Gourmet Underground Detroit » Chartreuse

Drunken Angel

Evan Hansen — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:05:59 +0000

Coconut syrup was one of my primary cocktail revelations of the last year. It’s a flavor that generally evokes in me an absolute numb, deadened sensation. Total ennui. It’s not that I hate coconut: I just don’t like it, and it’s never done much for me.

But last January or so, I had some ideas for drinks based off of coconut ranging from mixing it with rum and Aperol to using it in an egg white foam atop bourbon and chocolate bitters with fresh chocolate for sort of a German Chocolate Cake flavor. I found earlier this month that I, much to my surprise, missed having coconut syrup around.

So I made more and decided to start making drinks based upon it again. Of all the cocktails I’ve made recently, this is surprisingly my favorite, a nicely balanced drink that really only hints at coconut. The absinthe rinse is crucial: Minus that component, this particular recipe comes off as a just a touch flabby. Somehow, the absinthe highlights the citrus without adding much of the characteristic anise/licorice flavor. Pretty much awesome.

I’m calling it the Drunken Angel. Here’s the recipe.

Drunken Angel

.75 oz aged rum (not too flavorful – in this case, I used Appleton 12)
.75 oz white rum
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz yellow chartreuse
.5 oz coconut syrup
Absinthe
1 egg white
Peychaud’s bitters

Combine all the ingredients save the bitters in a shaker. Dry shake. Shake with ice. Swirl a bit of absinthe in a coupe and discard any that immediately puddles. Double strain the drink into the coated glass. Gently dash the Peychaud’s over the top of the drink, trying to concentrate several dots in the center. Use a toothpick to draw the bitters out into a nebulous, heavenly shape. Discard the toothpick, pick up the glass, and get your drink on.

To make coconut syrup, heat up equal parts sugar and water to create a 1:1 simple syrup. Give it a stir and don’t let it boil. As soon as all the sugar is dissolved, add unsweetened, unadulterated, flaked coconut to the syrup and let it sit for about a half hour to an hour until your kitchen smells like coconut.

Crossing the Rubicon

Evan Hansen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:33:00 +0000

There’s something to fire. Something beyond the obvious needs for warmth, internal combustion, and razing medieval towns. Playing around with it is at least moderately pleasurable on its own accord, so you can imagine how we at Swigs would view the combination of playing with fire and consumable liqueurs.

Obviously, the use of heat to change the properties of our food is a key principle of cooking, and I’d always wondered how it might be applied to my drinks beyond the token flaming orange peel at a trendy cocktail bar. As it turns out, bartending guru Jamie Boudreau had adequately demonstrated the concept already through a drink he created called the Rubicon.

The Rubicon

2oz dry gin
.5 oz maraschino liqueur
.5 oz lemon juice
.25 oz green chartreuse
a few sprigs of rosemary
Pour the chartreuse into a rocks glass and curl a sprig of rosemary around the bottom of the glass. Then light the chartreuse on fire. Fixate on the awesomeness.
Mix together the remaining booze in a shaker, shake with ice and a sprig of rosemary, and double strain into the glass, eliminating any stray bits of herbs and extinguishing the flame.
Add crushed ice until the glass is full; add a final sprig of rosemary as a garnish

It’s astonishing the degree to which the flame changes the flavors. The herbal qualities of the chartreuse and the rosemary remain, but they’re made more robust and meatier by the fire. The drink feels more masculine, not just because it’s crafted from every caveman’s favorite exothermic reaction but because the sweeter elements are muted and rounded off nicely.

Crossing the Rubicon is, of course, a classic cultural idiom that refers to the notion of passing the point of no return. Here’s a summary of the phrase’s history in Boudreau’s own words:

The rosemary curled in the glass reminded me of Caesar’s laurels and therefore I’ve named this libation after the famous river Caesar crossed in 49 BC after uttering the now famous words: ‘Let us go where the omens of the Gods and the crimes of our enemies summon us! THE DIE IS NOW CAST!’ It is with this action that the Roman Empire began, and western civilization as we know it.

Perhaps an unintended secondary meaning of the phrase and of the drink in this case is the fire itself. Once you know what fire can do to your food, once you know it what it can do to your chartreause, how can you not want to play with it just a little more?

A Jewel and a Jasmine

Evan Hansen — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:47:00 +0000

Several days ago, I had a discussion about a recipe for the “classic” sweet martini made with gin, sweet vermouth, and orange bitters. A friend had a poor experience with the cocktail, and I asked what gin and vermouth he used. In that case, all that was available was Tanqueray and Stock, both fine products that I use regularly — but never together. The gin has too much juniper and not enough nuance in the vermouth to stand up to it.

I thought a bit about that as I made a pair of gin-based cocktails tonight. Gin gets a bad rap, I think, due to mismade martinis and bitter gin and tonics prepared by legions of young bartenders recently promoted from positions as waitstaff. But it’s amazing stuff. When mixed into a drink appropriately, gin can seem at first sip as transparent as vodka, letting other ingredients strut their stuff. The depth that it adds goes largely unnoticed until you try a poor gin or use vodka instead. But it’s also surprisingly delicate, and because of the added botanicals, it has the power to ruin a drink.

That’s certainly what happened to my friend’s sweet martini.

Anyhow, I set about making a Jasmine cocktail for my wife and a Bijou (French for “jewel”) for myself. Both rely heavily on other ingredients, so the gin is not as aggressive a contributor — but an overly strong juniper flavor or sweetness would ruin them. So I grabbed my bottle of Bombay Dry Gin and went to work. The recipes, as I made them are:

The Jasmine

1.5 oz dry gin
.75 oz lemon juice
.5 oz Campari
.5 oz Cointreau
Garnish with a tightly wound lemon twist
Shake and pour into a cocktail glass

The Bijou

1 oz dry gin
1 oz greeen chartreuse
1 oz sweet vermouth (I used Carpano Antica)
2 dashes orange bitters
Garnish with a long lemon twist wound around a cherry
Stir and pour into a cocktail glass

Imagined by cocktail guru Paul Harrington with slightly different proportions, the Jasmine is bright, neon pink, garnished with a lemon peel. I enjoy mine with enough Campari and lemon juice to lend a grapefruit flavor using the Cointreau only to keep it balanced. Tonight, a sweet-ish lemon made the drink seem a bit sweet, but it was nonetheless a pleasant diversion from the cold weather and a touchdown the Iowa Hawkeyes put up on my Michigan Wolverines.

The Bijou, according to Imbibe magazine and other contemporary cocktail writers, it orginated in the late 19th century, first seeing publication in Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual (which I have wanted to buy from Cocktail Kingdom for some time). Allegedly, the gin, vermouth, and chartreuse represent the three colors of classic valuable jewels, the diamond, the ruby, and the emerald. It can be made in layers, but my laziness could fetch me a ribbon at the county fair. Whatever the legend and whatever the method of construction, it’s delicious — thick, big, and intensely herbal. I add an extra dash of bitters — most recipes call for one — but other than that, the recipe listed above is the same as Johnson’s over 100 years ago. I’ve seen a number of recipes cutting the chartreuse and vermouth to more contemporary tastes. I love herbal flavors, so I couldn’t imagine drinking it any other way. It seems so appropriate on a cold fall evening when there’s a sweet, almost herbal note to the air each day.