Nibbles & Sips

Fun with food and beverages: recipes and opinions about what, how, and why we eat.

Written in the Stars

Sips

The Zodiac Cocktail

Destiny? Fate? An excuse for every human foible?

That, my friends, are just some of the things folks find when they gaze up at the night sky.

Me? I have perhaps more than the average interest in astrology but I take it, like most things, with a few grains of salt and a whole lot of common sense.

(And, no, we’re not salting this martini. I made one exception, that was more than enough!)

What we are, is closing out this lovely romp through flavored-martini land with an ode to the stars, planets, and who knows what else out there in the vastness of space.

The Zodiac

1 1/2 oz Cranberry Juice
1 oz Vodka
3/4 oz Blue Curacao
3/4 oz Pomegranate Liqueur

Combine all ingredients over ice and shake until it’s cold as the far reaches of space. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

No garnish is needed–the inky depths of this drink speak for themselves. While not harsh–I would never give you a harsh drink, balance is important–this AlphaTini will positively take your breath away. Wait, did I say take? I mean it will snatch it from you like you’ve just been sucked out of an airlock.

And just like that sudden decompression, this drink will knock you ass over teakettle if you’re not careful. Testing a new cocktail a week, in addition to the occasional recreational drink, I have a pretty decent tolerance for booze, right? One quarter of a Zodiac–3 signs, if you will–and I was already feeling the effects, even after just having supper.

But, then, not all horoscopes are gentle…

# # #

Well, then! This week’s post has finished yet another Friday series here at Sips & Shots. After a week or two’s break I will be back with a delve into the world of white wines (just like our Meet the Reds mini-series way back when) and then we’ll get started on our next series (by the way, today’s cocktail was a hint, can you guess what the next series will be?).

But before we go, I wanted to be sure to tell each and every one of you how much I appreciate you reading, whether at Sips & Shots or over at Circle of Food. For every comment I receive here, there or on Facebook I always get a little thrill. As a thank you, I’d like to offer you this free download–a custom cocktail perfect for Valentine’s Day, courtesy of my other venture, the Character Cocktail.

Would you mind sharing your email address in return?

[download file=”http://www.sipsandshots.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/lovingcup.pdf” title=”Loving Cup Recipe Card”]

(For those who read via RSS feed, you’ll need to go to the actual post to get the download)

(I’d never sell your information, I just want to be able to track the downloads and be able to send out cocktail-related emails when something big is on the horizon. Once you’ve entered your email address the page will refresh, just scroll down back to this area and you should see “Your download is ready” and a button with the name of the file on it.)

To view the pdf you will need Adobe Reader, you can download it for free here.

Cheers!

Cocktail Gifts Galore

Sips

On Monday I told you about a fabulous trip that would make a romantic Valentine’s gift if ever there was one. If that trip is a little out of your budget (the way it is mine), here are some other gift ideas for the cocktail lover in your life that might not make your wallet faint:

Along the lines of Divino Tuscany, but a bit closer to home, if you’re near Paso Robles, California, or will be on March 31, 2012, consider gifting yourself or your loved ones the “Olfactory Evaluation of Wine” class led by Alexandre Schmitt at Niner Wine Estates. Learn exactly what all those notes about “noses” mean in this afternoon class for wine pros and enthusiasts alike. At $125 per person it’s practically a steal! Make sure to RSVP, though, as spots are limited.

Engraveable bottles of Double Cross Vodka
Prefer something a little more portable? How about an engraved bottle of premium vodka? Double Cross (seems like a dubious name for a Valentine’s gift, right? never fear, it refers to the double cross on the Slovakian coat of arms) vodka is offering just that for $39.99 (engraving may be extra  is free!). Email gifts@doublecrossvodka.com for specifics.

More from California, but this time from the comfort of your own home! The New York Times’ Knowledge Network (didn’t know there was such a thing, did you?) is offering a California Wines: Napa Cabernet course for the very reasonable rate of $65. A perfect gift for the online learner who’d love to know more about this very popular varietal.

Pop Chart Lab's Constitutions of Classic Cocktails poster

Got a visually-inclined cocktail enthusiast in your life? Consider this new (and very awesome, it’s definitely on my wish-list) print from Pop Chart Lab, Constitutions of Classic Cocktails, for a mere $36. It’s like a maze, with awesome drinks at the end–who wouldn’t like to solve that one?!

Glenfiddich 125th anniversary bottling

For the scotch lovers out there, be on the lookout for the Glenfidditch Cask of Dreams 125th Anniversary special bottling. Only 3500 bottles will be available, starting this month, at a suggested retail of $99. Get it while you can!

And, finally, if you’ll allow me a shameless plug of my own: You’ve seen the cocktails I create each Friday here at Sips and Shots, but did you realize that you can have your very own signature drink created just for you (or a loved one)? Character Cocktails are custom-designed cocktails based on the recipients personality and presented as a ready-to-frame piece of original art for $67, shipping included. Gift certificates (real, live, hold-in-your-hand ones as well as printables for you last-minute sort) are available at the Character Cocktail site.

Give the Gift of Experience

Sips

Unless you live under a rock, you know that Valentine’s Day is just over a week away.

Now I know that many people view this holiday as a money-grab by the card and chocolate industries and I’m not saying it isn’t, but I’m also not one to pass up an opportunity to say I Love You to the people in my life. (Yes, we should do that every day, but it’s nice to set aside one day in particular, too.)

For those who have no opposition to the upcoming holiday but are still wondering what to do or give to mark the occasion, have you considered laying low on the chocolates and tchotchkes, and gifting your someone special with an experience they’ll remember for the rest of their life?

How about, say, a trip to Tuscany?

Happy people congregating in Italycopyright Alessandro Moggi

Divino Tuscany 2012 is a

One-of-a-kind, 4-day celebration of the best Tuscan wines, food and culture. Divino Tuscany will offer a distinctive program that highlights premium wines: wine tastings with Tuscany’s top winemakers, seminars and grand tastings curated by James Suckling, former Senior Editor and European Bureau Chief of Wine Spectator and one of the world’s most influential wine critics; special luncheons and dinners prepared by Michelin-starred chefs and entertainment organized by IMG Artists, one of the leading producers of cultural and lifestyle festivals. Participating winemakers include Marchesi Antinori, Frescobaldi, Mazzei, Ricasoli, Il Borro, Petrolo and Castello Banfi, and more.

elegantly dressed couples in a gorgeous dining roomcopyright Alessandro Moggi

Sure, this sort of trip is a little on the pricey side (€1900 per person, or around $2500 at current rates), and you still have to make travel arrangements, but spending 4 days wining and dining in Tuscany in May doesn’t sound like a bad use of this year’s vacation fund, now does it? Especially not with a line-up of activities like this:

  • Festive welcome dinner to open the second edition of Divino Tuscany with the Italian premiere screening of James Suckling’s and James Orr’s film Heart and Soul of Cuba, recently shown to rave reviews at the Sonoma Film Festival, live music from Havana’s hottest pianist, Ernán López Nussa performing with his trio, and Grappa tasting with Cuban cigars
  • Gala dinner at the opulent Palazzo Corsini on the banks of the Arno.
  • Grand Tastings at the Grand Hotel Villa Cora poured by the winemakers and proprietors themselves.
  • Saturday night dinners in the private Palazzi of the most well known Tuscan wine families.
  • Join James Suckling as he escorts you through private tastings with winemakers he has personally invited for this intimate experience.
  • Divino Tuscany will close with a relaxed country lunch at the private villa Il Palagio, courtesy of owners Sting and Trudie Styler.

people at a wine tasting in Italycopyright Alessandro Moggi

And if you go? Please send me a postcard!

Baking By the Numbers

Nibbles

This weekend I needed to check out a recipe I’d concocted awhile back, a bread recipe that I’d adapted from various sources and while it worked, I wasn’t 100% happy with it. Thinking the blame might lie equally with the method as well as the ingredients, I decided to just start over and then compare the two recipes.

For the second trial I went back to my Professional Baking textbook from school. Deceptively thin, this book has just about everything you need to know about baking in it, but the recipes aren’t exactly what you’d call standard.

Baking is, for the most part, chemistry. All cooking is, to an extent, but while you can thicken a runny soup or bump up the seasoning of a stir-fry at will, baking is one of those things that if you’re ratio of wet to dry or leavening to mass is off, then you might very well end up with hockey pucks instead of rolls.

And no one wants hardtack on their plates.

So there’s math involved. Especially if you only want to make 1 small loaf of bread and not 12 of them.

Professional Baking is pretty much geared towards a production kitchen, after all.

But because baking is chemistry and science and math all rolled up into a tasty loaf of fresh bread, it’s fairly easy to figure out how much of everything you need if you use baking ratios.

Ratios, for those whose math skills are a little more than rusty, are a way of comparing items based on a single unit of measure. Think 4 parts flour to 1 part sugar, where part can be grams, ounces, or pounds depending on how much of something you’re trying to make.

Baking ratios are determined be considering the total weight of the flour as 100%, and all the other ingredients in relation to that. So if you only want to make a loaf of dough that uses 2 cups of flour, you can use the ratios to find out that you then need 1.2 cups of water, .075 cups of yeast and so on and so forth.

White Pan Bread baking ratios from Professional Baking with lots of margin notes

Cookbooks are the only books I regularly write in

Granted, having to figure out what .075 cups is equal to in the real world is a bit of a pain (.6 ounces or, roughly, 1 Tbsp + 1/2 tsp), having a scale with a metric function is incredibly helpful when doing any sort of baking conversions. Just weigh the flour you want to use in grams and base the rest of the ingredients off of that (also in grams, very important!).

Of course, it’s not a perfect system, mostly because there’s plenty of opportunity for human error.

Like when I figured out I needed 56% of something only I wrote it down in the wrong spot, thought it was the total grams needed of flour and ended up with a 3 oz “loaf” of bread dough. Oops. But, hey, if I ever need to make only 1 or 2 dinner rolls, now I can!

And that’s kind of a neat trick in and of itself.

She Was Afraid to Come out With the Vodka…

Sips

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Martini

She was afraid to come out with the Vodka
She was as nervous as she could be
She was afraid to come out with the Vodka
She was afraid that somebody would see

Two three four tell the people what she bore

It was an Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Martini
That she served for the first time today
An Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Martini
So with the Vodka, she wanted to stay

This song has been dancing around my head for more than a week–the moment I realized this week’s letter-inspiration was Y, yellow was the first thought and this song arrived right on it’s heels.

I thought about filking the entire song but even I’m not that obsessed!

At any rate, it was the inspiration for this week’s cocktail and the polka dots made me think back to an early Character Cocktail: the Miracle Mocktail. It was based on the idea of Bubble–aka Boba–Tea, right down to the tapioca pearls. Perfect polka dots! And what is the yummiest yellow spirit around? Limoncello, of course.

Since I still had a bounty of tapioca pearls in the cabinet, this time I decided to tint them with molasses instead of black food coloring (blech!). While very tasty, they are definitely more brown than black, but I don’t see that as a true problem, all things considered. Black tapioca pearls are available online and from specialty shops, if you’d rather not bother tinting them yourself, and instructions for preparing them (via Bubble Tea Supply) are pretty simple.

The biggest quandary I had was deciding whether to give it such a long name or not!

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Martini

1 oz Vodka
1 oz Limoncello
3/4 oz Green Tea
1/2 oz Peach Schnapps
garnish: 1 Tbsp prepared tapioca pearls

Spoon the tapioca pearls into the bottom of a cocktail glass. Combine vodka, limoncello, green tea and schnapps over ice and shake like a bikini top on a water slide and strain into the waiting pearls. Watch them dance around a bit, then sip.

The green tea is a further nod to the Bubble Tea inspiration, but the peach schnapps were just for taste. The peach and lemon are such a good mix; this drink is divine. And there’s no need to sweeten the tea or to use my beloved vanilla vodka–that would just be sugar-overload!