Funny Valentine (Blood Orange Old Fashioned)

 This is a really good cocktail. It has a little more depth than a traditional Old Fashioned, At its best, there are complex flavors that blend well but also stand out at different points, on their own. Also, this is an easy drink to make in bulk, making it a party favorite. 

You will need:

• 4 oz. bourbon
• 1/2 oz. Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
• blood oranges
  
• Aztec Chocolate Bitters (or a bitters that you prefer)

There are two ways to make this drink. Old school and new school.

I want to go old school:

1. Get a shaker. add some ice.
   
2. Pour in the bourbon. Stir. (You want that bourbon to get cold, so agitate it!)
3. Get an old fashioned glass.
4. Add the Luxardo Marachino Liqueur to the glass.
5. Quarter a blood orange and squeeze the juice of one quarter of blood orange into the glass. Drop the quarter blood orange into the glass.
   
6. Add the bitters.
7. Muddle these ingredients.
8. Stir the bourbon in the shaker. You want it cold!
9. Add ice to the old fashioned glass. Make sure you have good, hard ice. The larger the cube, the better.
10. Add the bourbon to the glass. Stir if you like, but only gently. You want this drink to be a progressive one--it will start boozy and get sweeter as you go down.
11. Garnish with a cherry, or blood orange rind, or blood orange slice. Up to you!

I'm postmodern, thank you very much:

1. Get a shaker. Add some ice. 
2. Pour in bourbon, Luxardo Marachino Liqueur, and bitters.
3. Quarter a blood orange and squeeze the juice of one quarter of the blood orange into the shaker.
4. Stir, baby, stir.
5. Let it sit while you prepare garnish. You want this baby cold!
6. Get an old fashioned glass. Add a big ice cube, or whatever ice you use. You can also serve this drink straight up, but make sure it has plenty of time to chill in that shaker.
   
7. Stir, baby, stir. (the shaker, obviously).
8. Pour the old fashioned into the glass. 
9. Garnish with a cherry, or blood orange rind, or blood orange slice. Up to you!

A word on garnish:

If you are going old school, consider skewering a cherry, an eighth cut of the blood orange (a little triangle), and another cherry on a toothpick and using that as a garnish. 

The rind is by far the most elegant garnish. And blood orange rind can be absolutely beautiful. Just make sure to leave out the pith, express the oils, and then give the rim of the glass a twirl. This works great in either.

Slices of blood orange are gorgeous. And don't feel bad about mixing garnishes. This is a drink that can be elegant or a little noisy.

The Max Eastman Flip, Part 2

 So, here is the recipe for the holiday alternative to rum and eggnog.

For 2 cocktails (who mixes just one?)

in a Boston shaker, mix

2 oz. bourbon (Bulleit, or Woodford or Maker's)

1 1/2 oz. vermouth (Dolin with Bulleit; Cocchi with Woodford)

1 1/2 oz. half and half (whipping cream if you have it)

2 egg yolks

2 barspoons powdered sugar

ice

While it sits, prepare a small cocktail glass, either a coup or a small roly poly. Place a single cocktail cherry at the bottom. 

 Shake the drink for at least one minute, preferably two. 

Pour out immediately in stages, reserving froth for both glasses.

Max Eastman Flip

Max Eastman Flip

1 oz. bourbon
3/4 ounce vermouth
3/4 ounce half and half
1/4 ounce sugar syrup
1 egg yolk.

shake stoutly. with ice. serve up in a champagne coupe and sprinkle with nutmeg.

A nice holiday drink. I used sugar syrup from my cocktail cherries, so it was a little cognac tinged.

Derived from the New York Flip recipe:

1 oz. bourbon
3/4 ounce tawny port
3/4 ounce cream
1/4 ounce sugar syrup
1 egg yolk

Simply Manhattan

The Manhattan may well be the perfect cocktail. While not as pure as the Old Fashioned nor as lively as the julep or mojito, it is both solid and stylish, sophisticated yet simple. It showcases a fine whiskey, and the ready availability of fine vermouth and different styles of bitters allow for infinite play.

Look Mom, One Cube!

It does have its limits. While fine whiskey makes a fine Manhattan, the higher you go up on the shelf the more your returns diminish. One loses subtlety any time whiskey is mixed. Save the Pappy's for the bare glass.

Mixing a Manhattan most often takes place in a shaker, but I make the case now for a stirred variety. The colder the cocktail not always the better. What's more, the ice chips that invariably fill the glass melt some flavor away. Stirring and serving over a single ice cube may not blend perfectly, but it gives the cocktail a kind of musky feel. At present, I put bitters into an old fashioned glass, pour whiskey over that, then vermouth (on a 2-1 ratio), stir, add my ice cube, stir again, add a garnish, and serve.

I will offer up some recipes with notes, and will continuously update this post to keep a running tab on the Manhattans I try.

Recipe 1: The Cheapside

Weller's Reserve Wheated Bourbon
Noilly Prat Rouge
Fee Brothers old fashioned aromatic bitters

I prefer Fee Brothers to Angostura because of its enhanced clove nose. I have tried this version with other bitters as well--notably Bolivar and Chocolate Mole bitters. Noilly Prat does not require a whole lot. It is a delicious apertif all its own, so I dumbed down the bourbon in this case to showcase the spice profile.

The Bourbon Flip

It is time to begin the search for a signature holiday drink. The holidays invite tampering with classics, with bold moves and uncertain results. While the colder days of winter call for stiff and unassuming cocktails of no more than three ingredients, and the dog days of summer call for white liquors, fresh herbs and citrus, the holidays invoke a different feel. The weather is transitioning. Warm days give way to colder, although even in the more wintery north, warm days peek out for days at a time, tempting us to return the mitts and hats to the dresser and to shed that extra layer of clothing. The air is crisper. The leaves have turned, and begun their gradual migration to the streets. Ovens heat up. Turkeys and hams and roasts occupy our plates alongside yams and turnips and dressing. The frantic rush of the year closes in. Yet, somehow, this is when we breathe the best.

So it needs a cocktail. Actually, not necessarily a cocktail, which, as cocktail 101 informs us, historically requires the addition of bitters to make it such. I prefer the idea of a flip for the holiday. It can stand alone, or follow a decent meal. It feels wholesome and round. It even sounds festive.

So I am searching for a good bourbon flip recipe. I've had two excellent flips, one in Chicago at the Violet Hour, and another at Empire State South in Atlanta.

The Violet Hour served up a libation it called the "Cold & Delicious"

Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac, Dow's Ruby Port, Spice Trader Syrup, Nux Alpina Black Walnut Liqueur, Whole Egg, Apple Bitters. 

 It was both cold and delicious. But it felt wrong to me. I had just had the bartender make me an old fashioned, which he did with 12 year old rye and tobacco bitters. After such a simple and aromatic libation, the flip tasted overdone. The spices all came together, but it tasted no different from simpler flips I had had in the past (at least in my mind, this was the case).

The flip at Empire State South was decidedly simpler, and as such carried the unassuming name "bourbon flip." I had it at the end of a meal in lieu of a dessert. It was beautifully crafted, and immediately impressed upon me the fact that we had to anoint the bourbon flip as the libation of choice for the 2012 holiday season.

So I must find a recipe. The most basic seems the following, which appears as a standard recipe almost everywhere and in every book:

2 oz. bourbon
1 egg
1 tsp superfine sugar
1/2 oz cream
1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg.

Another set of proportions over at Ladies United offers the following, which appears heavier:

3 oz. bourbon
2 oz. heavy cream
1 large egg
1 oz. spiced simple syrup

As for technique, the shaking method seems to be the popular one. To return to the classic How to Mix Drinks, the directions are as follows:

The essential in "flips" of all sorts is, to produce the smoothness by repeated pouring back and forth between two vessels, and beating up the eggs well in the first instance; the sweetening and spices according to taste.

It also calls for heating the beer (the recipe is for a rum and beer flip) to near boiling before mixing it with the rum and egg mixture. I think shaking will do, although I am untutored on the subject.

Manhattan, with some spice

How about a Manhattan made with falernum?