My plan is to implement a cocktail hour at home before dinner. Only one cocktail per person. It can be enjoyed with some basic bar food, perhaps while the hockey games are on or maybe I’ll even put on some music and Hubby and I will hone our small talk skills.
The first drink was simple – the Gin Fizz.
Apparently there is a very famous Ramos Gin Fizz created in the 1880′s in New Orleans. However, it is a more complicated and orangey drink. The Gin Fizz I mixed is also from the same era, but has fewer ingredients and is lemon based.
We have several milk crates full of liquor left over from a visit with our dear friend Scotty. Scotty lives on liquers and Twinkies. His crowning achievment was a twinkie trifle which combined the liquers and trifle in a surprisingly edible way. Scotty came over one night carrying $200 worth of booze in milk crates (with friends like that – who needs…well, anything else?) and left them with us.
I went through the milk crates and we already had a couple bottles of gin, so I didn’t need to buy anything special. Since we really have no idea where this gin came from (well, we did buy the Bombay Sapphire at one point, I don’t remember why) I figured the other bottle was probably a pretty cheap one. It turns out, though, that it is a bottle of regular Bombay gin (made with 8 spices instead of the 10 that go into Bombay Sapphire) and is a pretty good quality gin. I already had a lemon, ice, and superfine baker’s sugar purchased for making scones – but it should work for cocktails too. I needed to purchase soda water. I couldn’t find anything called “soda water,” but according to Wikipedia seltzer should do. It is just carbonated water (no minerals). This reminds me of a little story, slightly off topic, from my trip with Mom to The Netherlands. We had just arrived in Amsterdam and were sitting at a lovely restaurant where we had just requested two glasses of water from the lovely waitress. The lovely waitress replied, “Would you like your water with or without gas.” The waitress waited, I have to admit with much poise, through our fits of giggles and puns on flatulance until we finally figured out she meant “carbonated.”
As I read the recipe, I realized that the gin and its glasses need to be ice cold. Hmmm…things aren’t quite as simple as they seem. I’ve already had to research the bizillion types of water one can add to gin, now I find out I should be storing my barware and gin in the freezer. Mental note: read ahead on each week’s recipes. I informed Hubby that cocktail hour was postponed for an hour. I cleaned out the freezer, shoving the packages of frozen Dutch smoked eels to the back and made room for both bottles of gin and two tall glasses.
Once the glasses and gin were chilled, I got all the ingredients together and realized that my “tall-drink” glasses (regular water glasses) are way too tall. I don’t have the proper bar-ware for a tall drink-style cocktail. No need to panic – this is just my first mix and we are at home, mellow. Next, I realized that I’m supposed to serve this with two thin straws. I was slightly disappointed that this isn’t an umbrella drink. While I have several packages of tiny paper umbrellas, I’m a little low on the straw front. I only have giant crazy curly straws (in Cat-Woman and Finding Nemo shapes) or regular fast-food beverage style straws. I went for the less silly straws. As I was shaking away, Hubby commented that the shaker needs a little Tarnex applied to it. OK – so I’m not a class act yet, but you weren’t expecting Tom Cruise from Cocktail yet anyway, right?
Since hockey season hasn’t quite started, I put on the XM radio station for “chilling,” set out a bowl of cashews, and served the drinks that besides being in way too big glasses looked pretty much like the picture in the book. Slightly lemon colored, a little fizzy, maybe they could have been strained a bit better. (Mental Note: buy some cheesecloth.)
I proudly announced to Hubby “Gin Fizzes,” as I set the ice cold, dewey glasses down on the cocktail table (formerly known as the table between the couch and the TV) “Wow,” he replied, dripping with sarcasm, “You really started out fancy.” I guess he was expecting Tom Cruise!
Diagnosis – refreshing! Bubbly, cold, lemoney. Hubby wanted a little more gin flavor and a little less lemon, but all in all he agreed the Gin Fizz is a winner. It didn’t get the conversation going, though. I had prepped a narrative on the history of gin, but Hubby wasn’t interested. I’ll have to look into the art of small talk more.
Note: the cashews were not a good pairing with a Gin Fizz . I’m not sure what would be. It is a very acidic drink, so it is nice to have some food with it, but not cashews! Any suggestions? The cocktail book suggests certain kinds of fish – but I just couldn’t bring myself to break out the Dutch smoked eels…