My Cocktail Hobby and Cocktails for Men #1: The Martini

Tools of the Trade

I was bought a cocktail mixer for christmas which was a bit of a surprise.  I like the odd cocktail but as a card-carrying member of CAMRA it was beer that was my tipple of choice.

In the cold, depressing months of January I discovered an old Cocktail book my wife bought nearly ten years ago and began to devour the history and culture that surrounded the invention of the cocktail in America in the 19th Century.  It didn't hurt that suddenly prohibition-era speak-easies became all the rage in London at places like The Experimental Cocktail Club and Purl.

I quickly began trying all sorts of recipes - helped by the fact that my wife doesn't really like anything that really tastes of spirits hence the requirement to make 2 at a time.  Every trip to Waitrose became just that little bit more expensive when that extra bottle of Vermouth or Cointreau snuck into the shopping basket.  Six months later I now have a pretty well stocked cocktail cabinet which is a significant investment in both time and money!  Luckily there are some items that you go through quickly and some that last for months - its mainly the base spirits like Vodka, Gin, Bourbon, Brandy and White and Dark Rum that go quickly (or even more quickly if my father gets to them - and he drinks them neat...)

I recommend a good read of the 12 Bottle Bar website if you're looking to build up a cabinet - although you may have to adapt your bottles based on what you can find in your local supermarket.  If you want to go on a quest then I do recommend Gerry's on Old Compton Street which is a veritable treasure trove.  I had to go here to find Orange Bitters for instance.

Over time though I began to realise that I was gravitating towards the real classics; the Martini, the Manhattan, the Sazerac.  It was these pre-1930's flavours that really rocked my boat - especially anything with the addition of Bitters.

So onto the Martini - my aperitif of choice these days.   There are two main ingredients; Gin and Vermouth although the Vodka Martini is also popular.  Something you can live your life by though is that Gin is almost always better than Vodka :-)

I take my Martini dry - which means Dry Vermouth.  This seems to make the Gin sing more than a Perfect Martini (mix of dry and sweet vermouth).  I also take my Martini stirred not shaken (the distinction seems to be both aesthetic and to do with the level of dilution from the icecubes).  The key thing is to ensure that the glass and the liquid are both ice-cold.

Some people take their Martini so dry that only the ice get seasoned (otherwise known as an In-and-Out Martini).  On a whim I had a go.

Recipe for an In-and-Out Martini.

• Fill Martini Glass with Ice and pour over a good dash of Dry Vermouth.  This 'seasons' the ice.

Vermouth-seasoned ice.

• Fill an Old-Fashioned Glass with 4 or 5 icecubes and pour in 2 shots or 50ml of gin.
• Stir the gin glass for a quick count of 100
• Throw out(!) the 'vermouth-y' ice and strain the contents of the Old-Fashioned Glass into the the Martini Glass
• Garnish with either a Cocktail Olive or peel a small amount of skin from a Lemon and drop into the glass.  Make sure to squeeze the lemon peel so you get to the oil locked inside.

An In-and-Out Martini

Verdict:  Not my cup-of-tea.  Gin-heavy with not much added by the Vermouth although I suppose if all you want to taste is the Gin then this might rock your world.

I'm going to stick with my favourite method - I'm afraid I do like to taste the Vermouth.

Recipe for a Dry Martini, stirred-not-shaken.

• Fill a Martini glass with Ice and Water and leave to chill

• Pour 50ml or 2 shots of Gin, 3/4 of a shot of Dry Vermouth and a dash of Orange Bitters into an Old-Fashioned Glass.  You can omit the bitters if you don't have them but I like the herby edge it gives the drink.
• Add 4 or 5 icecubes to the glass and stir for a quick count of 100.
• Throw the ice and water in the martini glass away and strain the contents of the Old-Fashioned glass into the Martini glass.
• Garnish with squeezed lemon peel.

Dry Martini

It's also worth mentioning the gin I've started using.  Sipsmiths is a microdistillery launched in the last few years in London - the first new distillery in 189 years in the capital.  Given that London dry Gin is part of our heritage and this is a great example of the type I strongly encourage you to hunt it down and give it a go (I found it in Waitrose)

Sipsmith London Dry Gin

Recipe: Ruby Four Cocktail

In honour of my new niece Ruby (born on monday not a tuesday alas) I thought I'd have a look for an appropriately named cocktail.  As it turns out there are several cocktails containing the word Ruby but unfortunately absolutely all of them had at least one ingredient I don't own.

In the end I adapted the recipe for a Ruby Martini #2 from Diffords Guide.  While I had Cointreau and Courvoisier I had to find substitutes for both Creme de Framboise and Martini Rosso.

Cinzano Bianco was a reasonable alternative to the Martini but I thought the Cherry Heering was a good alternative to Creme de Framboise in flavour if not in texture and would complement the brandy base.  I have been unable to find Cherry Heering in the supermarkets and had to make a special pilgrimage to Gerry's on Old Compton Street who basically sell any liquor you can think of (worthy of a blog post on its own!).  Its good stuff anyway and necessary to make a Singapore Sling or a Blood and Sand

Courvoisier VS Cognac, Cointreau, Cheery Heering and Cinzano Bianco Sweet Vermouth

Recipe:

1. Chill a martini glass by filling with ice and topping up with water.  Set to one side.
2. Prepare your shaker of choice
3. To this add 1.5 shots of Brandy, 0.5 shots of Cherry Heering, 0.5 shots of Cointreau and 0.5 shots of Sweet Vermouth
4. Optional - add a dash of Angostura Bitters.
5. Shake with ice and strain into glass (discarding water and ice first)
6. Garnish with a cocktail cherry

Ready to be Shaken

The Ruby Four cocktail

As for the name of the drink - it comes from the infamous Kaiser Chiefs song (the first 4 words of the chorus!).  I cannot get this out of my head now..

Recipe: Beer-Butt Chicken

So I bought a BBQ on Ebay.  I really wanted a Weber Kettle but £200 was a bit rich so a few days scouting Ebay led me to a nice Antipodean family in Carshalton who were emigrating and leaving an orphaned grill behind.  £50 - not bad.

Weber Kettle BBQ

Several days spent reading every article on Amazing Ribs taught me many things I never knew about BBQ. You should cook with the lid on, there is such a thing as a BBQ that is too hot, flames are bad and you should not cook whole animals directly above the coals but above and to the side of the direct heat.

I do wonder about the mindset of the first person to jam a beer can up a chicken's backside.  Luckily this approach to cooking a bird has become so widespread that I don't feel playing along impinges my character to any degree.  

I can confirm though that whatever flavour it imparts to the chicken it is a pretty rubbish idea in practical terms as my chicken fell over twice and almost extinguished the coals.  I totally wigged out at this point and needed my wife to calm me down.  Next time I will be using one of these.

The good news is despite all the setbacks it did turn out pretty well with a nice pink smoke-ring under the skin.

The first thing you want to do is rub the chicken all over with a handful of salt (sea salt if you can).  This draws a little bit of moisture out of the meat which should help the skin crisp up.  Wrap it in cling-film and give it a good couple of hours in the fridge.  In the meantime drink 3 cans of the cooking lager you bought so your non beer-geek mates don't drink the good stuff when they come round.  Save one can.

Generic Cooking Lager

Take the chicken out of the fridge and rinse all the salt off.  Dry it with some kitchen roll and put it onto a baking tray.  At this point you want to rub it with a spice mixture.  You need a combination of what I call background notes (half a teaspoon of onion power and/or garlic powder) with some high notes (a couple of teaspoons or so of either Cumin, or Smoked-Paprika or dry Mustard) and another teaspoon of salt.  You could use dry thyme or herbes de provence for a more low-key flavour instead.

Pour away (or drink) half the can of beer.  Now jam that can as far as it will go into the chicken's cavity.  Leave the chicken like this for about 30 minutes at room temperature.

Raw Chicken Balanced on a Beer Can

Set the BBQ up for indirect cooking.  Halve your coals so one half is against each side of the BBQ with room for a roasting tin in the middle.  If you fill this tin with water if will keep the cooking environment humid which will be useful to prevent the chicken burning (as well as catching drips from the chicken).  

If you have a BBQ thermometer you are aiming at a temperature of about 180-190c on the grill.  Place the chicken very carefully on the cooking grate above the water pan.

At this point you have a choice; smoke or no-smoke.  On this occasion I chucked two handfuls of apple-wood on each pile of coals and immediately closed the lid.  There is no need to soak the wood despite what the instructions may say.

I had an organic chicken of around 2.1kg which took around 1.5 hours to cook (a supermarket chicken may take less time).  As it always the case with BBQ you really need to take the temperature of the chicken to see if its done - this should be at least 77c but you will find some conservative sources claiming 83c.  Many sources will go slightly below 77c but I didn't want to take any chances with a whole chicken.

Take the temperature in the thickest part of the thigh (between the thigh and the body).  If you want to be totally ninja then you need a wireless thermometer so you can watch telly and still know the temperature of the grill and the meat (note I had the meat probe in the wrong place - hence the temp plus its in farenheit)

Maverick ET-732 Wireless Thermometer and a bottle of very nice American Craft Beer

And the result...

Smoked Chicken straight off the BBQ

Ready to be carved!

Lunch tomorrow!

Lunch!

Recipe: Buffalo Wings

Americans can do simple food so well - so many times across that country I have stepped foot into a random bar and had a great burger, or a fantastic breakfast or my favourite; a whole bucket of chicken wings washed down with a whole bucket of beer.

So Buffalo Wings - cheap, cheerful and so I thought completely undoable this side of the pond.  Firstly - where can you find chicken wings?  Normally when I order these anywhere I receive pathetic excuses for wings with a quantity of meat that makes me feel sorry for the scrawny beast that probably never really used them.  I've seen organic and free range chicken wings for sale in Waitrose at £5 for 4.  Given I eat about a dozen in a sitting it wasn't going to work.

One of the benefits of moving out to the suburbs has meant access to a car and a quick look on the internets found me a couple of decent butchers.

My first attempt used chicken wings sourced from the greats Bevan's butchers at Garsons Garden Centre in Esher.  I asked for a dozen chicken wings at something like £5/kilo and received about 1.2kg.  Fantastic free-range chicken meant these wings were mahoosive examples of their kind and fed two adults (sparingly) for 2 days.

Attempt number two took me to the Game Larder in Claygate where the butcher had no fresh chicken wings but kindly sold me about 25 frozen wings for £2.  Yes - thats £2.  Although this is a bargain the wings were much smaller than the examples at Garsons and I always feel a bit icky eating battery chicken.

Next on the shopping list is the sauce.  There can be only one authentic sauce and that's Frank's Hot Sauce .

Frank's Hot Sauce

I've seen this in Waitrose before - you need to add melted butter to it for Buffalo Wings.  Alternatively you can buy Frank's Buffalo Wing sauce which from what I can tell is Frank's and butter - I've only seen this in Garsons Farm Shop.

I adapted this recipe as I wanted to bake, not fry the wings.  I've tried cooking them on a raised rack but this just results in the sauce falling off!  At this point there are 2 choices.

1. Dip the refrigerated wings in the sauce before cooking per the recipe above - aka the wife-friendly option.  This delivers non-messy wings that are spicy but truthfully are not buffalo wings.  They are better the next day than option 2 though.
2. Cook without sauce.  This delivers exceptionally crispy chicken wings that you then dip into the hot, buttery sauce that you've heated on the hob (the flour coating gives the sauce something to stick to).  These are the wings I'd been craving!

Result.  Chicken wings with home-made coleslaw and potato salad.  3 days worth!

Buffalo Wings