Food-themed art for the modern home
What do you do with a big bag of blood oranges hauled back from the market?
The choices are endless. With their sweet flavor with hints of berries and cherries, blood oranges naturally lend themselves to sweet and savory recipes. I could make a pound cake or muffins or a salad or sauce for chicken. But there's something to be said for just squeezing the heck out of them for a tall glass of juice. Or any refreshing drink.
Some days, when I get back home after a long day of prepping for and teaching a class at night, I just want to collapse on the couch with a glass of wine. And inevitably of course, some days I get back home and realize I don't actually have any wine around the house.
Yesterday was one of those days. I got back home close to 10pm with a slice of pizza and just didn't feel like trekking back out again, especially in the wind and snow. So I did the next best thing: make myself a gin cocktail.
Well, it has been quite a week! Since turning in my edited galley pages for my cookbook, I've been busy testing out new recipes for both Brooklyn Galley and Appetite for China. And celebrating the end of a long project usually means a cocktail somewhere in the mix.
I've been trying out this Rosemary Salty Dog cocktail for the last couple of day. If you've never had a Salty Dog, it's basically a drink with grapefruit juice and vodka or gin in a glass with a salted rim. It was likely concocted in the early 1950s by the same man who came up with the Bloody Mary.
This cocktail just screams summer to me, possibly because of the icy grapefruit flavor, or possibly because "salty dog" word association brings up nice thoughts of saltwater, beaches, and playing with dogs. My brain works in mysterious ways.
Although this drink isn’t made with Irish whiskey or beer, I think it’s pretty fitting for St. Patrick’s Day. It’s green and was possibly created by the Irish in Prohition-era Chicago. But most importantly, it’s very cold, which is fitting for this insanely early spring we’re having.
Many of the quick gin drinks I make at home — such as gin and tonics, gimlets, and gin rickeys — are mixed with lime juice. But I recently bought a bunch of organic lemons and have been looking for ways to incorporate them into cocktails. One easy drink is the Southside, a minimalist cocktail with easy-to-find ingredients: gin, lemon juice, mint, and simple syrup.
Well, it's March. Here in New York, after another warm spell, we're back in the midst of chilly temps. It's more Paris chilly than Northeast US frigidness; instead of negative temps giving your face frostbite, the all the cold moisture in the air just seeps into your bones. These past few rainy days, hiding indoors with a good movie or book seems preferable to sloshing through the streets and subways, the latter which in New York becomes totally crippled any time we get more than 1/4 inch of rain.
I've also been dealing with the cold by whipping up some hot drinks. In this case, hot buttered rum. Now, every bar in town seems to serve a mulled wine, hot apple cider, or hot toddy. But in our high-cholesterol-fearing modern age, it seems that nobody wants any butter in their drinks anymore, even as we scarf down pork belly entrees and bacon desserts en masse. What a shame. Because you can actually make this delicious drink with just a scant 1 teaspoon of butter, or less than the amount the average person puts on his morning toast.
Last year I had an amazing cocktail at a restaurant whose name escapes me now. It might have been in Brooklyn. Or Manhattan. All I remembered is that it was one of those places that served amazing, pitch-perfect cocktails.
I ordered one called The Bee’s Knees without knowing the ingredients except gin. I took a sip and immediately asked the bartender what was in it.
“Gin, lemon juice, and honey,” he replied.
And?