Drinks

Autumn Glory apple margaritas with rosemary and black pepper

Fall cocktails, blush hues. This week, a study in contrasts.

It’s that time of year when the skies start to darken earlier than normal. At 9PM, sunset in the height of summer is just starting to edge its way down the valley that sits squarely across from our stone patio. It’s now mid-fall, and that hour is 5PM, the time ticking towards that point in November when the clocks are turned back and we, for the most part, accept with reluctance that winter is near.

I love the darkness. I love the rain. I love anything that forces me to stay inside and seek cover amongst a treasured set of inanimate objects. Books, magazines, iphone gadgets – ordered yet still unpackaged. Reading, writing, cleaning, procrastinating. Wearing nothing but loungewear.

I love the smell of fall. The whiff of damp leaves that hangs in the cold air when the kids run in from their games outside. I once bought a candle from

Homesick Candles,  each candle smelling like the leaves endemic to the state on the label. More Aēsop than Yankee Candle should you ask, I can’t take those cloying smells. I bought the candle that said “Washington”. I’m not from Washington. I’m not from anywhere close to Washington. But the candle reminded me of this time of year. The hunker. The silence. Somehow, it smells like home.

It’s the season for sturdy stockpots and cast iron cookware. Long-neglected since the early days of spring when the days are still more cool than warm. My pots nearly beckon me to use them, cry out for a damp rag to release them from their silken coats of dust. They speak to me, I know they do. Maybe yours will too if you bend your ear and listen.

In summer it’s hard to cook slowly and methodically. Meals require nothing but a quick sear or a bracing vinaigrette. But, autumn demands it of us.

Including cocktails. Especially cocktails.

I made these beauties a few weeks ago; on a weekend that was just warm enough in the sunshine to make outdoor drinking appealing. The morning had been crisp, the kitchen tiles cool to the touch. We were in the mood for cocktails (before noon, naturally), and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to use my stove to prep them.

And make use of all of the fall flavors. Autumn Glory apples with notes of sweet caramel and cinnamon. Apple pie without the guilt.

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Drinks

Nice to meet you again

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It’s time friends. It took 9 months of coordination, planning, excessive emailing and general indecisiveness to get to this point, but I’m happy to unveil an updated blog design.

Two years ago I began this blog as a means to share my love of food with a broader audience. Though I put many hours of work into the concept behind the site, selecting the original design took several minutes.

I’d hired a freelancer to help me through some nagging technical and design issues, and he offered a quick solution: buy a pre-made theme. Genius.

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But I had one other suggestion for my friend the programmer: find a theme that hides the photography.

Hide it ….Bury it….Make it invisible.

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Drinks

Anatomy of a cocktail

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Social media is a bizarre world full of picture posting, “me me me”-ing and so much content that it’s hard to absorb even a fraction of the messages. But, I will say, that if you choose your battles and dedicate your time to one channel, the payoff is great. I’ve gravitated towards Instagram as my channel of choice for a number of reasons – the food community is bar none, inspiration in the form of jaw-droppingly beautiful images is aplenty, and no less important – it serves as a laboratory for future food posts.

I’ve had people ask me how I develop content for the site and the answer is twofold: often a story worth telling pops into my head and I reverse engineer a food connection from that starting point (e.g. “Valentine’s Day and other tragedies“). But I also use Instagram as a way to test the popularity of certain dishes. If I notice that people really love eggs, “Green Shakshuka” will show up on the blog.

Today, the show is all about cocktails, which just so happens to be an Instagram-driven topic. A few months ago I started posting a regular Friday night cocktail, and noticed a trend. Every time I post my Friday night cocktail:

1. I immediately lose followers, which suggests that I’ve somehow attracted a large percentage of a) teetotalers and/or b) people who don’t like to have a good time. So if you would include yourself in one or more of those categories, I’ll clarify: You will see booze on this site. Lots of it. I sometimes mix myself a lunch cocktail and once drank red wine at breakfast. [sneeze]Forbreakfast.
2. Of those who do leave comments, the response is overwhelmingly positive. A few of my favorites:

  • Whoa, check this out! [tags friend]
  • [tags friend] lets get that party on the books!
  • I think I’m in love….shhh don’t tell my husband and my personal favorite:
  • Fååårk det lyder perfekt! (which I imagine to mean “f*** this looks perfect!”….but maybe it’s really “far from perfect!” or “for your diet this is perfect!”
     
    If anyone can answer this question, I’ll send you a Bloody Mary. Or at least a recipe for a Bloody Mary.)

You can see that a lot of friend tagging happens when I post a cocktail picture. I get it; people are excited for the weekend. They’re eager to discuss where the night will start. And this, by the way, makes me incredibly happy. I love knowing that I have some infinitesimally small part in kick-starting people’s weekends. Where they take it from there (raging hangover, walk of shame in fishnets and a borrowed boyfriend T.) is up to them.

I also find this second point interesting because I never get the same kind of reaction with my food pics. It’s not that my food images are unloved, it’s just that people are far more vocal when meals are posted in liquid form.

Which…suggests one thing: People aren’t making fancy cocktails at home.

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Am I right?

I see a few obstacles in the making of cocktails at home.

Please answer the following questions honestly:

  1. When you’re at a bar and order a Gin & Tonic or a Vodka soda and the bartender asks for your liquor preference, do you panic? Furthermore:
    1. Do you squeak out the word “Belvedere” not sure whether you’ve dropped the name of a gin or vodka brand?
    2. Or do you just casually say “whatever you’ve got on hand”, attempting to seem low key when really your booze game is weak?
  2. Could you spot a jigger out of a bar tools lineup? A muddler? How about a Hawthorne strainer?
  3. Do you have the right barware above your fully-stocked bar? (brandy snifters, champagne flutes, highball glasses, rocks glasses, copper mugs for Moscow mules, etc.?)
  4. Do you even have a bar? (translation: counter that holds at least three bottles of hard alcohol)

 

If your answers were Yes, Yes, Yes, No, No, No then count yourself amongst the majority.

Because mixing a cocktail is intimidating. And if you don’t do it correctly, your drink will be a total failure.

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Savory

For the love of pomegranate molasses

Pomegranate molasses
Not long ago I was scared of pomegranate molasses.

It’s not a common ingredient, and to be perfectly honest, anything with the word molasses makes me just a little bit hesitant. My mind jumps to baking and Southern cooking, neither of which are strengths.

Combine my aversion to molasses with pomegranate molasses packaging, which is often entirely in Arabic, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

I’d bought a jar years ago when I’d seen it used in recipes from my Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cookbooks. Paul Wolfert, Yotam Ottolenghi, Claudia Roden, all repeat offenders.

But I’d hidden it in the back of my cupboard, along with the Vietnamese rice papers, and there it remained until last year. When for obvious reasons, I pitched the dust-covered bottle into the trash, horrified by its 2010 expiration date.

But I do love sweet & sour flavors. It’s a perfect marriage; Chinese restaurants have made a fortune singing its praises.

A few weeks ago I came across a recipe for sticky Moroccan chicken, and there it was – pomegranate molasses – in all of its glory, with the promise of a gooey, slick, finger-licking sauce.

Seeing that I’d already pitched the bottle of pomegranate molasses, I figured I’d pass on the recipe. But when I peeked into the fridge that morning, I was happy to see a full, unopened container of pomegranate juice. Hmmm…perhaps all was not lost. The wheels began to turn.

One thing I’ve learned in the kitchen is that when you don’t have the right ingredient, improvise. Lime instead of lemon, brown sugar instead of white, and most important, homemade when you don’t have a packaged version. You won’t get the exact same result, but you’ll get something similar. Which unless you’re trading baking powder for baking soda, will still be pretty delicious. Sometimes even more so.

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Before long, I was nose deep on a pomegranate DIY mission, surfing through online recipes and getting excited about the prospect of making some at home.

I found what I needed, cracked open the pomegranate juice, added some lemon juice and a hint of sugar, and I was off to the races.

I don’t know why I was so nervous about pomegranate molasses. It’s one of those simple, flavorful ingredients that every cook should have in his or her arsenal.

Bobby Flay will flay you for not keeping it on hand. (Cue the laugh track, I needed it there). But seriously, he’s crazy about this stuff. Here’s proof. It tastes good on everything. Including straight off the spoon.

Check out some of my favorite ways to eat it, starting with the chicken of course…

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And if you read this postabout my love for kitchen alchemy, you’ll know that the pomegranate molasses has made its way into quite a few cocktails…

Here it is paired with Chambord, key lime and blood orange juice with a hint of soda…

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