Finding myself recently in need of vitamin C and ethanol—for medicinal reasons—and like so many others stuck at home with supplies running low, take-out burritos cooling on the kitchen table, and a bar equipped with almost, but not quite exactly, the right mix of bottles, I improvised a little on the classic recipe and made this extremely smooth drink, which I'm calling the Margarita-19:

• 2 oz. añejo tequila (I used a far-too-nice Azuñia better suited to sipping neat)
• 3/4 oz lime juice, fresh squeezed as always (things aren't quite that bad yet)
• 1/2 oz simple syrup
• 1/4 oz Maraschino liqueur
• lime wheel to garnish

Rub the remains of the squeezed lime on the rim of a rocks glass, then dip it into kosher salt and carefully fill it with ice, trying not to knock all the salt off. Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice, shake vigorously, and strain into the prepared glass. Garnish and enjoy.

To your continued good health!

Perfect for a picnic!

Although I haven't blogged about any cocktail since last July, I haven't abandoned the lab; in fact, I'm finally ready for a first: publishing an original! I've been playing with this one for months but as it's obviously a summer drink, I'm releasing it only now, when you need it the most. Herbal, bright, cold, and not so boozy you wouldn't want a few before five o'clock, Sunshine Through the Tall Grass is just right for hot weather, long days, and meals outside. Here's what you do:

• 1 1/2 oz. gin. I used The Botanist for this, but I'm not too particular.
• 1/2 oz. Chartreuse
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice, fresh squeezed
• 2–3 oz. ginger beer; I recommend Fever Tree.
• Tarragon and lemon wheel to garnish

Fill a rocks glass with crushed ice. Place a generous bunch of tarragon leaves on the palm of one hand and slap it hard with the other. Then plant this bunch in the ice, artfully, along one side of the glass. Add gin, Chartreuse and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker full of ice cubes. Shake vigorously and strain into the glass. Top off with something like 2 to 3 oz. of ginger beer, depending on the size of your glass, how full of ice you had it, and how sweet you want this drink to be. Place a lemon wheel on the rim behind the tarragon for a sunset-through-the-grass effect.

Go ahead and try this while the weather's warm. I'd love to hear about your results and about any variations you try!

In The Modern Housewife, a sort of cookbook-novel published in 1850 by Alexis Soyer (the Gordon Ramsay or Alton Brown of his day), you can find a list enumerating the various foods that a celebrity chef of the 19th century might consume in 70 years of feasting and idling. In the midst of the sort of numbers that sound reasonable to modern ears—4 1/2 tons of bread, 21000 eggs, 250 melons, etc.—is the following:

in poultry, 1,200 fowls, 300 turkeys, 150 geese, 400 ducklings, 263 pigeons; 1,400 partridges, pheasants, and grouse; 600 woodcocks and snipes; 600 wild ducks, widgeon, and teal; 450 plovers, ruffes, and reeves; 800 quails, ortolans, and dotterels, and a few guillemôts and other foreign birds […] 120 Guinea fowl, 10 peacocks, and 360 wild fowl.

What an extraordinary variety of birds were available to this heroic character! I'd like to think of myself as an adventurous eater but aside from the enormous numbers of chicken and turkey typical for a 21st century American and what I imagine is an above-average amount of duck, I can count probably less than 10 quail, one or at most two pigeons, one goose, and one pheasant—certainly no plovers or peacocks (!) or those intriguing “foreign birds”.

This list has me curious! For the sake of my soul I'll leave the poor Ortolans alone but it may be time to seek out some alternative sources of poultry.

Today, July 21st, we honor the birthday of Ernest Hemingway, a man that did more for cocktail culture, simply by drinking, than almost any career barman can claim for a lifetime in his trade. But what will we drink? The choice of Hemingway cocktails is wide, of course: Death in the Afternoon, Death in the Gulf Stream (he's a dangerous man to drink with), Green Isaac's Special, the long list of standards that appear in his books. But probably the most characteristic classic out of the vast Hemingway drinking-lore is the simple Daiquiri.

Although famous for drinking generally, Ireland isn't exactly well-known for its contributions to cocktail culture. The country produces maybe three potential ingredients of note: Guinness, Bailey's, and Irish Whiskey; but the combination of all three in the form of an Irish Car Bomb manages to also mix in a threat of violence (to your head at least) and offers the sort of unpleasant novelty drinking that we're not about here.

One of America's two main contributions to the celebration of Saint Patrick's day^* is the adulteration of domestic lager with green food-coloring, which is quite a bit worse.

But for a more sophisticated way to enjoy something Irish this Friday, try the Emerald:

• 2 oz. Irish whiskey (I used Jameson's because it was handy, and because I visited the former distillery last summer)
• 1 oz. sweet vermouth (the remains of February's Carpano Antica, still fine after a month in the fridge)
• 2 dashes orange bitters

Just like last month, stir all ingredients in a mixing glass or shaker with ice, but do NOT shake. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon. Cocktail fans will recognize that this drink is a Manhattan with Irish whiskey and orange bitters in place of rye and Angostura.

Sláinte!

* The other is corned beef. ↩