 
 "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
Happy Bissextile Day! Calm down, don't get excited, it has nothing to do with bisexual textiles. (?) It is, of course (as if I had heard it before yesterday), the name of the day added during leap year. Wes and I took the day off and are going to Long Beach to see Star Trek: The Tour, and will spend the day revelling in geekiness. Diana says there's even someplace down in L.B. where we can get a decent drink. (We'll see about that.) Must. Have. Now. Salad is good for you ... especially when it's in a BACON CUP! Quite the lovely deconstructed BLT. Sheer genius (and, in my opinion, more useful and practical than the bacon mat. We loved the opening line: "I had an occasion calling for bacon-themed food." Steve replied, "Gosh, I think we call that occasion 'life.'" Liquor project of the day. This came from the current issue of Saveur magazine, and intrigued me -- I'd never thought of the flavors of oranges and coffee going together, and in combination with rum it made me go "Hmm." It also involves arcane ritual, which I always find appealing. The story behind the concoction goes like this:
Now, here's how you go about making one. Where does the number and ritual come from? No idea (although it's undoubtedly left over from the French influence in Madagascar. This appears to be a Malagasy adaptation of a homemade liqueur in France called "Quarante Quatre" (44), which is sometimes made with cloves. However, I'm briefly reminded of one of the funniest episodes ever of "Malcolm in the MIddle," one of my favorite comedy programs ever. Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) is attempting to bond with her horridly unpleasant mother (Cloris Leachman), joining her and all the other old ladies of the Old Country in making a gigantic traditional pastry for some saint's feast day back home. The thing's enormous, and has dozens of layers, each one representing some battle or whatever. Apparently on layer 38 Lois got the exact number of raisins wrong, and her mother loudly demanded that the start the entire pastry over again. Lois protested; "What difference does it make if there are 126 raisins or 127? It's going to taste exactly the same!" Her mother shrieked, "IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO TASTE GOOD, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFICULT TO MAKE!!" Well, I digress a bit, but this made me think of that scene, although I suspect that this cordial will not only be a bit of a pain to make, but will also taste great.
According to Saveur, "the Malagasy version is best sipped neat or over ice, preceded by a toast to the Reverend Shaw." Last night's "Down Home" is up. You have a week to stream stream the show and listen at your leisure. This week featuring Brian Stoltz, OK Go, Bonerama, Leigh Harris & Larry Sieberth, The New Orleans Social Club featuring Dr. John, John Mooney & Bluesiana, Egg Yolk Jubilee, The Radiators, The Neville Brothers, Big Sam's Funky Nation, John Williams & Dean Magraw, Phil Cornish, the brand new album from Punch Brothers (Chris Thile's post-Nickel Creek project), Battlefield Band (playing at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica on March 7), a solo album from Battlefield Band fiddler Alasdair White, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The New Orleans Jazz Vipers, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Clarence Garlow, The Mello Joy Boys, John Delafose and James Andrews with The Andrews Family. Enjoy! [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. The results are in! The winner of this month's Raiders of the Lost Cocktail is ... not the drink I submitted. (D'oh.) I liked it better than Paul did, but here was his observation:
Ouch. :-) Here's where I messed up, though ... Paul made another observation:
The other version of the Pisco-Apricot Tropicál that Baker listed as a variation added a pony of pineapple juice to the first recipe. We tried that one later and liked it a lot better. Unfortunately, thanks to my having waited until the last minute (again) I had already submitted the other one, so I blew it. I do still recommend the pineapply version, so give it a shot and see what yez think. The one Paul chose as the winner, though, was absolutely sublime and blew both Pisco-Apricot Tropicáls out of the water. We made them last night and loved them, and the drink will most definitely be added to our regular rotation. (Fair play to yez, Jay and Charlie!) I particularly recommend Rothman & Winter's Orchard Apricot in this drink.
The original recipe in the Savoy Cocktail Book called for a half-jigger of each of the liqueurs, and Jay toned that down to a half pony. I haven't tried the original version yet, but I will in fact take Paul's word for it that it's better, as I prefer drier cocktails; a full jigger of liqueurs might be a bit much for me, given my typical tastes. The use of the R&W apricot also lends a bit of extra dryness while not compromising on flavor (in fact, its flavor is exquisite). The only problem with this recipe is that it makes a really big drink, bigger than we usually like to make. What I ended up doing was increasing the recipe by 50%, using 2-1/4 ounces each of gin and vermouth, and 3/4 ounce each for the liqueurs. This made two perfectly-sized drinks for Wes and me. I'm glad I finally got a chance to participate in RotLC,and I'm looking forward to the next one. This time I'll get my butt in gear earlier, do more digging and see if I can come up with the winner! New R.E.M. single. "Supernatural Superserious," from the forthcoming album Accelerate, due out April 1. Hey, it's pretty good! Super salumi. Culinate features an interview with Armandino Batali (Mario's dad), maker of fine pork products. Breaking News: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early. It's all over. Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early (God, I love The Onion.) D'oh, damn you New York! Why do youse guys have this and not us?! What really catches the eye here is the menu, which includes this dish (emphasis mine):
I'll be making my own version of this soon. Must. Have. Now ... [ Link to today's entries ]
Comhghairdeas! Go maire sibh, Glen agus Mar! Er, congratulations Glen and Mar! In case you were living under a rock last night, or just couldn't be bothered with an otherwise mostly boring-as-shite Oscar telecast, Irish musician Glen Hansard and his musical partner and now girlfriend, Czech musician Markéta Irglová (who perform together as The Swell Season), won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Falling Slowly," from the film Once, one of my favorite films of the year. Here's the video of the performance of the song. I was hoping that the three Disney songs would cancel each other out, and apparently they did. I'm sure they were perfectly good songs in the context of the movie, but they didn't do a lot for me as standalones. (That said, I do want to see Enchanted; our friend Rick has been raving about it.) Not only do I love "Falling Slowly" as a song, it really is the musical/narrative heart of the film. It's a great example of using music to tell a story. When they won (after being introduced earlier by a "chuffed" fellow Irishman, Colin Farrell), it was by far the sweetest and most satisfying moment of the show. Glen's speech was humble, and you could tell he was gobsmacked, completely overwhelmed. Then, in an outrage, the orchestra cut Mar off before she could speak! Everybody at the Oscar party booed. Jon Stewart brought her back out after the ad break, saying "Enjoy your moment." I'm not sure who to credit for that, but we picked Jon. However, the AP reported that credit went to producer Gil Cates, who said "the show director was looking down and queued the music when Hansard finished speaking. 'She was accidentally played off. No one wanted to play her off. ... I asked her to come back. I asked Jon to please bring her back. It was a very emotional moment.'" Mar said, "When I went backstage, they said they were going to have me go back out. It was great to get that chance, and I'm very grateful to them for doing that." She gave a terrific speech. Watch: Reaction seems to have been overwhelmingly positive, and as the Los Angeles Times said, "The right song won, and hopefully it brings more viewers to "Once," and more listeners to the Swell Season." The Irish Times reported:
They were also congratulated by An tUachtarán Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland, but perhaps in an even bigger nod, "got a congratulatory text message from Bono, which 'is one of the biggest things that can happen to an Irishman, he said, describing the U2 lead singer as "the chieftain of our country.'" (Bono for Taoiseach!)
Sigh, Swell Season and Frames gigs may be tougher to get into now. Good on 'em! I was talking to a friend in Ireland last night, trying to gauge the local reaction. I speculated that it'd be either "Feckin' deadly! Oscar for Ireland! Brilliant! Pints all 'round!" or "Jaysis, now his feckin' head'll never fit through the feckin' door ..." or somewhere in between. She laughed and said, "Spot on!" but really it's more the former. Everyone's very happy about it, and for once, Oscar did well in that category. [ Link to today's entries ]
Allons à Scott, Louisiane, pour honorer un grand homme ... From New Orleans musician Ben Sandmel (thanks Ben!) comes word on a wonderful event in Scott, Louisiana this weekend, honoring a man who's made unparalleled contributions to Louisana French-Acadian culture. Here's more from a diary on DailyKos:
Ben adds:
"Beverages," i.e. the beer that's closest on hand. :-) Head on out to Scott, help a great man and pass a good time, y'all! Passed on, two icons of Louisiana culture. Rest in peace ...
And ...
Thank you, gentlemen. Last night's "Down Home" up for streaming. As always, accessible here, the 2/21/08 show features John Boutté, The Neville Brothers, Anders Osborne, Dr. John, Frankie Ford, Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns, OK GO & Bonerama, Woodenhead, Jelly Roll Morton, Tuba Fats' Chosen Few Jazzmen, Nicholas Payton, Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band, Cuarenta y Cinco, Los Lobos, Gillian Welch, Gram Parsons, The Balfa Brothers, Clifton Chenier, Nathan Abshire, Cedric Watson & Corey Ledet, Déanta, Pierce Turner, Bill Jones, De Danann, Leola Manning, Son House, Lightnin' Hopkins and Lucille Bogan. Not a bad show a-tall! [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. I came across this one the Flickr photostream of Joerg Meyer, a bartender in Hamburg, Germany. This is the house cocktail at the bar where he works behind the stick, Le Lion - Bar de Paris, and Wes and I found it to be a delightful apéritif. (Joerg's original metric measurements, which I converted for non-metric hardheads like me, are provided in parentheses.)
Now that we have a drink, let's drink to something ... Worst. President. Ever. It's not just the Comic Book Guy who says so. It's the American people.
To add some specifics ... this new rating is the lowest ever (as in EVER), for as long as they've been keeping track of presidential approval ratings, making George W. Bush the most unpopular president in American history. The Attytood blog from the Philadelphia Daily News elaborates:
Why the frak is he still even in office? (Because the population of this country, by and large, are appallingly apathetic. I think this may be starting to change.) [ Link to today's entries ]
Raiders of the Lost Cocktail: Apricot Brandy. This is the first time I've managed to get my lazy, absentminded, procrastinatory ass in gear and participate in what is now the third installment of Raiders of the Lost Cocktail,, run by the folks over at The Spirit World. The general idea behind it is this: "While we are certain there are great new cocktails yet to be discovered, we are equally certain there are great old cocktails that have been lost to the vagaries of time and chance. Some have been recovered by the new masters, but many have not. They are out there, in books and magazines, but they are at risk..." 
I started digging through my old books (almost at the last minute of course, I being me) and started by escewing ones that lots of people probably already have, such as the Savoy Cocktail book. Given that I'd pulled out Charles Baker earlier this week he was still fresh in my mind, but lots of people already have his Gentleman's Companion, but I'll bet not quite as many people have his subsequent tomes, The South American Gentleman's Companion, Being an Exotic Drinking Book Or, Up & Down the Andes with Jigger, Beaker & Flask. Our usual standard for apricot brandy (that is, sweet apricot liqueur with a brandy base, not a clear eau-de-vie or distillate of apricots, such as Hungarian barackpalinka or the outstanding Blume Marillen) is Marie Brizard's most excellent Apry, but lately we've been enjoying the relatively new product by Rothman & Winter from Austria (and imported by our pal Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz), called Orchard Apricot. It's slightly lower in alcohol than Apry (24% as opposed to 30%) and slightly less sweet (I forget the brix, and don't have my refractometer handy ... actually, come to think of it, I don't have a refractometer), so you might have to adjust the balance in your cocktails to your own preferences when using it. While it doesn't have quite as much alcohol or sugar, what it does have is a deep, rich, wonderful flavor of apricots! In the book I found three contenders, and last night Wes and I had a tasting of two. We passed the glasses back and forth, tasted, swished them around, wrinkled and furrowed our brows, and declared that we had two good cocktails but only one clear winner. Here's the one that came out on top, plus the runner-up and a special bonus cocktail (one you've perhaps seen before but richly deserves another view), all featuring lovely lovely apricot brandy.
Well, chances are that by now Miguel is mixing at that Great Bar in the Sky, where all the liquor is premium, there's cold running fresh fruit juices on tap and no such thing as sour mix or Pucker schnapps. Here's how we did Miguel's first concoction, and it's my official entry in Raiders of the Lost Cocktail:
The runner-up was still a fine drink, though, again in Charles' words:
Or, if you're too lazy to read the Bard's prose:
While we did like this drink, the apricot didn't shine quite as much, and Wes felt that the mint might have been a bit of a problem; although we like mint, it seemed as if it was fighting with the apricot a bit. I might actually increase the apricot to 3/4 ounce next time I make this, especially if using the lower-alcohol and -sugar R&W brand, and see how it goes. Mint-fighting or not, I think this one does deserve more tries. Now, for a third special bonus drink, which is one of my very favorite drinks featuring apricot brandy. It didn't quite fit in with the rules, as it's not a vintage cocktail but a new one, and although it was published (in this case in the San Francisco Chronicle, it's not really lost, only not well-known enough yet. Plus, the Chronicle version left out a key ingredent, due to its lack of commercial availability at the time. This ingredient won't be a problem for dedicated cocktail geeks, though, and said ingredient will be commercially available from Haus Alpenz, in the form of St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram, very soon. It was created by my friend Daniel Reichert, and although I've posted it a couple of times of the past few years it's most certainly worth posting again, as it's absolutely lovely. Make sure you sing its namesake song as you enjoy it, and Dan reminds us that summer is not the only time for drinking rum; it's a lovely soul-warmer in the wintertime too.
In his article Gary Regan suggests kicking up this drink with Appleton Estate 21-year-old rum, and that'll certainly make it more special. However, to make it truly special ... that teaspoon of pimento liqueur transforms the drink, lifts it be an exponent or two and carries you off to the beaches of Montego Bay. Don't leave it out. Any other good cocktail ideas using apricot brandy? Leave 'em in the comments! Last night's edtion of "Down Home." Y'know, I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I was really happy with the radio show I did last night. In fact, I thought it was particularly good, and I also thought that the first two sets were better than anything that's been played in a long time on that radio station I used to be on. I was a bit frustrated by the fact that I had to wonder if anyone was listening; the only call I got was from the one guy who calls every week. So I'd like to get as many of you to listen to it as possible, and hopefully get you into the habit of listening to it on demand. You can stream last night's show here for 7 more days, until it's replaced by next week's show, and sometime in the next week I think you should. I featured the new digital-only EP by OK Go and Bonerama, "You're Not Alone", which is brilliant and from which 100% of the proceeds will go towards relief for homeless musicans in New Orleans and toward building a new Habitat for Humanity house for Al "Carnival Time" Johnson who lost his Lower Ninth Ward home at 2349 Tennessee St. and everything in it (and who sings lead vocals on a scalp-tingling version of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" on the EP and on last night's show); also other tracks from Bonerama and Al, plus Marcia Ball, Sidney Bechet, Lucien Barbarin, Louis Prima, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Michael Doucet, Feufollet, Clifton Chenier, Christy Moore, Dónal Lunny, Chris Smither, Josh Ritter and more, including the first-ever Grammy winner in the brand-new Cajun and zydeco category, Terrance Simien! Tons of great music, please do check it out. (As always, thanks a million to Sean for hosting the show!) I want one. And it is not "vile," it's awesome. They're missing a bet, though ... they also need a runner that looks like a strip of bacon. I've already got the perfect place for it. [ Link to today's entries ]
Happy Val and Tines Day! 
(Well, maybe not Val so much. Not quite "Top Gun" these days.) Okay, no, wait. That's not what it's all about, is it? People have vastly different feelings about today. Some, as various friends said in email today, "loathe what Valentine's Day has become, an occasion all but specifically designed to make people feel bad," or "Frackin' consumer holiday, to the max. About nothing but SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!" The romantic idealists among us just prefer to think it's all about love, showing love unconditionally and publicly, to the person you love, and not giving a damn who thinks what. (And if you love someone, you oughta be able to marry them.) It's also about appallingly cute pictures, like this: 
Yes, she loves her little baconlet. (Thanks, Mary!) It's all about fine candy, too. Mmmmmmm, Vosges, Recchiuti, Sucré, Leonidas ... You can love your city and its music and its people, too. Here's a wonderful video produced by Preservation Hall Films and Ben Jaffe, shot on the street of the French Quarter and featuring vocalist Clint Maedgen and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." And it's also about the birthdays of Cajun musician Michael Doucet (Happy Birthday, Mike!) and my old friend Matt Brown's little boy Teo (Happy Birthday, Teo!). All you need is love. Homeless New Orleanians and Gulf Coast residents screwed by FEMA again. First victimized by the loss of their homes due to the failure of the federal government-built levees, and now screwed TWICE by FEMA.
Jesus weeping Christ on crutches ... we have GOT to get this government out of power!! Cocktail of the day. "Hey, do we have any cherry brandy?" Thus came the request from Wes as he was digging for last night's libation, and the answer was indeed yes, we're usually never without the Cherry Heering (or kirsch, if that's what he mean, which it wasn't). We still haven't replaced our most recently drained 1.75l bottle of Maker's Mark, so our new bottle of Bulleit Bourbon stepped in. Properly equipped, then he was off. This one came out of Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology, and is an adaptation of one that initially came from the Bard of Cocktails, the great Charles H. Baker Jr. and his classic The Gentleman's Companion, or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask. Both Wes and I are trying to recall whether Gary specified Bourbon or listed it as "Bourbon or rye" (will double-check later), but we think it's the former. Having looked up Baker's original rendernig of the recipe we see he specifies it as a rye cocktail and are eager to try that version. That said, when Gary makes adaptive changes it's usually for a very good reason -- balance and flavor being two big ones. Wes thinks that Bourbon might actually be his preference here, but we'll see. I like everything about this drink but its name, which refers to the "Gulf of Tonkin incident" of the Spanish-American War in 1898, in which our country capitalized on an explosion of unknown origin aboard the USS Maine and blamed it on Spain as a pretext for starting a war. (All this shit sounds sadly familiar, doesn't it? Sigh.) A little Googling revealed that the drink is also called "McKinley's Delight," which I prefer actually, and we speculated that it might have become a Bourbon drink when rye fell out of favor during Prohibition. Take two coming soon, but in the meantime here's the version we thoroughly enjoyed last night.
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