orange » Wonderland Kitchen
Browsing Tag

orange

Mixing Islay: The Coal Fire Cocktail

The Coal Fire Cocktail - Wonderland Kitchen
February 28, 2013 By In drink me, from the bar

At home, I’ve been on a bit of a single malt scotch kick recently. The smokier and peatier the better. Maybe it’s the time of year, but right now there is nothing more satisfying to me than 2 ounces of peaty, smoky, and briny Isaly scotch. It could also be that I’m just projecting our desire for a wood burning fireplace in our living room into my glass. But let’s not get too psychoanalytic.

Though single malts are best taken neat with just a few drops of water, I simply couldn’t resist trying to find a way to get those flavors into a cocktail. If you think you would like the taste of the last log in the fireplace, burned all the way down, embers ashy yet aglow, then this cocktail is definitely for you. That description pretty much sums it up. The recipe calls for Ardbeg 10, but any smoky and peaty Islay single malt—like a Lagavulin 16 or Laphroaig Quarter Cask—would certainly make an acceptable substitute. Sláinte!

Coal Fire

1 1/2 oz. Pikesville Rye
1/2 oz. Ardbeg 10 Year Islay Single Malt Scotch
1/2 oz. Taylor Madeira Wine
1/2 oz. Grade B Maple Syrup
1/4 tsp. Los Nahaules Mezcal Joven
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
Flamed orange peel for garnish

Combine the rye, scotch, Madeira, maple syrup, mezcal, and bitters in a mixing glass. Stir with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Flame an orange peel and drop it in for garnish.

Champagne Cocktails for Valentine’s Day

Champagne Cocktails for Valentine's Day
February 14, 2013 By In drink me, from the bar

The devil is in the details. An idiom, a truism, and something I firmly believe. It’s the little things—the subtleties—that make something truly sparkle and definitely very sexy. And when it comes to champagne cocktails, for me, at least, subtlety is key. If I’ve got good bubbles, I want to taste them. But just the right amount of subtle accent can take a flute of champagne to a whole other level. I created this trio of distinct champagne cocktails in honor of Valentine’s Day with the hope that you can take your love to the next level. Cheers.

Champagne Cocktail: French Kiss
A riff on the classic French 75, French Kiss is the lightest of the three champagne cocktails presented here. A subtle sweetness from the St-Germain and spice from the ginger liqueur mingle with herbaceous, sour, and dry, adding a surprising layer to this “fruit-on-the-bottom” drink.

French Kiss

1 oz. Plymouth Gin
1/4 oz. Lemon Juice
1/4 oz. St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1 barspoon Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur
4 oz. Moët & Chandon Imperial Champagne
Lemon twist for garnish

Place a sugar cube in a champagne flute. Combine the gin, lemon juice, St-Germain, and ginger liqueur in a mixing glass. Shake with cracked ice and strain into the champagne flute. Top with the champagne and garnish with a lemon twist.

Champagne Cocktail: Rich and Famous
My personal favorite of the bunch, Rich and Famous is at least half of its name. Hopefully the famous part will follow.

Rich and Famous

1 oz. Pierre Ferrand Ambre Cognac
1/2 oz. Bénédictine
1/4 oz. St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
3 1/2 oz. Moët & Chandon Imperial Champagne
3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
3 dashes Angostura Bitters
1 demerara sugar cube

Place a demerara sugar cube in a champagne flute and drench with the bitters. Combine the cognac, Bénédictine, and allspice dram in a mixing glass. Stir with ice and strain into the champagne flute. Top with the champagne.

Champagne Cocktail: Difficult Loves
A trinity of Italian ingredients come together in this bitter but savory champagne cocktail, named in honor of Italian writer Italo Calvino’s short story collection of the same name.

Difficult Loves

1/2 oz. Cynar
1/2 oz. Carpano Antica Formula
1/2 oz. Cocchi Americano
4 oz. Moët & Chandon Imperial Champagne
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1 sugar cube
Orange twist for garnish

Combine the Cynar, Carpano Antica, and Cocchi Americano in a mixing glass. Stir with ice and strain into the champagne flute. Top with champagne and garnish with an orange twist.

Champagne Cocktails

Award Winning: Lonely Angel No. 35

Lonely Angel #35
January 29, 2013 By In drink me, from the bar

A cocktail is always infinitely more compelling to me if it has an interesting story to accompany it. And of the original recipes I’ve created, Lonely Angel No. 35, a Negroni variation that uses the French St-Germain elderflower liqueur, definitely takes the cake in the story department.

I created this drink on the night of Thursday, October 4, 2012. It was my birthday. But it was a birthday night devoid of the usual birthday accoutrements. There was no cake. There was no dinner out at a restaurant (or an exquisitely prepared feast at home). No friends or family around to celebrate, as Molly was in NYC on business. Boo-hoo, right? I wasn’t even home for most of the evening myself as I had performed a concert earlier that night. So when I arrived back at home at 10:30 p.m. that night, I decided that I’d fix myself a drink. Always up for an experiment, I decided to mix a variation on my beloved Negroni.

My choice of ingredients was influenced as much by what we currently had on the shelf as by the disappointment I was still nursing after learning that my cocktail The French Intervention wasn’t eligible for Martha Stewart and St-Germain’s Fifth Annual Can-Can Classic Cocktail Competition because it didn’t feature enough St-Germain. The contest rules–which I originally neglected to read, of course–specified that submitted drinks needed to include 1 oz. of St-Germain; The French Intervention only uses 1/2 oz. A Negroni variation, I thought, could be the perfect showcase for that volume of the liqueur as long as the other ingredients could stand up to it.

I chose Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage Bourbon in place of the gin and Cynar instead of Campari to shade it more towards the mellow side. The coup de grâce, however, was my decision to float four dashes of Angostura for an initial added kick of bitterness. That simple tweak makes the drink. If you know St-Germain, you know that it finishes strong. So putting the Angostura front and center sets up a really neat effect and balances the drink as it progresses across the palate.

I ended up submitting this drink to the Can-Can Classic Cocktail Competition and promptly forgot that I had. That is until two weeks ago when I received emails from both St-Germain and Martha Stewart Living. Though Lonely Angel No. 35 wasn’t the grand prize winner, it was chosen as a runner up. As a prize I received a bottle of St-Germain as well as a custom St-Germain bicycle. Not too shabby!

Lonely Angel #35

So, the name. The ‘lonely’ part should be obvious—I was alone on my birthday. What’s more lonely than that? The ‘angel’ in the title is a bit more cryptic and convoluted. My birthday is October 4. Written out numerically it is 1004. If you say that number in Korean—one thousand four—it is pronounced chun-sa. In the Korean language that is also a homonym for ‘angel.’ Get it? And No. 35? It was my thirty-fifth birthday. So there you have it.

Lonely Angel No. 35
Runner Up, Fifth Annual Can-Can Classic Cocktail Competition

1 oz. Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage Bourbon
1 oz. Cynar
1 oz. St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur
4 dashes Angostura Bitters
Wide orange twist for garnish

Combine the bourbon, Cynar, and St-Germain in a mixing glass. Stir with ice and strain over one large ice cube into a rocks glass. Float four dashes of the bitters and garnish with a wide orange twist.

In the Russet Gold of This Vain Hour

russet_640
November 8, 2012 By In drink me, from the bar

For this cocktail, I had a fairly clear idea of what I was after. I was looking to create a drink that would round out the darker end of Wonderland Kitchen’s fall offerings—something slightly complex and rich, but not cloying. I sometimes regard drinks with a multitude of ingredients a little suspiciously, as though their creators were attempting to flex some sort of mixological muscles. But having now imagined my own hooch hydra, I may start to reconsider that position.

It all comes down to balance and if a cocktail tastes like a bunch of things thrown together and swirled around for the heck of it, well, that may just be the case. I would have pulled the plug on this particular project if I detected any of that going on, but thankfully what emerged was something I considered to be intriguing, exactly in line with my original intent, and pretty darn tasty to boot. The cocktail gets its name from the title track of an album by the late-1990s alternative rock group The Autumns.

In the Russet Gold of This Vain Hour

1 1/2 oz. Pierre Ferrand Ambre Cognac
1/2 oz. Smith & Cross Naval Strength Rum
1/2 oz. Amaro Montenegro
1 oz. Punt e Mes
1 tsp. St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
1 tsp. Demerara Syrup
Flamed orange peel for garnish

Combine the cognac, rum, amaro, Punt e Mes, allspice dram, and demerara syrup in a mixing glass. Stir with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Flame an orange peel over the top of the drink and drop it in for garnish.

Easter Egg Cocktail: The Sergio Leone

edddrink_top
April 8, 2012 By In drink me, from the bar

Since we didn’t color Easter eggs or bake an Easter ham, I was on the hunt for something to celebrate the holiday. A recent interest in exploring cocktails that make use of raw eggs led me to several recipes that had obviously been posted in advance of this weekend for people just like me.

Of the bunch, the Sergio Leone cocktail, caught my eye as much for its tip of the hat to the famous spaghetti Western director as for the fact that it was the only one I could mix up with the supplies currently available in our not-too-shabby-but-clearly-lacking-in-some-areas home bar collection. I love the tang produced by bourbon and fresh lemon juice. And with the maraschino acting as the bridge between the two, the result was a not-too-sweet cocktail worthy of a grown up Easter celebration. A small orange peel disk as a garnish gives the illusion of a brightly colored Easter egg hidden at the bottom of the glass.

The Sergio Leone Cocktail
Adapted from RPM Italian mixologist Paul McGee’s recipe featured online in Wine Enthusiast Magazine

1½ ounce Willett Bourbon
½ ounce Luxardo Maraschino
¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
¾ ounce simple syrup
½ egg white
1 orange peel disk for garnish

Combine the bourbon, maraschino, lemon juice, simple syrup, and egg white in a shaker without ice. The “without ice” part of the equation is important. A little tip I picked up from a bartender at The Patterson House in Nashville: when working with raw eggs, it is best to do the initial shake sans ice to allow the egg white to emulsify. (I can attest from first hand experience that shaking raw egg with ice initially will lead to a result you will certainly pour down the drain.) Shake vigorously for 10-12 seconds. Next, add some ice to the shaker and shake as normal. Pour the drink through a fine mesh strainer into a chilled coupe, garnish with the orange peel, and enjoy.