If you didn't already notice, The JackKnife Barbers left everyone relatively alone during the Thanksgiving weekend. Our fans were free from incessant posts about "buy tickets now" and "please help us now." We hope you enjoyed your short reprieve because I've returned now with the resolve of a musk ox in free fall and the passion of a short-haired house cat.
You are running out of time to buy your ticket for the Battle of the Bands on Dec. 8th at Tremont Music Hall. Our time slot is based on OUR pre-show ticket sales. The more tickets we sell before the show, the better our time slot. If you're planning on buying a ticket at the door, you're an asshole because you're not helping anyone. Get your ticket now at www.mattstache.com or send me at email at matt@mattstache.com.
Seriously. If you buy your ticket at the door at 10PM, it's likely that you've already missed our set because we ended up going on at 5:30PM because you didn't buy a pre-show ticket.
Now that I've made that clear, I'd like to say that I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was lovely and that you binged on an obscene amount of turkey (or tofurkey for our vegan friends) and copious amounts of stuffing and potatoes. What should you do with the leftover turkey? Make turkey sandwiches like a goddamn American! Pick that carcass clean!
And then...
..make turkey broth out of the carcass.
I smoked my turkey, so the carcass has a lovely hickory aroma to it. Simply follow this recipe:
1 turkey carcass
5 carrots
1 onion
3 stalks of celery
1 head of garlic (yeah, one FULL fucking head of garlic)
Salt and pepper to taste (you can taste, can't you?)
Fill a stock pot with enough water to thoroughly submerge your turkey carcass, bring to a boil. Add the rest of the aforementioned ingredients and cover the pot. Let it boil for four or five hours or until the bones of the turkey fall apart in your hands. Continue to add water as necessary.
Strain out the bits and pieces and store in your fridge. You can also pour it into ice cube trays and make turkey broth ice cubes. You can use these cubes to quickly add flavor to soups or to simply whip up a quick cup of broth when you're in the mood.
Alternatively, turkey broth ice cubes add a fun element to any party when mixing cocktails for that guest that has overstayed their welcome.
Showing posts with label cocktails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cocktails. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2012
Friday, November 13, 2009
Not a "Bad Idea"
Four or so drinks in one weekday evening, I said to Lance one evening, "Would you like a bad idea?"
"What's a 'bad idea,'?" he inquired as I began mixing an entire pitcher of Rob Roy.
"A 'bad idea'," I explained, "Is that last drink you have before bed."
"Does it have alcohol in it?"
"Yessssss."
"Then yesss."
"For example, this pitcher of Rob Roy." I continued "Inevitably, I will wake up tomorrow and say 'Ughhh.. that Rob Roy was a bad idea."
I've mastered the art since of avoiding the "bad idea." Instead, I've become interested recently in the application of fortified wine in cocktail form. Semi-innocuous and certainly less potent than other cocktails -- equally complex and enjoyable.
Bereft of ingredients necessary to make a trule classic port or sherry cocktail, I offer this substitute which I improvised this evening.
'Stacheville Rose
-----------------
2oz. port
0.25oz. grenadine
0.25oz. orange juice
gingerale
Shake the first three as hard as you can in a shaker filled with cracked ice. Strain into tall ice-filled glass and top with gingerale.
"What's a 'bad idea,'?" he inquired as I began mixing an entire pitcher of Rob Roy.
"A 'bad idea'," I explained, "Is that last drink you have before bed."
"Does it have alcohol in it?"
"Yessssss."
"Then yesss."
"For example, this pitcher of Rob Roy." I continued "Inevitably, I will wake up tomorrow and say 'Ughhh.. that Rob Roy was a bad idea."
I've mastered the art since of avoiding the "bad idea." Instead, I've become interested recently in the application of fortified wine in cocktail form. Semi-innocuous and certainly less potent than other cocktails -- equally complex and enjoyable.
Bereft of ingredients necessary to make a trule classic port or sherry cocktail, I offer this substitute which I improvised this evening.
'Stacheville Rose
-----------------
2oz. port
0.25oz. grenadine
0.25oz. orange juice
gingerale
Shake the first three as hard as you can in a shaker filled with cracked ice. Strain into tall ice-filled glass and top with gingerale.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Green Tea Plum Wine Cooler
This recipe was half-created from a mythical world beverage that was once (and may periodically still be) available at EPCOT and half-created from a chilled version of a throat-soothing home remedy given me by the bassist of my former band Monte Carlo Method.
You'll need four green tea bags, honey, sugar, a bottle of Chinese plum wine, a bottle of coconut rum, water and ice. Hardware includes measuring implements, a tea kettle or appropriate saucepan, and a decent sized glass iced-tea pitcher.
First, how to make iced tea fast. In general, take your final vessel half-full with ice and water. If you intend on making 8 cups of tea, fill your pitcher with 8 cups of ice and water. This can be achieved by four times filling a two-cup measuring cup first with ice, then topping it off with water until the ice barely floats. Surprise! Two instant cups of ice water. Use twice as many tea bags per cup of boiling water, steep appropriately, sweeten and then add the hot double-strength, double-sweet tea to the ice water pitcher. The tea is cooled to roughly room temperature and may then be served over ice.
Using this formula to make the cooler, do the following.
Boil two cups of water, steep four green tea bags, adding two teaspoons of sugar and two teaspoons of honey (I use regional orange blossom honey). After steeping the tea, add to two cups of ice water in your pitcher. Add four cups of Chinese plum wine and one cup of coconut rum. Serve over ice.
Funny. It took longer to explain how to make sweet iced tea than it did to explain the cooler.
Beware, as with most tea, green tea contains caffeine. This is the reason I am awake at 12:45am writing a beverage blog.
You'll need four green tea bags, honey, sugar, a bottle of Chinese plum wine, a bottle of coconut rum, water and ice. Hardware includes measuring implements, a tea kettle or appropriate saucepan, and a decent sized glass iced-tea pitcher.
First, how to make iced tea fast. In general, take your final vessel half-full with ice and water. If you intend on making 8 cups of tea, fill your pitcher with 8 cups of ice and water. This can be achieved by four times filling a two-cup measuring cup first with ice, then topping it off with water until the ice barely floats. Surprise! Two instant cups of ice water. Use twice as many tea bags per cup of boiling water, steep appropriately, sweeten and then add the hot double-strength, double-sweet tea to the ice water pitcher. The tea is cooled to roughly room temperature and may then be served over ice.
Using this formula to make the cooler, do the following.
Boil two cups of water, steep four green tea bags, adding two teaspoons of sugar and two teaspoons of honey (I use regional orange blossom honey). After steeping the tea, add to two cups of ice water in your pitcher. Add four cups of Chinese plum wine and one cup of coconut rum. Serve over ice.
Funny. It took longer to explain how to make sweet iced tea than it did to explain the cooler.
Beware, as with most tea, green tea contains caffeine. This is the reason I am awake at 12:45am writing a beverage blog.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
French 75 Followup
For the advanced players, double points for mixing your French 75 using Andre Strawberry sparkling wine. Triple points if you can keep a straight face at the checkout counter while buying it.
All extra points forfeited if you blurt out an excuse to the cashier like: "It's for my girlfriend/wife/fiance/teenage daughter."
All extra points forfeited if you blurt out an excuse to the cashier like: "It's for my girlfriend/wife/fiance/teenage daughter."
Lemon Liqueur and French 75's
Christmas has not yet passed, my party has not yet occurred, nor have I cleaned up the aftermath, but I'm already planning for New Year's Eve.
If you know me at all, you know that I'm fond of sparkling wine, which I unabashedly refer to interchangeably as champagne. I'm cultured and fancy and all that nonsense, but I'm also practical and have a decent command of the English language and economy of words. "Champagne" is simply easier to say.
In any blog that I write, "champagne" will generally mean any sparkling wine unless something is specified by name.
Last year around this time, I discovered a rather decadent champagne cocktail that I became quickly fond of. The problem with champagne cocktails is uncorking a bottle of champagne and finishing it before it goes flat. You can save it for a mimosa in the morning if you're not drinking on a weeknight, but that's another blog entirely. I said all that to say, a French 75 is a rare treat for me.
The recipe, as I've interpretted and perfected it, is as follows:
1.5oz gin
1oz lemon juice
1tsp of powdered sugar
4oz - 6oz of champagne
I almost always mix these two at a time and may fudge the proportions a bit depending on the volume of the drinking vessels and how froggy I'm feeling that evening. Simply shake the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker, strain into a glass and top with champagne. On the rocks or straight up? Yes. If your champage is chilled, feel free to serve the cocktail up. I prefer mine on the rocks in a double old-fashioned simply by virtue of the fact that champagne packs a hell of a hangover.
If served "up," a cocktail/martini glass or a champagne goblet (not to be confused with a champagne flute) is appropropriate. From what I understand, the modern "martini" glass is a fairly recent invention -- an evolution of the traditional stout, rounded champagne goblet in which early martinis were served.
But mixing and shaking and dealing with sticky sugar and lemon juice is such a hassel. What if you run out of ice to shake AND serve with!? The solution is lemon liqueur.
The non-champagne portion of the French 75 is nothing more than sweetened gin with lemon juice added. Essentially gin, water, sugar and critic acid in varying proportions. You could easily replace the shaken portion of the cocktail with a pre-chilled sweet lemon liqueur.
Which brings us to lemon liqueur:
15 lemons
4 cups of gin
2 - 3 cups of simple syrup
Wash the lemons thorough (as if I didn't have to remind you) and remove the "zest" with a microplane or fine grater. Don't go too deep; the white pith is bitter. Place the zest and gin in a large glass container and let it steep for about a week, swishing it around when you get bored or impatient.
After a week, run the whole thing through a fine mesh strainer or coffee filter, and you've got soup!
Every red-blooded cocktail lover should know how to whip up simple syrup (and sour mix when in a pinch, for that matter). 1 part water, 1 part sugar, bring to a boil, stir until dissolved. Let the syrup cool before mixing with anything. Once your syrup is complete and cooled, decide how much to add to your liqueur. You could add as much as 4 cups, but at that point, it starts to taste like slightly lemony sugar water with a hint of gin. I err on the side of too little simple syrup rather than too much. Remember, you can always add more. Sweeten your liqueur based on how dry or sweet the champage with which you will be mixing it is.
If using a spumante, for God's sake man, maybe add two cups of simple syrup in your liqueur; if using an extra dry or dry brut, you may want to add a bit more.
Ok, time to go swish my bottle impatiently!
If you know me at all, you know that I'm fond of sparkling wine, which I unabashedly refer to interchangeably as champagne. I'm cultured and fancy and all that nonsense, but I'm also practical and have a decent command of the English language and economy of words. "Champagne" is simply easier to say.
In any blog that I write, "champagne" will generally mean any sparkling wine unless something is specified by name.
Last year around this time, I discovered a rather decadent champagne cocktail that I became quickly fond of. The problem with champagne cocktails is uncorking a bottle of champagne and finishing it before it goes flat. You can save it for a mimosa in the morning if you're not drinking on a weeknight, but that's another blog entirely. I said all that to say, a French 75 is a rare treat for me.
The recipe, as I've interpretted and perfected it, is as follows:
1.5oz gin
1oz lemon juice
1tsp of powdered sugar
4oz - 6oz of champagne
I almost always mix these two at a time and may fudge the proportions a bit depending on the volume of the drinking vessels and how froggy I'm feeling that evening. Simply shake the first three ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker, strain into a glass and top with champagne. On the rocks or straight up? Yes. If your champage is chilled, feel free to serve the cocktail up. I prefer mine on the rocks in a double old-fashioned simply by virtue of the fact that champagne packs a hell of a hangover.
If served "up," a cocktail/martini glass or a champagne goblet (not to be confused with a champagne flute) is appropropriate. From what I understand, the modern "martini" glass is a fairly recent invention -- an evolution of the traditional stout, rounded champagne goblet in which early martinis were served.
But mixing and shaking and dealing with sticky sugar and lemon juice is such a hassel. What if you run out of ice to shake AND serve with!? The solution is lemon liqueur.
The non-champagne portion of the French 75 is nothing more than sweetened gin with lemon juice added. Essentially gin, water, sugar and critic acid in varying proportions. You could easily replace the shaken portion of the cocktail with a pre-chilled sweet lemon liqueur.
Which brings us to lemon liqueur:
15 lemons
4 cups of gin
2 - 3 cups of simple syrup
Wash the lemons thorough (as if I didn't have to remind you) and remove the "zest" with a microplane or fine grater. Don't go too deep; the white pith is bitter. Place the zest and gin in a large glass container and let it steep for about a week, swishing it around when you get bored or impatient.
After a week, run the whole thing through a fine mesh strainer or coffee filter, and you've got soup!
Every red-blooded cocktail lover should know how to whip up simple syrup (and sour mix when in a pinch, for that matter). 1 part water, 1 part sugar, bring to a boil, stir until dissolved. Let the syrup cool before mixing with anything. Once your syrup is complete and cooled, decide how much to add to your liqueur. You could add as much as 4 cups, but at that point, it starts to taste like slightly lemony sugar water with a hint of gin. I err on the side of too little simple syrup rather than too much. Remember, you can always add more. Sweeten your liqueur based on how dry or sweet the champage with which you will be mixing it is.
If using a spumante, for God's sake man, maybe add two cups of simple syrup in your liqueur; if using an extra dry or dry brut, you may want to add a bit more.
Ok, time to go swish my bottle impatiently!
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