; now head on over to Anna’s place to see what everyone else has been up to.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Mixology Monday by Paul
4 Comments »

After more than two years with the same theme, and about a year and a half of talking about changing it, I finally got my act together and spent some time working on it. I know, some bloggers switch themes every time they change their clothes, but I’m, um, especially challenged when it comes to tinkering with the innards of the site, so the fact that I got around to updating it at all is a pretty big accomplishment. Plus, I had a header graphic that I’ve been sitting on for, oh, nine months, and thought I should use it while my designer friend, Patty, is still alive.

If you’re reading this from an RSS feed and have no idea what I’m talking about, click on over and check out the main site. And if you see any problems, let me know (include what browser you’re using; not that it’ll help me fix the problem, but it will help me shift the blame elsewhere).

Tags: General by Paul
19 Comments »