Random Photo of the Day

Fooling with the digital camera at night. Moon and trees and breeze.

My favorite cocktails, part 3

(Update below) The missing link: Martinez

The Manhattan is one of the oldest and finest cocktails and one of the first to combine base spirits with vermouth (Italian, or sweet vermouth). It was developed by someone (one of a number of possible bartenders) in a bar (one of a number of suggested locations, including the Manhattan Club) somewhere in New York City (which seems to be definite) sometime in the 1880s (or even the 1870s). The earliest recipes varied a lot, but the consistent components have always been: whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters.

There appears to be a general consensus that the Martini evolved from the Manhattan, although it may be difficult to see the connection on the surface. The Martini does have vermouth, but it's French (dry) vermouth and it uses gin rather than whiskey. And no bitters (although early recipes for the Martini actually included orange bitters). Without the missing link, it's hard to credit the lineage.

The Martinez is not only the transitional cocktail between the two, but it turns out to be a delicious drink on its own, and I can't understand how cocktail drinkers allowed it to disappear for generations. It substitutes gin for whiskey, adds a dab of sweetness from Maraschino liqueur (unnecessary with the sweetness of rye or bourbon), retains the bitters and adds a twist of lemon for the garnish. Gin and Maraschino make a wonderful pairing, as a lot of early cocktails attest. The Martinez is a beautiful drink, with a lovely amber hue; it's absurdly simple to make and even simpler to drink.

The Martinez (derived from Gary Regan's recipe)

2 oz. gin (Bombay Sapphire or Tanqueray 10)
1 oz. sweet vermouth (Antica Formula)
1/4 oz. Maraschino liqueur
1 dash Angostura orange bitters

Stir with ice and serve in a chilled cocktail glass, with a lemon twist for garnish

Update:

Tried the recipe with Vya sweet vermouth replacing the Antica Formula. Vya's version (from California) is a really intriguing take on vermouth, with a rich spicy character that reminds me (in a good way) of fruitcake. The Martinez? It might even be better this way, with a tiny bit more depth. The spice in the Vya is an excellent pairing with the spice in the gin.

My favorite cocktails, part 2

The Vieux Carré cocktail is one of those rare old drinks with a guaranteed provenance: it was invented in the 1930s by 'Walter Bergeron, the head bartender at the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans, and is named after the French term for what we call "The French Quarter" ... le Vieux Carré ("Old Square")' -- according to the Gumbopages and everyone else.

Like The Last Word, it has a critical component originally developed by a religious order--Benedictine liqueur--but in the Vieux Carré, the liqueur is a tiny addition. It is very much a New Orleans cocktail, combining the French (cognac & Benedictine) with the American (rye whiskey), and the New Orleans specialty: Peychaud's bitters. Unlike a lot of cocktails whose provenance is not so certain, the recipe has been essentially identical no matter where I've found it. The only question that arises is whether to stir or to shake the drink. Ordinarily, I would err on the side of stirring, but shaking the drink does create a nice little foamy cap (the picture above is of a stirred drink).

In either case, the drink is disturbingly easy to lap up, just delicious.

Vieux Carré

1 oz. cognac (Courvoisier VSOP)
1 oz. rye whiskey (Rittenhouse BIB)
1 oz. sweet vermouth (Antica Formula)
1/2 tsp. Benedictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters

Shake it or stir it with ice and pour over ice cubes in an Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with twist of lemon.

My favorite cocktails, part 1

When I originally "planned" this post, it was going to be "cocktail", singular. In the last few weeks, however, my fascination with one particular drink hasn't ebbed, but the list has grown on me. So the next plan was to write a post about three cocktails. Or maybe four. With a beautiful photograph of each one, naturally, which was where the "part 1" came from.

In order for me to photograph a cocktail, I've obviously got to mix it. And after the photo session, what then? Throw it out? Are you insane?!!

So it's best I break this up and not end up face down on the Afghan rug.

The modern revival of the cocktail has several pieces. In addition to the crucial return to quality ingredients (no mixes, no faux "maraschino cherries", no crappy well liquors) and attention to detail, it has been about rediscovering "lost" cocktails or forgotten details about classic cocktails, and it's about creating delicious ways to combine ingredients in brand-new cocktails--like the mixologists at the recent competition here in Portland. Much of this innovation is chronicled online; in fact, I'd have to guess that the proliferation of New Mixology has been fueled to a great extent by the Internet and the ability to share ideas, recipes and enthusiasm with other professional and amateur mixologists around the planet.

The Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle's Pike Place Market was founded in 1998, at what must have been the beginnings of this movement. (At some point, and soon, I need to make a pilgrimage to visit, preferably with a soft bed and dark curtains somewhere close by.) Drinkboy.com credits the bartenders at the Zig Zag with rediscovering The Last Word from a 1950s' era book, The Jones Barguide. It's an unusual cocktail, combining as it does equal parts of four beverages, two of them extremely full-flavored liqueurs. A common first reaction on seeing the recipe is that it needs a significant adjustment, increasing the percentage of base alcohol and reducing the liqueurs--but it doesn't, and the first taste confirms it. As Drinkboy says: "You could consider it as being a gin drink for people who might not like gin. It's addition of Lime Juice, Maraschino, and Chartreuse to the Gin provide an excellent balance of sweet, sour, and herbals to this very approachable cocktail."

I have yet to see The Last Word on a Portland cocktail list, although Lance Mayhew produced a beauty for my son, Alex, and I at Fifty Plates (and it looks past time to update that website!). Alan Akwai came back from a trip to San Francisco reporting that the drink "was everywhere".

It's an impossible drink to describe. Either make your own or find a bartender who can. A final benefit of The Last Word is that it will be the only cocktail to make a dent in that ridiculously big bottle of Maraschino. Without it, the bottle would hang around the home bar for 20 years.

The Last Word

1 oz. Tanqueray No. 10 gin
1 oz. fresh lime juice
1 oz. Green Chartreuse
1 oz. Luxardo Maraschino

Stir with plenty of ice and pour into a chilled cocktail glass. Following Lance Mayhew's lead, I garnished it with a homemade brandied cherry.

Well, foo!

I knew it was coming and I had a strong suspicion that the wedding would be the grand finale . . . but today's episode of For Better or For Worse, arguably the best comic strip in print, is Lynn Johnston's last. My mornings are going to have a hole in them for some time to come, because I've been following the stories of Elly & John Patterson, their kids and their dogs for years and years, and Johnston's ability to personalize this family (based on her own) has been a grand adventure in storytelling.

With the greatest respect to Lynn Johnston, I've reproduced the final strip here. If I've violated copyright, I hope she accepts my apologies.

Mixology Competition

Today marked the second annual Mixology Competition as part of the fourth annual Great American Distillers Festival here in Portland. I was working as the timer in the competition -- each bartender had seven minutes to make the required five cocktails for the judges. The recipes had to include at least one of the alcoholic beverages featured at the festival, and included a lot of homemade ingredients like syrups, bitters and some very odd approaches to the simple (ha!) ice cube. Lighting conditions were awful, particularly since I didn't want to disturb the contestants with a flash. But this one I actually like.

I only managed one clear picture of a competitor, Alyson Dykes from the Teardrop Lounge. That's what I get for being a nice guy and not using a flash.

Even more too much television

Updates Below

It has been a matter of pride with me for years that I scorn "reality tv". Never watched it, never will. No survivals, no machine-made musical "talents", no auctioned brides. I'm a purist and only watch scripted stories.

Except, well, it finally occurred to me that for the third year in a row, I was eagerly looking forward to a season of Last Comic Standing. Which is, um, a reality tv show. I love standup comedy and was hooked the first time I watched the open auditions, held across the country in a number of cities, with long lines of would-be comics waiting for two minutes to convince a pair of judges that they were good enough to compete that evening against other comedians for a chance to end up (that first year) stuck with a dozen other comics in the Queen Mary, busily attempting to eliminate the competition. Part of the entertainment of the open auditions are the complete and utter weirdos that wander up on the stage convinced that their bizarre behavior is "standup". Mercifully, the judges cut them short in a few seconds and most leave the stage in the same confusion they entered. The comics that compete that evening and ultimately move on to the national competition are invariably people who have been working clubs for years and have learned how to write and present their own material.

There are always very talented people left behind at the local level and many of them are comics I find vastly superior to the judges' choices. And it seems that this year's finalists are weaker than last years, which were weaker than the previous year. Some of the finalists are truly bad, and it's difficult to understand how they managed to progress as far as they did. At this point, four of the original dozen have been eliminated, and they were all pretty damn bad.



A few of the remaining comics are very good indeed, and my personal favorite is the single woman to get this far. Iliza Shlesinger is very smart, very funny and leaves nothing behind when she goes onstage. I love how she brings a physical element to her comedy; in a strange fashion she reminds me of Dick Van Dyke's standup, with his cartoonish exaggeration of movement. Shlesinger is also gorgeous, and I think that this has been a factor in the show, as some of the less-secure males have "challenged" her as if she threatened them more than any of the men. There have been two challenges to date, with two comics sent home at the conclusion of each. Schlesinger won both of them. In the first, the audience gave her 68% of the votes. The second time she got 62%.

In the most recent challenge, she whipped on two of the weakest comics, one from England and the other from India. I was very pleased to see them go, because I didn't think either was funny and because they had both commented rudely about my favorite. B'bye! Iliza kicked your ass!

The only other finalist I think is really good is Louis Ramey. Good and varied material and a great delivery.

Update 1, July 24

Last night's episode began with an hour-long "challenge" at the Playboy Mansion, in which the remaining comedians had to compose a bedtime story for the "Girls Next Door", which is apparently a "reality" show involving three of Hef's "girlfriends". Hmmm. A reality show visiting another reality show . . . I'm getting in deep. This segment was fortunately on the TiVo, so I could zip through it to get caught up. Some of the stories were not terrible, although I was disappointed that Iliza passed up the perfect chance to do her "T-rex being hit by a rock" impression. (cue video!)



The usual scenario for the show would have called for a vote among the remaining players to determine who would go into a three-way elimination; this is the segment that Iliza had won twice. The guys had been strategizing the best way to handle Iliza now that she'd become (as one put it) a giant. Fortunately for me and my frustration, the format had been changed (maybe just because of her) and all seven had three minutes on stage and the voting took place as it does in the finals, with the viewers using phones and the Internet to choose their favorites. I got to vote for Iliza ten times! She did entirely new material and it was difficult to tell how it went over. It felt like new material that needed some polishing but she did seem to connect well with the women in the live audience. Louis Ramey's material was great. In fact, I would have chosen his performance over everyone else's, based just on last night. His stuff is cohesive, polished and funny. Most of the other comedians wandered around, jumping from joke to joke without much connection. C'mon, guys, it's only three minutes!

Now I have to wait a whole week to find out the results.

Update 2, August 1

It's looking somewhat chaotic at LCS, and according to this well-informed blogger, the entire show is a scam (which surprises me not at all).

NBC's Last Comic Standing claims on its own website to be a "search for the funniest comedian on the planet". It's not. The auditions are staged, the celebrity judges aren't judges, the footage is doctored to make a favored bad act look good, and talented working comedians are passed over for "characters" with no act and a big personality.

I've been wondering how the show coordinates the "live" performances over a period of many weeks, while maintaining the fiction that the "contestants" are still living in one house in LA. Or is it Vegas? All while maintaining careers that keep them living and working far away from either place. I'm not at all surprised that the "voting" being done by people at home is completely irrelevant to who wins. Didn't stop me from voting 10 times for Iliza, but still . . .

Last night, the eight comedians all performed their "last" acts, regardless of whether they'd (at least in theory) been voted off the show last week. Only after each act was finished did the hosts announce the voting results, and of course, it was scheduled so that the final two acts had one "finalist" spot remaining, and the result wasn't announced until both were done. Or, actually, after another commercial. Predictably, Iliza finished in the top five. Next week, NBC will spend two hours leading up to the announcement of which of the five "won."

This site has some really good critiques of the show and the comics, going back through the weeks (in the July archives). For the most part, I'm in agreement with them, although I like Louis Ramey's act more than they do; maybe it's because an "80s style" doesn't bother me. The earlier entries are really good on the subject of the acts already eliminated, mostly along the lines of "what the hell were they doing here in the first place?" And the critiques come from real stand-up comics, so they're well informed. I was especially fond of this one, in regard to pretty boy Jeff Dye, who I find enormously irritating:

Next, Jeff Dye. Wow, there is so little in this set, it's like watching a teen girl's boyfriend do a set for her friends at a sleepover. If he played the cute card any harder he would have to legally be considered a cast member of High School Musical. It's kind of gaggy to watch, and he did racist-lite jokes, but he's in the finals, and man, maybe it's all teen girls voting out there? Their fingers are small enough to text really fast, so watch out, this could be the biggest upset since Dat Phan.

And this earlier critique:

Jeff Dye. Jeff reminds me of Gary Gulman without all the annoying humor to get in the way. He's tall and fresh-faced, animated, and wears day-glo. But it's pretty much Britney Spears bubble-gum comedy. He did two extended jokes, one about "The Sound of Music" (really? he's half as old as that movie), and then something oddly mean-spirited about the homeless. But, clearly on to the finals. Clearly. It's the kind of vote that drives "real comics" crazy-- What? That guy? This is insane!-- but he's doing what the genre of TV wants from him, and I see him surfing on down the pipe, not a ripple in sight.

But my favorite comment of all was in regard to the then-upcoming visit to the Playboy Mansion:

Next week's comedy challenge just might be sad and poignant-- the show travels to the Playboy mansion where, it appears from the tease, the comics will be asked to entertain what may be three of the dumbest and most humorless people on the planet-- Hef's girlfriends. Anyone who has ever seen The Girls Next Door will sympathize. The worst part? You don't want to make Kendra laugh. That laugh just goes right through you. It's like a rusty chef's knife going right through your solar plexus.

Ah, and thank god for YouTube. Here's the evidence.




It's so annoying, in fact, that there are YouTube videos of young women demonstrating their "Kendra laugh." None of them, sad to say, is in her league.

Update 3, August 9

Iliza won! I can't really say that I'm surprised, but I was certainly relieved that another stupid act didn't win this year. The final "episode" was truly appalling and supremely not funny, but her short bit was well done and the award almost made up for some seriously awful comedy. I have a feeling this is going to fall off the TiVo season pass list for next year; it just wasn't as much fun watching it. Kudos to Iliza and I can only hope that some day she'll do a show here in Portland so I can see her live.