 
 "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
Li'l Dizzy's. Friday of Tales of the Cocktail was a light day for us, Tales-wise; we only had one seminar scheduled (although there at least two more I'd have loved to have gone to), but we wanted to make time to see friends today. My old college friends Shawn and Maggie were in town with their son Dillen for the summer, as Shawn was working on a film that was shooting down there, so we headed out for lunch around noon. The initial idea was to head to Willie Mae's Scotch House for a plate of fried chicken, but as Maggie isn't a van of chicken and Dillen had recently declared himself to be a vegetarian (a vegetarian in New Orleans? Ooh kid, you're gonna have a tough three months), Plan B was needed. Fortunately Plan B was a good one -- Li'l Dizzy's on Esplanade at the edge of the Tremé. It's a Bacquet family restaurant (their 12th), one of the first families of Creole cooking in New Orleans, and run by Wayne Bacquet, who used to run the beloved Zachary's on Oak Street. The food's great, and there's salad, greens and mac 'n cheese for Dillen. Perfect. It was packed but there was one table just waiting for us. The day's menu was written on a whiteboard near the door -- red beans, étouffé pot roast, the near-Platonic dish of Trout Bacquet (pan roasted trout topped with jumbo lump crabmeat and swimming in a pond of butter), fried chicken ... but the one that caught my eye was the 7th Ward Pork Chop. I was in a bit of a quandary, though. Creole-style roast beef, done in a slow braise with tons of debris, so tender you could cut it with a spoon, or my beloved pork! Well, maybe if the pork chop's fried I'll get the pot roast, as I wasn't in the mood for anything fried (and knew I'd be in for tons of it later that night). I'll use the Wesly Solution, I thought -- just ask the server that if he or she had a choice between two dishes, which one would it be? Our friendly, nurturing but sassy waitress arrived. "What can I get you, baby?" "Is the pork chop fried?" I asked." "Grilled to your order, boo," she replied. Ooooh. Still, I had to know. "If you had to choose between the pork chop and the pot roast, which one would you get?" Oh dear. Her face puckered to the kind of look you get from your third grade teacher if you're caught misbehaving in class. "Child, the flavor is 50-50," she said in a gently admonishing tone. "You want the pork chop, it takes 20 minutes to cook. You wanna eat now, get the pot roast." Well. That's tellin' me! I was being a huge pain so she skipped me and went on to Wes, who said, "Grilled pork chop, please!" Well, goddammit ...I couldn't very well sit there and watch him eat pork and not have any for myself. "Me too!" "Welll, there you go, that wasn't so hard now was it, baby?" No ma'am, not really. Pick your sides! Mac 'n cheese and vedge-a-tibbles, please! When the pork chop arrived my jaw dropped. 
Just ... look at that garlic! It's covered! Oh yeah! Sautéed just enough to give it some nuttiness but leaving a little of the garlic bite behind, and that chop was perfectly cooked. Just a bit of crisp crust and a rosy medium on the inside, tender and juicy. Great homestyle mac 'n cheese, although the veggies had been cooked to within an inch of their lives (not quite like being able to spread my mom's asparagus on a cracker with a butter knife), much to my and especially Dillen's consternation. "Oh well," Maggie said, "it is the South after all." Old school, I guess, where your veggies cook for a looooooong time. A minor quibble for me really (although not for our nascent vegetarian); I don't fault Mandina's for the green beans out of the big no. 10 can they serve with some of their dishes, I just ignore 'em. I had a few of the veggies, but I was more than happy with the pork chop. Li'l Dizzy's is about as down home as it gets. If you haven't tried them out, you need to. Aromatics and Their Uses in Cocktails. That was the title of the seminar we hit that afternoon after lunch, and one I'd really been looking forward to. "Libation Goddess" Audrey Saunders, of the Pegu Club in New York, and top mixologist Tony Conigliaro from the U.K., would be conducting this one. We'd been admiring Audrey from afar for years, had finally met her, and were very keen to hear some of her ideas about flavor and aroma. 
Audrey began the seminar talking about tinctures and essences. I had been fascinated with the idea of tinctures in cocktails, having heard the idea from her first (as I recall) on the DrinkBoy message board years ago, but that's another case of "everything old is new again" -- Prof. Jerry Thomas was talking about making spice tinctures in the first-ever cocktail book, which he wrote in 1862. What is a tincture? It's defined as "an alcoholic extract of a non-volatile substance," used in medicines (i.e., tincture of iodine, etc.) but can also be used for herbal and spice extracts. Audrey gives the following basic recipe for making a tincture: one cup vodka, one ounce herb or spice. You can heat or toast the spice slightly to help release some of the aromatics, then place the herb/spice in a jar with the vodka and let it steep for two weeks, agitating gently every day. No 151 or 190 proof Everclear is required, despite what some people say. "I use Stoli," she said. Once it's finished steeping you strain out the solids, place the resultant tincture in a dasher or dropper bottle, and what you basically have is a liquid spice, to be applied a drop or a dash at a time, depending on its potency. She also discussed essences, using examples from a perfume maker by
the name of Mandy Aftel, who has a book out entitled
Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance
Following me so far? I know, this is all new to me too, and it's science, really. It's just a little scientific background to the materials, and an aid in understanding them and how they're made and where they come from, because once you have the materials at hand, you use them to make drinkable art. One of the things Audrey does is to use tinctures and diluted essences, dropped or sprayed onto the top of a cocktail, to layer the flavor and create aromas. The example she used was a classic New Orleans cocktail, the Ramos Gin Fizz. This Ramos Fizz was a little different, though ... on top of the creamy, foamy head formed by the egg whites in the drink, Audrey dropped two drops of a tincture of cardamom. You didn't get the flavor so much, as you sipped the drink through the creamy, foamy head, but that cardamom aroma went right up your nose and gave an extra dimension to the cocktail, made it even more exotic, and even fooled you into thinking you could taste the cardamom even if it was too soon for you to really be doing that. Also, instead of an eyedropped, you can put tinctures into an atomizer and spray them on the top of the cocktail for a similar effect. Truly amazing. She also asked, "Why do we garnish?" For looks, mostly, but in the form of twists you're getting the spray of lemon oil on the surface of the drink, a layering of flavor and an essential component of certain drinks like the Sazerac. But if you're just garnishing for looks why not use them as a flavor and aroma enhancer also? You can spray tinctures or diluted essences on an edible garnish -- "Try spraying that cardamom tincture on some mint," she said. You can also use these to scent wooden stirrers as well. A rack of essences and tinctures are the notes in your symphony. Pick some and start composing. The next mindboggle came from Tony Conigliaro, who besides working with numerous bars and restaurants to develop new drinks has also worked with perfumiers. He had as specific project in mind -- he wanted to get the help of an expert perfumier to help him isolate and combine essences of the primary aromatics in a famous perfume, Chanel No. 5, to use in a cocktail. The most distinctive aspect of Chanel No. 5's flavor is from the flowers of a tree called ylang-ylang, native to southern India, Java, Malaysia, the Philippines and other Pacific islands. Other of Chanel No. 5's primary components were jasmine, sandalwood, May rose and one other I forgot. He obtained edible, food-grade versions of these essences, combined them carefully to closely approximate the aroma of the perfume, then dropped the resultant mixture onto sugar cubes and used those aromaticized sugar cubes to make a Champagne cocktail -- the Champagne No. 5 Cocktail. 
When I saw that we'd actually be served this I got a little worried. I tend to despise most perfumes, and I'm not entirely sure why other than the fact that the monstrously mean and abusive principal of the first elementary school I went to wore so much perfume you could smell her coming before she got to your classroom, and I'm probably still traumatized by that. I think most people who wear perfume wear entirely too much of it. I shouldn't be able to smell it on you unless I'm really close to you; you're not a goddamn Lunar Moth, and I don't need to smell you from two miles away. That said, I'm willing to try just about anything. And if nothing else, the mechanics and physics of this cocktail were truly astonishing. The edible perfume essence on the sugar cubes were brought to the surface of the drink inside the myriad tiny little bubbles, which released them as they burst. Tony recommended straight-sided Riedel Champagne glasses to help release the aromas, as the typical Champagne flute with the receding lip tends to trap the aroma inside the glass. It smelled ... well, perfumey. But not the off-putting smell I'd associated with perfume abuse over the years. It actually smelled like something I'd want to taste, and I did. It tasted ... well, perfumey, but delicate and complex and floral, and there was so much going on in there. This type of drink would certainly be an acquired taste (and Wes mentioned that though he was fascinated by it it's not the kind of drink he'd want to have very often), but the mechanism of this cocktail is extendable to so many other flavors. Wes also noted, as did I, that the flavors of the floral and perfume components got more intense the more you drank, as the sugar cubes continued to break down with the action of the bubbles. Given the near-limitless range of flavors and flavor combinations you could make with essences and tinctures, you could take a cocktail like this anywhere you wanted. I enjoyed every single seminar we took at Tales of the Cocktail, but this is the one that filled more pages in my notebook than any other, and was the most eye-opening. This might be too esoteric for some, but in some ways the world of the cocktail is limited -- there are only so many ingredients, and so many ways to put them together. If we're going to continue to challenge ourselves and our taste buds by stretching the boundaries of taste and aroma in cocktails, this is the kind of stuff we need to be thinking about. I can't WAIT to drink at the Pegu Club. Jack Dempsey's. Friday night was also set aside for seeing friends, and after we left Audrey and Tony, excited and inspired (and still trying to take it all in a week and a half later), we walked to the Marigny to see our friends Michael and Louise, hang out, catch up and sip some Sazeracs. (I believe there were Beefeater Martinis and some jonge genever being sipped as well.) The skies looked threatening, and we wondered if this would put a crimp in our evening, but after a brief but intense deluge things calmed down a bit. Then Dean and Becky arrived and we caravanned to a great neighborhood joint in the Bywater called Jack Dempsey's 
Still alive and kicking on Poland Avenue between Royal and Dauphine and just and good and popular as ever, Jack Dempsey's is still a bit of a young-un compared to some other neighborhood joints like Mandina's or Liuzza's -- if I recally correctly they opened in the late 1970s -- and was named not for the famous boxer but for a local, a grizzled crime reporter for the now-defunct States-Item newspaper who was a New Orleans fixture. It's a survivor, that's for sure ... Jack Dempsey's and Restaurant Mandich ("the Galatoire's of the Ninth Ward") were THE two places to eat in the Bywater, but sadly Mandich didn't survive Katrina. Neither did Jack Dempsey's sign, but that seems to be the least of the restaurant's worries -- they're too busy making the best fried seafood in town. 
Now, remember what the late Neil Broyard of the Saturn Bar said about ordering "fancy" drinks in the Ninth Ward, "fancy" being a general euphemism for "something that's not a beer or a shot." He said, "You want a fancy drink, you go Uptown." I would have been perfectly happy with a huge frozen schooner of Abita beer, but Louise and I were both in the mood for Martinis and hoped that said craving would be satisfied. Despite the ominous appearance of foo-foo drinks containing numerous vile ingredients like Sour Pucker described on hand-written cards above the bar, Louise swears you can get a good Martini here, despite the bartender being a young guy in his early twenties who looked as if he might've thought a Martini was something made with vodka, if he'd even heard of it. Now now, we mustn't prejudice ourselves against bartenders based on their age or appearance, as you WELL know, so dammit, we're ordering Martinis. To the waitress Louise said she's like a Beefeater Martini, "very dry," with an olive, and I said I'd like a Beefeater Martini as well, but "I'd like mine old-school, with some vermouth in it." When the Martinis arrived, I sipped mine -- not as I had wanted, way too dry for me -- and I saw Louise sip hers and make a face. We swapped, took another taste ... big, big smiles all around. That kid had knocked both of those Martinis out of the park, and very quickly doubled his tip. Okay, one thing you need to know about Jack Dempsey's if you're going to eat there is that the portions are absolutely Gargantuan. This is good information with which to arm yourself, so you don't get embarrassed by shrieking "Oh, JESUS!!" when the plates are put in front of you. First off, appetizers -- we wanted onion rings. Why? Because these are pretty much the best in town, and we knew we'd have enough for the table. In fact ... we kinda had enough for two tables, but because poor Wesly suddenly started feeling poorly and decided he shouldn't eat anything, we managed. The serving was so large that Michael suggested we place something next to it to provide a sense of scale, and he kindly contributed his driver's license. 
For our mains we wanted seafood platters, hands down. There are two sections of the menu at Jack's -- fried seafood and broiled seafood. Presumably the broiled seafood is better for you, but if you order it "you'll be appropriately mocked," Michael said. The reason you come here is for fried seafood -- nobody does it better, even places that have greater reputations for it. The J.D. Platter is their gold standard, "for two" as it says on the menu, which is laughable because it's easily enough for four. 
This platter consisted of catfish, drum, shrimp, oysters, some little crawfish pies and some balls of crabmeat dressing, all perfectly, beautifully battered and deep-fried. Hot, crisp, and so un-greasy that you could have placed any of that fried seafood on a paper towel and it wouldn't have left a grease mark. (Well, hardly any, anyway.) The sides offered were a pretty good gumbo, lemon-yellow homestyle mac and cheese, and some really good French fries. Given the number of oyster fans at the table, we supplemented our J.D. with an extra fried oyster platter, and some more sides. 
Busy every night and worth a drive from anywhere in the city for this nearly Platonic fried seafood, Jack Dempsey's is as neighborhoody and unpretentious as it gets. The waitresses are embracing and enveloping and pure Ninth Ward, dawlin' ... so eat a light lunch, head to Jack's, order a Martini and don't worry about all the fried stuff. Just split everything and try not to think about the fact that "it ain't da seafood dat makes ya fat, it's da batta." [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. Yeah, I know, this was the one from The Cocktailian that I posted the link to yesterday, but we made them last night and they were fantastic and we took a nice picture, plus I want to encourage the use of this liqueur (plus it's a pretty bottle, so hush), not to mention using pisco in something other than the ubiquitous Pisco Sour, so here we go.
I'm gonna start playing with St. Germain and silver tequila next, but I'm sure someone's already thought of what I'll think up. Spirited Dinner at Commander's Palace. We'd really been looking forward to this. With a gentle sigh, we decided to forget about how great a time Paul and Darcy and everyone at The Delachaise would be having at the Lafcadio Hearn-themed Spirited Dinner (coverage of which I'll link to later on), and pledged to forge on to the Garden District without dwelling on it. We would be dining on the amazing food of Chef Tory McPhail, one of the best in the city (and anywhere), with drinks prepared by two heroes of ours, Dale DeGroff and Audrey Saunders. We were in for a treat no matter what. We were also in for an adventure. It's very difficult to pair cocktails with food, and much easier to do so with wine. There are some who don't believe it's possible to pair cocktail with food (Tom Fitzmorris was apparently pooh-poohing the whole idea on his radio show that day), but I disagree strongly. It can be done, it just has to be done with great care. Another exciting aspect of what Tory was doing was that, à la Rickey and G-Man at the (sadly) fictitious New Orleans restaurant Liquor, there's booze in every dish. The flavor of the spirit or liqueur is in the marinade or in the sauce, which should jump-start Dale and Audrey's work and make the cocktail matches heavenly. 
There was only one disaster for the evening, and fortunately it was over and done with before we even got to the restaurant. I was planning on wearing my seersucker suit to the dinner, and as we were getting dressed I was horrifed to see a gigantic stain on the front of the jacket, across the lapel and onto the jacket itself. I had no idea how that had gotten there, since I knew I hadn't spilled anything that huge on myself while wearing it. The flurry of cursing that burst from me was probably audible all the way down the hall, and now I was facing the prospect of entering Commander's Palace without a jacket on for the first time in my life. I managed to keep my head from exploding with the greatest effort (and I could already hear Ti saying, as she would later, "Oh, it's no big deal," but ... sheesh. It's in my blood. You wear a jacket to Commander's. We didn't have a car yet so we had arranged to meet Wendy and Dayne downstairs and share a cab, figuring that even if we did have a car, cabbing it back home after five cocktails would probably be the best thing to do. Turns out Dayne wasn't wearing a jacket either, so I didn't feel so bad. One cheap cab ride later and there we were, and the nice valet boys were kind enough to offer to take our picture. This was only my second time back at Commander's since they reopened in October, and it was great to be back. Actually I was wrong about the cocktail count; there weren't to be five cocktails that night, but six. As we were ushered into the dining room, we were presented with a "welcoming cocktail." 
This was a variation on the Mimosa that they simply called a Pineapple Champagne Cocktail, with pineapple juice standing in for the orange, but with a large pineapple chunk garnish, which had been impaled on a large sprig of fresh rosemary. We were instructed to drop the whole garnish into the drink, and as we sipped it the piney, woodsy aroma of the rosemary wafted into our noses. Although there was no time for the rosemary to actually infuse the drink, it was as if we could actually taste it. We were seated with Dayne and Wendy, and two other couples who were transplanted locals (one to Houston, and ... I forget where else), so there was some local bonding happening right away. I think we managed not to sing the Seafood City song too loud, but there was drinking going on, so you never know. We were greeted by Ti, Dale and Audrey, who spoke briefly and then kicked off the festivities with the serving of the first paired cocktail. 
This was a Cucumber Creole, containing, as I dimly recall, cachaça, cucumber, a hint of mint, lemon juice and I sadly don't remember what else. If any of y'all were at the dinner and can help with the details of some of these drinks, I'd really appreciate it. First course arrived, as is the Brennan style, simultaneously for every diner at the table. 
Cachaça Seafood Escabeche, with grilled octopus, mussels, clams, shrimp and blue crab with liquid parsley, lemon, bay leaf-infused olive oil and heirloom tomato salt. I was a tiny bit worried about this one, not being a huge fan of either octopus or mussels, but I trust Tory implicitly and will eat anything he puts in front of me. My trust was, as usual, well-placed. This was really good, and the pairing worked very well. "Escabeche" is a term for seafood marinated in an acidic mixture, and the lemon as well as the herbal elements in the dish and the cocktail played off one another just right. Cocktail number two came, and I was really excited about this one. 
This was one of the two best pairings of the evening, and a drink I'd definitely make again. I love coconut water (which is what sloshes around inside ripe and especially young coconuts, which we buy for a buck each at the nearby Filipino market, hacking off the top, drinking the glassful of water it contains and scooping out the tender, creamy flesh with a spoon), and I love to see it used in a cocktail instead of the thick, overly sweet cream of coconut you see all the time. The ginger's peppery counterpoint to that was wonderful, and the mysterious element added by muddling the ginger with agave nectar instead of sugar as the sweetener was genius. I was a little baffled by the use of vodka instead of rum, though, and I suspect it had to do with certain requirements that sponsors' products be used throughout the event. That's cool, I understand -- events like this could not take place without the support of the sponsoring liquor companies, and bartenders and consultants often make a big chunk of their living creating cocktails on commission from spirits companies. That said, my personal taste runs toward having little to no use for vodka in cocktails, I think I'd definitely use a nice white rum. The brilliance of this drink particularly came through once the course was served: 
Rum Butter-Poached Lobster Calaloo, with Caribbean curry, ginger, okra, taro, sweet potato and house-distilled roasted coconut liqueur. Oh my Gawd. Calaloo is sort of the Caribbean version of gumbo, often thickened with okra, usually containing a mixture of greens, and like gumbo can be done a zillion different ways. This one was a stew rather than a soup, featuring that beautiful, beautiful lobster. I learned the technique of poaching lobster in butter from Chef Thomas Keller of The French Laundry after reading his book (and eating the dish), and next time I do it you can be damned certain that I'll be adding rum to the butter, and serving this drink with it. Intermezzo time! 
The Green Goddess, a frozen shooter made with mint, some basil and other herbs and ... gaaah, I forgot everything else! Very refreshing and very palate-cleansing. Commander's has made a habit of serving a small refreshing cocktail by itself as an intermezzo rather than the somewhat clichéd sorbet, and I love that idea. This intermezzo didn't arrive alone, however. What the hell, let's serve a dish with it! 
Tequila-Flambéed Shrimp Piñata, with grilled cactus, corn, avocado, cilantro, hot chiles and citrus lime sauce presented in an edible coriander "piñata." This was fun and whimsical and delicious, taking the theme of a journey through cocktails and food up from the Caribbean into Mexico. The flavors were fantastic, bright and spicy with the calming flavors and textures of the avocado and the cactus, and the "piñata" was similar to a phyllo pastry, but a little chewier, and scented with coriander. I didn't get to beat the crap out of it with a stick, but here's what it looked like when opened: 
Y'know, from now on I think I want my piñatas to contain tequila, shrimp, cactus, corn, avocados and chiles rather than cheap little wrapped candies. Can we arrange that for my next birthday party? (Heavy on the tequila, please.) Then came what was probably my favorite combo of the entire evening. 
The Blood and Sand is a classic cocktail, and the only straight-ahead classic that was served at the meal. Usually it calls for a blended Scotch, and though I'm not sure what Scotch they used in this one, it did have a bit of smoke it it, which made it so perfect to go along with what was to come next. 
Our entrée was Sugarcane and Bourbon Smoked Duck, smoked over smoldering whiskey barrels with local figs, a sweet potato pone, BBQ'ed onions, vanilla bourbon syrup and foie gras ganache. Jesus Gawd. Let's just go through this again, shall we? Duck with Bourbon and sugarcane rub, smoked over smoldering wood from whiskey barrels. This is one reason why Tory McPhail is one of my favorite people on the planet. This dish was just fantastic; I think Wes and I had our eyes rolled up in our heads more than once while eating this dish. And the really fascinating thing is that the booze in the dish wasn't paired with the booze in the drink this time ... the smoke in the booze in the drink was paired with the smoke in the duck in the dish. (The vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison, the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true. Um. Sorry, I digress.) I wanted thirds and fourths of this, and I'm going to cry next time I go to Commander's because this dish won't be on the menu. Maybe I'll luck out and it will, though. Fingers crossed. Time for dessert! 
The cocktail was the NOLA Fizz, made with Champagne and Absolut New Orleans vodka, a new limited edition release that was launched this week during Tales of the Cocktail. It's a mango and black pepper vodka, which is rather interesting, and the limited run of 35,000 cases will raise $2 million for charities on the Gulf Coast, aiding victims of Hurricane Katrina and the U.S. Government's flood caused by the failure of their levees. 
Champagne and Strawberries: Champagne- and Zinfandel-braised Ponchatoula strawberries with caramel genoise, double French vanilla ice cream and candied lavender sabayon. Lovely, lovely dessert ... I know there are those among us who say it's not dessert without chocolate, but you can serve me Ponchatoula strawberries anytime and I'll be very, very happy. A very successful Spirited Dinner! I can't wait for the next one! And if six cocktails weren't enough (and apparently they weren't), Wendy, Dayne, Wes and I had the cab bring us to the Swizzle Stick, where we proceeded to drink Sazeracs, Adelaide Swizzles and French 75s with bartenders Michael and Tommy until we closed the joint down. That's the way to spend an evening, and my hangover wasn't even too bad the next morning. The cocktail gods continue to smile on me. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. We first tasted this one at a Tales of the Cocktail event called Cocktail Hour, filled with bartenders, mixologists, authors and you-name-'em, all mixing drinks for us to taste, signing books, etc. Dr. Cocktail offered this original concoction using the fabulous, delicious (fabulicious?) St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur. There's lots to love about this fascinating new addition to the liqueur lineup, first of which is that it's drier than most liqueurs. I was up until this point completely unfamiliar with elderflowers, and these are grown in France, gathered by hand only during a short season, making the liqueur show up in fairly limited quantities. The flavors that hit you first are fruity rather than purely floral -- I tasted pears, the loquats we grow in our backyard, and fresh lychees, with the floral notes mostly in the background. Wonderful stuff, and I was thinking, "This would make a great gin cocktail ... I've got to see if I can come up with something." Of course, Doc was way ahead of me! As a cinematography grad student in a previous life (well, in the that's-what-I-used-to-do sense, not the Shirley MacLaine sense), I find the name of this drink tremendously appealing.
No garnish was specified, but I'd drape a long curly lemon twist over the rim of the glass and into the drink. Ardent Spirits. Gary Regan's new newsletter is out, detailing among other things his first trip to N.O. for Tales of the Cocktail, including a picture of a very motley crew in which you might recognize a couple three faces. The Cocktailian: Peruvian Elder-Sour. Gary's most recent Chronicle column is out as well, with the Professor's substitute bartender Jake filling in. Jake gets an email from the Professor with the recipe for today's cocktail, a close relative of the Cocktail of the Day above. This sounds fantastic, and will be tonight's cocktail, no doubt! We sure love that St. Germain. [ Link to today's entries ]
Tales of the Cocktail, Day 2. Yeesh ... sorry for the delay, y'all. Ths was a long post to put together, and I was flat on my back sick all day Wednesday and Thursday, except when we were dealing with Tuesday evening's surprise of no hot water in the house. That ended up meaning a new water heater going in Wednesday evening. $1,515.40 later and we have hot water again. (I'm trying not to think of that amount as as six absinthe fountains.) My head's still throbbing a bit, but I'm better than I was yesterday. Onward! Last Thursday, our first full day at Tales, was our biggest one. Two morning seminars, then after lunch the Lost Ingredients seminar in which I was a participant, then (supposedly) the historical cocktail walking tour of the Quarter, then the Spirited Dinner at Commander's. Good thing we didn't knock back several cocktails at the opening reception and then walk over to the Swizzle Stick and knock back some more with Nurse and Doctor Cocktail. (Oh no, wait ... we did. Never mind.) 
Not quite as fuzzy as I thoguht I'd be, we headed to the first panel of the day: The Cocktail's Family Tree, a look at how the cocktail used to be just one kind of drink (specifically, it meant a spirit with water, sugar and bitters), not a catch-all term for all mixed alcoholic drinks. There were cobblers and daisys and fixes and flips and sangarees and punches and shrubs and lots more. Going through all this was moderator David Wondrich of Esquire magazine and many other publications (boy, what a gig he's got), bartender John Myers of The Thirstin' Howl (God, I love an awfu-- er, brilliant pun), bartender Jim Meehan of Food & Wine magazine and Ryan Magarian, mixologist and one of the developers of Aviaton Gin. The only drawback to a panel like this is that you can't possibly fit all the history into a 75-minute seminar; we'd need to spend a week drinking our way through the development of the cocktail with all its fellow drinks for the last couple of hundred years (and how much fun would that be?). The guys all did a great job though, and it was fun and fascinating. We also got to sample two drinks from the cocktail's family tree, one daisy and one fizz, the latter near and dear to the heart of New Orleanians. The daisy, a forerunner to drinks like the Sidecar or what Gary Regan classifies as a "New Orleans Sour," generally was a spirit with fresh lemon juice, sugar, a bit of Curaçao and sometimes grenadine. No grenadine in this one, and the Curaçao is a damned good one. Here's this version:
For comparison, here's Professor Jerry Thomas' version from his 1862 classic The Bartender's Guide, or How to Mix Drinks:
And of course, our beloved Fizz:
My first-ever cocktail seminar. Great job, guys! (By the way, Dave's got a front-cover feature in Esquire this month on The Best Bars in America ... check it out.)  An appropriately fuzzy iPhone pic of Wes, Gary Regan, me and Dave Wondrich. Next was a dilemma, one of several presented by Tales. They're just as maddening as Jazzfest in the scheduling department, putting a wonderful seminar on rum by Wayne Curtis (author of And a Botle of Rum: A History of the New World in 10 Cocktails, Jeff "Beachbum" Berry and Steve Remsburg, holder of perhaps the world's most extensive private rum collection. I was tearing my hair out over this one, but we ended up at Drinks and Dishes Born in New Orleans, led by Food Goddess Lorin Gaudin of New Orleans Magazine and "All Over Food" (on 99.5 FM, the former WRNO as I was growing up -- "We're the rock of New Orleans!" -- and now a bizarre right-wing Faux "News" affiliated station I'd ignore completely if it weren't for Lorin), Ti Adelaide Martin, co-proprietor of Commander's Palace and Café Adelaide, Poppy Tooker of Slow Food New Orleans and Chef Duke LoCicero of Café Giovanni on Decatur St. What followed was a delightful trip through the New Orleans food scene along with some of its classic cocktails old and new. One bit of exciting news was Ti's announcement that the book she wrote with her cousin Lally Brennan, In the Land of Cocktails, focusing on New Orleans' own cocktails and its vaunted status as "the birthplace of the cocktail" (well, that's the story we like to tell, anyway), will be out in October. I knew they had been working on it, but this was the first I'd heard of an actual publication date. Yay! Ti talked about the long history of cocktail drinking in New Orleans, how we like to drink cocktails in the morning (some people think that's weird; I don't get those people), drinks like the Brandy Milk Punch and Absinthe Suissesse, and then served the newest New Orleans classic, developed as the house cocktail for Café Adelaide -- The Adelaide Swizzle. 
This delicious, refreshing long drink consists of New Orleans Amber Rum (made right on Frenchmen Street!), fresh lime juice, Peychaud's bitters, soda and ... a Secret Ingredient. "We've been very free with every recipe for everything we've ever made at Commander's and Café Adelaide, if someone wanted it," Ti said, "But y'know ... I thought it was about time we had one that was secret." Fair enough! Shooting a bit of a look toward certain people in the audience, she added, "Although some of y'all cocktail geeks have figured it out." I'd say the best way for you to figure it out is to go to Café Adelaide and drink lots of Adelaide Swizzles. Me, I'll never tell. With this we had a Café Adelaide version of a classic New Orleans dish, Crabmeat Ravigote, with a nifty modern twist -- a Tabasco Spoon Cracker. 
The recipe is below, in the next post. Chef Duke talked about his own history in the New Orleans restaurant scene, and being Italian talked about the long history of Italian influence in New Orleans' cuisine -- "Creole Italian" being a recognized and well-loved subset of our cooking. That led to a talk on the history and development of the Muffuletta sandwich, and some eye-opening theories of its true origins. Chef Duke likes 'em warm, and served us some lovely warm muffuletta slices. I've always been a fan of the room-temperature muff myself, but he does have a point -- when you warm some thing it does release more flavor, and he likes the barely-melted cheese just beginning to ooze out of the side. We also got to try his little "cocktail muffulettas," a little bit bigger than a golf ball. 
Lunchtime, and we had about an hour and a half before I had to get back for the panel I'd actually be speaking on. (*gulp*) Actually, I was pretty confident about what I was talking about, and had received the good news that my Pimento Dram No. 3 had arrived and was being readied for pouring. With our new friends Dayne and Wendy Miller from Seattle (who get to drink at Vessel and Zig Zag all the time, lucky ducks) we dashed over to Johnny's Po-Boys on St. Louis St., just a few blocks away. One of our favorite poor boy joints, we knew we'd get something fast and good here, provided the line wasn't too long. It wasn't, and the two daily specials that day were perfect for us -- for Wes, Half a Soft Shell Crab Poor Boy with Gumbo (it might have been half a poor boy but it was a whole soft shell crab), and for me ... aaaaahhhhhhh ... Half a Hot Sausage Poor Boy with Red Beans and Rice. 
Boy, did that hit the spot. Great hot sausage too (although I still miss Gene's ... *sob*.) Now, the moment of truth ... the Lost Ingredients: Obtaining (or making) rare ingredients for even rarer cocktails. Moderated by Dr. Cocktail and featuring a few people I knew (well, since the night before, anyway, and for years online) and a couple of folks new to me. I was comforted a bit by the fact that Joe Fee of the fabulous Fee Brothers bitters, syrups and cordials company was more nervous than I was. Not helping my nervousness was this: 
It wasn't so bad, though. In fact, it was really great that all these folks showed up to hear about a bunch of wild, obscure stuff that we seven cocktail geeks up at the table were excited about, and they were all excited about it too. There was Wes, right up front, a comforting presence, and next to him was bartender extraordinaire Jamie Boudreau from Vessel, with whom I'd swapped some emails and who I was really looking forward to meeting, Dayne and Wendy behind them, Jim Meehan from the earlier seminar (who's a super nice guy) as well ... I was surprisingly relaxed. Previous public speaking engagements had me curled up in a ball in the corner at this point, growing a tumor. Not today. There was a disaster, though ... Paul Clarke's bottles of Falernum No. 9 that he'd made didn't show up at the room. I felt awful for him, but he did what needed to be done and although there was nothing of his to taste he did a great job describing his process for making this product that can be fairly difficult to find (especially if you live in a state with state-controlled liquor stores that don't see fit to stock it). Bravo, Paul! Then it was my turn ... 
Boy, did that eight (or so) minutes go by quickly. The crowd was great, and people really liked the Pimento Dram, which was fantastic. It's really gratifying, and a testament to how cocktail people are the coolest and nicest people in the world, that non-professional mixologists like myself are embraced and encouraged by the pros. My appreciation is endless ... thanks y'all. As an aside, in today's Time |
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and who also puts out a product called 