Cocktail Hacker

Think of all the parties you’ve been to in your time. I would imagine that at a minimum one of those parties had a large cut glass bowl filled with a an alcoholic concoction. Floating in this deliciousness was likely a ring of ice and some fruit slices. What was this wonderful elixir you ponder, punch of course. Punch, originating from the Hindi word Panch, was originally a drink made from a base spirit, sugar, lemon, water, and tea or spices. The word became anglicized to punch in the early 1600’s and has been used as such since.

There are nearly as many punch recipes as there are people alive today and I can’t claim that I have a lot of experience with any of them. Thankfully there are people on these here interwebs that can offer some suggestions. In looking at the recipes they vary in difficulty from very easy (Rocky Mountain Punch) to quite involved (David Wondrich’s Regent’s Punch). There are even non-alcoholic recipes, but that’s for another post.

Pretty much any punch is going to be perfect for your party so long as you have enough for the crowd. The recipes range in alcohol content so you could easily make one that could be consumed all day. Some of the recipes even have caffeine in them (David Wondrich’s Rum Punch), so once you’ve gorged yourself on tasty food you’ll be able to stay awake for the remainder of the game. My thoughts?

I don’t think you can go wrong with either of the recipes by David Wondrich. Wondrich is the author of Imbibe! and generally wise cocktail dude. If neither of those sound particularly tasty then take a peek at some of the recipes listed on the Saveur site. There are quite a few and the recipes have a wide range of ingredients and flavors. Still want more? You could always get historical and go with Martha Washington’s recipe for Rum Punch. Or, if you’re still needing more, Jerry Thomas lists 59 recipes in How to Mix Drinks. I’m betting you can find one there that you like. Me? I think I’d go Winter Berry Punch. Just sounds really tasty.

One final thing to keep in mind. Toss a container full of water in the freezer the night before. Rings are pretty traditional but you could go with a simple bowl full of water or get all kinds of crazy and go with a platonic solid. I recommend a icosahedron for super bonus points. You can even embed some flowers or fruit in the ice if you’d like a touch more decorative. However, since this is for a Super Bowl party I’m guessing decorative isn’t super high on your list of priorities.

When I hear someone mention the Super Bowl the first thing that springs to mind is cold. Seems to make logical sense since the game is played in the middle of the winter. Now, this year certainly isn’t the best example seeing as the game is being played in Tampa, FL where the temperature on game day is supposed to be in the high 60’s. Not exactly wintery. But, I’m guessing that a large portion of the viewers will be somewhere wintery. So this post goes out to you.

On a cold day there is nothing tastier than a well prepared bowl of chili. To be clear, I’m not talking about Chili Verde or Texas beef chili here. I’m talking all American chili with beans, meat and sauce. This dish fits our criteria perfectly since the initial prep is very minimal, it can cook all day on the stove or in a crock pot and is ready whenever folks are ready to eat.

Where to begin though? There are so many options. If I can be perfectly honest with you all, I generally wing it when I’m making chili. I buy some meat (beef, pork, turkey, chorizo, you name it), some beans (pinto usually) and some tomato sauce. I sautee up an onion, a couple peppers and some garlic. Add that mixture to my crock pot and add all the remaining ingredients. Then I start adding herbs and spices; chili powder, cayenne, cumin, oregano, and salt to name a few. Lid it up and let the whole deal cook for a while tasting it about once an hour and adjusting my seasoning appropriately. If it needs to be a bit thinner I’ll add some chicken stock, thicker, some tomato paste.

I’m guessing however, that my method isn’t going to help you make chili for the first time so here are a few recipes that I think look good.

Halftime Chili

Boilermaker Tailgate Chili

Smokin’ Scovilles Turkey Chili

There are tons of ways to make this dish all your own. Change up the meat; beef, pork, chicken, sausage, even faux meat, the sky truly is the limit on that one. Vary your beans; nearly any beans can make a good chili. Finally the most closely guarded secret of the chili masters is the spice blend. Add what you like, make it scorching hot, or mild but super flavorful.

Another take away from this post is that Chili isn’t the key here, its the class of food, stew/soup. There are a nearly endless number of recipes that you could make for the big game that would be just as easy to prep as this one. Maybe a beef stew, chicken chowder, seafood chowder, jambalaya, you name it. Hope this has inspired you to get your crock pot fired up.

Drop a comment below if you’ve got some awesome recipes I should know about. I’m always up for fantastic food.

When I’m thinking about food that will work good for the Super Bowl I have a few criteria. The food in question should:

• Be easy to prepare
• Appeal to a wide group of people
• Require a short final prep during a break
• Scale to various group sizes

There are lots of foods that fit in to these categories, but first I’d like to share one with you that has been a favorite of my family for years. Whenever we’re planning a large family gathering where prep time will be minimal my mom makes up a batch of her lasagna. I think there is little that speaks of classic Italian American food like the lasagna made here in the US. The recipe you find below is what we use, but there are nearly endless variations that can be made. Experiment, I’m certain you won’t be disappointed.

Easy Lasagna - Marie Gambon

[Ingredients]

[Sauce]

2 lbs Ground Beef

2 lbs Italian Sausage

3/4 tsp Pepper

1/2 tsp Oregano

2 cloves Minced Garlic

1 Tbsp Sugar

1 Tbsp Minced Parsley

1 tsp Basil

1 tsp Tabasco

1 tsp Chili Powder

1 tsp Salt

1 20oz can Tomatoes (Diced)

1 small Diced Onion

1 6oz can Tomato Paste

[Remaining Ingredients]

1 package Lasagna Noodles (No boil work fine)

1 cup Sour Cream

3 cups Grated Mozzarella Cheese

Grated Parmesan Cheese

[Directions]

1) Brown meat, onion and garlic.

2) Add tomato paste, tomatoes, herbs and spices.

3) Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

4) Cook noodles as directed on package (if needed).

5) Heat oven to 350F.

6) Alternate layers of meat sauce, noodles, sour cream, and cheese in

an 11x7 baking pan, beginning and ending with meat sauce.

7) Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese.

8) Bake until top is bubbly and golden brown (~45 - 60 min).

This recipe will easily feed about 6-8 people. I’d suggest making a small salad to go with it, assuming you’d like to pretend you’re being slighly healthy. The nice thing about this recipe is that it can be scaled up easily to accomodate a large group. Also, it can be made ahead of time and either refridgerated or frozen until you’re ready to cook it. Although, if you decide to freeze it you’ll probably need some extra time in the oven. I’d plan an extra 30 minutes or so.

Well, I hope this first installment has at least spurred you to start thinking about what you’ll cook for the big game. Stay with us, we’ve got more coming as the week goes on.

I entered this week with a bit of trepidation. You see about a year and a half ago Aaron and I were both just getting in to mixing cocktails. We decided that with the 4th of July fast approaching we should throw a party and feature gin drinks. Being new to the game we both looked around on the net and found some drinks that sounded good. The Aviation was one of the ones we chose and we stocked up on Maraschino and lemons, being gin lovers we had plenty of that on hand. We used Regan’s recipe from the Joy of Mixology and whipped up our first batch. The results were, well, unexpected. Since neither of us had ever had Maraschino before we had no preconceived notion of what this drink might taste like. Those of you familiar with the flavor of Maraschino likely know where I’m going with this. This liqueur has a certain funk to it. The taste is most certainly an aquired one and not what you’re expecting when you hear the words cherry liqueur.

So, to wrap up that little tale I haven’t mixed one since. But I knew, deep down, that there must be some merit to this cocktail for it to have survived as long as it has. So on the tasting schedule it went. The first recipe I tried was Regan’s, again. This time I think my pallate has matured because I quite enjoyed the flavor of the Marachino. That said I don’t feel that this recipe is particularly balanced. The Luxardo (my Maraschino of choice) completely eclipses the flavor of the lemon juice and the gin (Plymouth) barely shines through as well. A good start, but I think we can do better.

Next I sampled the recipe from David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails.

Aviation (Killer Cocktails)

2 oz Gin

2 tsp Maraschino

3/4 oz Lemon Juice

This recipe makes a drink that is much more sour and the gin really shines through in this one. However, still not the balance that I’m looking for. I felt the drink could use a touch more sweetness (provided by the increased Maraschino in Regan’s recipe) so I mixed up another, this time adding 1 tsp of simple syrup. This additional sweetness however, masked the lemon’s sourness almost completely. D’Oh! Still not what I’m looking for. As a side note, the recipe from Killer Cocktails is nearly identical to the one in Vintage Cocktails and Spirits, so I chose not to make both.

Next I decided to try a recipe posted by Dan in the comments on my initial Aviation post.

Aviation (a la Dan)

2 oz Gin

1 oz Lemon Juice

1/2 oz Maraschino

Tiny Dash of Simple Syrup (~1/2 tsp)

This, my friends, is the Aviation I’d been looking for. The drink is much more balanced with enough sweetness coming from the Maraschino and tiny dash of simple syrup. The sourness is present and bold, but not over powering and you still get enough of the pleasing Maraschino funkiness. My only remaining problem was that the Plymouth was masked for the most part. Thankfully I have lots of other gins to choose from and quickly remedied the situation with some Juniper Green. This recipe is the one that will go down in the Cocktail Hacker tome of knowledge as my preferred recipe. Thanks for the excellent tip Dan.

But wait! You must be wondering what happened with the search for Creme de Violette. In short, I struck out. I checked the four largest liquor stores in the Boulder area and none had it in stock. Even DaveCo, the largest liquor store in the world which claims to have everything, had none. In fact, they hadn’t ever heard of it. Liquor Mart offered to special order a bottle but said it would take a least a week to arrive. I’m not that patient folks. So, I turned to the interwebs and found that Sam’s Wine had it in stock. However, due to a typing error on my part the bottle didn’t ship until Thursday. So…I’ll be putting up another post next week discussing the recipes that lean more toward the classic.

The Aviation is a classic cocktail that now lives a life of relative web 2.0 anonymity. A search on Wikipedia will link you directly to the general cocktail page, which doesn’t do anyone much good as the page doesn’t even list a recipe. Thankfully my reference books had a few recipes and my fellow cocktail bloggers have done their experiments as well so I have a good starting point for the week.

The first recipe for the Aviation to see print was in Hugo Ensslin’s book Recipes for Mixed Drinks printed in 1916. I, sadly, do not have a copy, but Erik came to the rescue by posting the recipe on his site.

Aviation Cocktail (Original Recipe)

1/3 Lemon Juice

2/3 El Bart Gin

2 Dashes Maraschino

2 Dashes Creme de Violette

Shake well in a mixing glass with cracked ice, strain and serve.

Now, I’m guessing the first thing that popped in to your head is “What the hell is El Bart Gin?” I know it was certainly the first thing in mine. From what I can best ascertain its a long gone brand of Dry Gin. About all that can be found on the net these days about it is sales of new tin signs and news about the sale of a mint condition antique sign that went for $60,500 at auction. I think its safe to assume though that El-Bart was one of Ensslin’s favorite gins as it is called for in some of his other recipes as well. Following that my second question was in reference to just what exactly Creme de Violette is. In doing a bit of reading in Vintage Cocktails and Spirits and online I had my answer. Creme de Violette is the name given to a group of French liqueurs whos main source of flavoring and coloring is violets.

Creme de Violette is a touch hard to find in some areas in the US as there is only one importer (Haus Alpenz), and one brand being imported (Rothman & Winter). I’ve checked one local liquor store, but no luck there. I plan to do some more extensive searching tomorrow. An interesting note is that due to the relative scarcity of this liqueur in the US most modern recipes you’ll find don’t list it as an ingredient at all. For example below is Regan’s recipe from The Joy of Mixology.

Aviation (Joy of Mixology)

2 oz Gin

1/2 oz Maraschino Liqueur

1/2 oz Fresh Lemon Juice

I’ve certainly got a full week ahead of me and I can honestly say I’m really looking forward to it.