Vampires, Vermouth, and the Dirty South

I'm a vampire buff.  I have a thing for zombies too, but I'll get into that in a week or so... today is all about those sexy, sleazy, bloodsuckers and the hoomans (me) who love them.

True Blood is one of my favorite shows: honestly, I could live without Sookie and her incessant whining, but then every show needs a bad guy... Mostly, I love the snarky writing, colorful chararcters (Lafayette and the mercilessly smart-mouthed vamper, Pam) and the endless parade of man-candy: nary an episode passes without one of the many attractive male leads parading around shirtless. Life is hard, get a helmet!

Recently, the show returned for it's fifth season and it couldn't come fast enough! Personally, I think it promises to be the most exciting season yet... Anyway, it put me in the mood to finally try a cocktail I've been dancing around since stumbling across it on CocktailDB (if you haven't checked out the site, you should: Martin Doudoroff and Ted  "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh have done an amazing job collecting thousands of recipes both old and new in one place.)  It at first reminded me of my beloved Mahattan, but on closer inspection it's more like a negroni...  The name comes from the French word for 'jewel,' and perhaps comes from the use of the bright green color of the chartreuse? With a name like the Bijou, and the herbaceous notes of the chartreuse there to enhance the vermouth, it put me immediately in mind of the wild woods around Bon Temps...

Bijou Cocktail

1-1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz green chartreuse
1/2 Sweet Vermouth
1 dash orange bitters








Stir in a mixing glass or tin with ice and strain into a cocktial glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon.
(photo from http://wineguyworld.blogspot.com)

I didn't immediately fall in love with it; I thought it was a little too strong on the 'musty' flavor- to be fair, though, I admit that I've have my sweet vermouth around and open for awhile- okay, 3 or 4 months- so that may very well have something to do with it.  I really ought to get one of those vacuum pump stopper kits precisely to keep my vermouth stash fresher for far longer.  That said, I'll probably give the drink another try before long.

While it may not have been an instant favorite, though, I will say that the Bijou definitely had bite ;) Now if I could just find my own 1,000 year old undead viking, life would be good...

My Bitter Half....

I am a woman possessed.

There's a certain magic to the addition of bitters to a cocktail that I hadn't fully appreciated until rather recently: It had always seemed kind of arbitrary to me, the way they are added- just a dash or two, and no more- to so many different drinks. I realize now that's a bit like saying vanilla is not really necessary for chocolate chip cookies. If you forget to add it, people will notice. But probably more accurately, it's like the difference between Italian sausage and a Bratwurst: it's all in the seasoning, and it's a whole different animal! So in the same way that one discovers the nuances of cooking ethnic dishes with different characteristic spices, so have I opened my eyes and awakened my palate to all of the subtleties bitters can bring to the bar. Now that I've fallen under the voodoo spell of bitters I can't get enough of the stuff, and I'm throwing them into just about every drink I make at home now, just to see what all the different varieties and combinations thereof can do....

It started with one, just one purchase of a bottle of Angostura bitters so I could start making my beloved Manhattans at home. "I won't need more than that for quite some time- bitters are bitters, right?," I thought to myself. And then one of my favorite bartenders, Julian, had to go and make me a Manhattan with orange bitters, insisting up, down, and six ways from Sunday that changing those two little dashes could make all the difference in the world. And he wasn't kidding! So off I skedaddled to my nearest Binny's for a bottle of the much revered Regan's Orange bitters. Then, the VeeV contest happened in May, and I went bat-shizzle hibiscus crazy and had to have that darned Burlesque bitters from Bittermens, too. I had it shipped all the way from Boston because I could not rest until I'd tried it with the VeeV. And since I was at it anyway, then I had to try the more anise-forward Peychaud's if I was ever going to make a proper Sazarac.... Sometimes, you don't really want to shove the genie back into the dasher bottle ;)

Today, it was the siren call of Fee's Grapefruit that lured me off the safety of the upper decks. This week's experiments involve cocktails made with beer, and this made me think of those hundreds of little wedges of citrus I've been served over the years with my lovingly pulled pints of ales, lagers, and Belgian-style wheats, which also in turn made me think of Margaritas and what a love child born from the marriage of both would taste like. And then there was that gosh darned Grapefruit Bitters, staring at me from the shelf at my neighborhood liquor store.... I tried to look away, but I was powerless against it's promises of crisp, thirst-quenching euphoria on such a smarmy, hell-mouth kind of day. I guess I'm still a sucker for a sweet talker....

So tonight I mingle and flirt with lager, tequila, lime, and my new Fee's; who knows where the hell this party will take us (just don't tell Grapefruit that I've already made a date with his cousin, Fee's Peach!)

The Solstice

The Solstice - A Tipsy Vixen creation

2 oz VeeV Acai Spirit
1.5 oz Jacques Cardin VSOP Cognac
1/2 oz homemade ginger syrup (instructions below)
1/2 oz lemon juice
2 dashes Regan's Orange Bitters



Dayaaaaaaaaamn! Sometimes a girl just can't catch a break... I was supposed to spend the summer solstice whooping it up all Celtic-like with my extended Chicago family, but as luck would have it, instead this girl was bored out of her mind at work. Booooooo!

Not to be subdued so easily, I went home and tied one on anyway with my other VeeV concoction. It isn't that I didn't like this drink; quite the contrary! The gals and I both agreed that the Ringwald was just more appropriate for the contest at hand. That said, I was really proud of this one too, and knew I could still roll it out to celebrate the upcoming holiday for which it's named.

Maybe it was a little nerdy of me, but when I saw the pretty yellow color, and tasted the warm citrusy blend of the cognac, ginger and fruits, the 15 year-old fluffy-bunny pagan still hiding somewhere in my psyche got all excited and glommed onto the whole solar thing. The rest of me decided that it was also a very summery drink in it's own right, and decided to indulge her.

For this one, I tried my hand at making ginger syrup: the experiment was successful for the drink at hand, but unfortunately the syrup starts to lose it's spiciness rather quickly and therefore it's potency in cocktails. I'll have to continue exparmentin'! as grandad would say, to solve that problem...

Anyway, you can make up a few ounces of ginger syrup rather easily like this:

Mash up about 6 ounces of fresh ginger root.
Heat about 1/2 a cup of water in a saucepan over medium-low heat, and completely dissolve 1 cup of sugar. Add the ginger and let it simmer very gently for about 20 minutes. Strain, cool, and bottle in a sterilized container.

Feel free to mix up a Solstice, and share your comments or suggestions below!