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Posts Tagged ‘Lime’

A Tall, Frosty Beverage*

Posted in Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , on September 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

*Recent ruminations from the ladies of LUPEC, as originally published in the Weekly Dig.

by Pink Lady

Ever sampled a Zombie, Suffering Bastard, or anything served in a skull mug or Scorpion bowl? With out-there names and kitschy vessels, Tiki drinks are apt to inspire a giggle among cocktail neophytes. In their original incarnation these were balanced, palatable drinks built upon rum, fresh juices, and flavorful syrups—legitimate cocktails that would make modern bar snobs swoon.

The roots of the Tiki craze stretch back to Prohibition, when thirsty Americans took to the Caribbean seas (where rum flowed freely) for rum cruises. There they developed a taste for exotic island cocktails, making the market ripe by the time Ernest Beaumont-Gannt opened his “Don the Beachcomber” bar in Hollywood in 1934, just after repeal. Victor Bergeron soon followed suit, revamping his Oakland eatery into “Trader Vic’s,” complete with South Seas décor. Post World War II the Tiki phenomenon blossomed into a true craze that lasted well into the 1950s, longer than any other cocktail fad to date. This weekend we’ll be raising a glass to the Tiki Craze.

Join us at The Franklin Southie on Sunday, September 18th, from 7pm-11pm, for an evening of exotic Blender Drinks on the Patio. We’ll have a delicious array of frozen favorites made with Hendricks Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum, the freshest ingredients, and maybe a few guilty pleasure favorites as well.

This event is open to the public, and there is no cover charge to enter. And, as with all LUPEC events, boys are welcome, and we’ll be donating a portion of the night’s proceeds to a local women’s charity.

Mix up one of these at home as you get in the spirit.

COCOANUT GROVE

1 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz Lopez Coconut Cream
.5 oz orange Curacao
2 oz Sailor Jerry Rum
1 cup crushed ice

Put everything in a blender.
Blend for 30 seconds or until smooth.
Pout into a cocktail or saucer champagne glasses.
Serves 2.

CIN-CIN!

COCKTAIL PARTY

TIKI PARTY AT FRANKLIN SOUTHIE

SUN 9.18.11
152 DORCHESTER AVE.
BOSTON
617.269.1003
7PM-11PM/21+/FREE
@FRANKLINCAFE
FRANKLINCAFE.COM

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New Orleans on Our Minds

Posted in Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

*As recently published in the Weekly Dig.

by Pink Lady

In a little over a month the ladies of LUPEC Boston will be heading down to New Orleans for one of our favorite events of the year, Tales of the Cocktail. LUPEC Boston will join over 10,000 bartenders, cocktail geeks, and spirits professionals for five days of seminars, tastings, and events all in celebration of that great American invention, the Cocktail.

The ladies of LUPEC Boston will be involved in two great events at Tales of the Cocktail this summer. On Thursday, July 21 from 1pm-2:30pm we’ll team up with LUPEC broads from New York for “Ladies’ Choice: Women Behind Bars,” a seminar saluting our spirited forebroads, much as we do in this here column. From mold-breaking saloon owners to current day cocktail mavens, women have had a vital, though often overlooked, impact on the evolution of bars and cocktails. We’ll present an inspiring history of ladies like Ada Coleman, former Head Bartender of the Savoy Hotel and Helen David, who opened the Brass Rail Bar in the midst of the Great Depression.

Then, on Friday July 22 from 12:30pm-2pm, LUPEC will host “Ladies Who Lunch” as part of the Spirited Lunch series to celebrate women in the spirits industry, from bartenders to marketers to distillers. Interested women are invited to come and raise a glass as we commiserate and discuss our unique role in this male-dominated business. All cocktails will feature spirits from companies that have women at the helm; including Macchu Pisco, Ron Zacapa, Cat Daddy Moonshine, Bulleit Bourbon, Pueblo Viejo tequila and Laird’s Applejack. As with all LUPEC events, vintage creative luncheon attire (fabulous hats, gloves, vintage dress, etc.) is encouraged (but not required).

We hope those of you trekking down to NOLA can pop in to one or both of these events. If you’re Boston-bound this summer, mix up one of the cocktails we’ll be serving at our luncheon, courtesy of Meaghan Dorman, LUPEC NYC.

SLEEPYHEAD

.5 oz lime
.5 oz lemon
.75 oz ginger syrup
2 oz Laird’s Bonded Applejack

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into Collins glass. Top with soda and garnish with lime wheel and ginger candy.

CIN-CIN!

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BULLET-PROOF COCKTAILS Or “Drinks You Can’t Mess Up”*

Posted in Bulletproof Cocktails, or Drinks You Can't Mess Up, Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , , on April 9, 2010| 4 Comments »

*The latest ruminations from LUPEC Boston, in case you missed ’em in The Weekly Dig.

by Pink Lady

Fellow drinkers, cocktail enthusiasts and lovers of quality beverage: We are lucky. We’re enjoying a glorious era. The cocktail is queen, and finding a quality drink in Boston is as simple as sidling up to any of the great bars in a long list of local destinations. Many of us remember a different time, a darker time, before rye was present among the spirits on the back bar, before the B-Side was even born (may it now rest in peace).

On occasion, though, we Boston drinkers might find ourselves inexplicably outside our comfort zone. Your fratty cousin comes to visit, for example, and you end up drinking with him at the Boylston Street bars (one that is misleadingly named after a spirit, perhaps?), and no matter how hard you try to explain that “Eastern Standard is, like, RIGHT THERE,” no one will budge. What’s a bratty cocktail snob to do?

A Manhattan or a classic martini is a simple enough template, but proceed with caution here—you have no idea how long that vermouth has been open, unrefrigerated and gathering dust on the back bar. A margarita should also be avoided, unless you have an unspoken affection for from-the-gun sour mix. There is a time and a place for a beer and a shot, or a gin and tonic … and many would say that this is it. If that’s not quite your speed, fear not; there are cocktails out there that simply cannot be ruined, no matter how hard an inexperienced bartender may try. So we present a new LUPEC feature for situational ordering: “Bullet-Proof Cocktails,” or “Drinks You Can’t Mess Up.”

Proud among these is the Mamie Taylor, a great old highball named for a famous Broadway star. It was the drink-du-moment for a few fleeting years around the turn of the 20th century and consumed by the thousands in the hot summer of 1900. The drink figured prominently in popular culture, writes Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: “Poems were written about the drink, jokes were told, and articles were written using Mamie to illustrate au courant sophistication.”

The Mamie’s a simple beverage composed of inexpensive ingredients, yet bars were nevertheless able to charge exorbitant prices thanks to the drink’s popularity. According to Haigh, it became “synonymous with ‘swank refreshment’ until 1920—and Prohibition.” Mamie enjoyed a brief comeback in the ’40s and was a predecessor to vodka’s gateway cocktail, the Moscow Mule.

Let’s bring Mamie back! Just … maybe don’t ask for her by name, lest you risk feeling even more uncomfortable than you already do with your fratty cousin’s “bros.”

MAMIE TAYLOR

From Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh

2 oz Scotch
.75 oz spicy ginger ale or ginger beer

Build over ice in a highball glass. Stir and garnish with lime wedge.

Notes on situational ordering: If the bar has ginger beer, lucky you! If not, or if you’re afraid to ask, ginger ale will do. If said bar does not have a fresh juice program, ask for Scotch & ginger with extra lime wedges as “garnish”—three or four should do.

CIN-CIN!

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What We’re Drinking: Oloffson’s Punch*

Posted in Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

*The latest ruminations from LUPEC Boston, in case you missed them in The Weekly Dig

by Pink Lady

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake; over 1.5 million left homeless; as many as 200,000 dead. The statistics flickering across the television screen nightly about the recent earthquake in Haiti seem improbably tragic, difficult to comprehend from the comfortable vantage point of a barstool.

Restaurant industry colleagues have rushed to donate time and talent to raise money to support relief efforts: Via Matta and Radius will donate 100 percent of dessert sales, servers at Myers + Chang have been donating a portion of their tips, Stella did a mini-celebrity chef dinner, and Upstairs on the Square held a day-long fundraiser offering guests opportunities to dine and donate at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our friends over at Drink offered an opportunity for charitable imbibing via a special menu of tropical cocktails made with Haiti’s famous Rhum Barbancourt, with a portion of proceeds going to Haiti relief. The list goes on an on, and we only hope it will grow.

Generous Bostonians, LUPEC salutes you. We invite our readers to do the same by raising a glass of Oloffson’s Punch, invented at the Grand Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince. The eponymous hotel has been many things since it was erected at the turn of the 19th century: a fancy private residence for the then-ruling family, a military hospital occupied by US Marines, a fashionable tourist destination for glitterati like Mick Jagger and Jackie Onassis, and an artistic hub, a sort of “Greenwich Village of the Tropics.”

The enchantingly decrepit hotel also served as backdrop for Graham Greene’s novel, The Comedians. In his words, “You expected a witch to open the door to you or a maniac butler, with a bat dangling from the chandelier behind him.” The hotel’s “tropo-Gothic gingerbread façade” also inspired cartoonist Charles Addams, creator of the famed Addams Family. LUPEC loves a good story, and the Grand Hotel Oloffson is full of ’em, from tales of an eccentric owner who raised alligators in the hotel swimming pool to the American expat owner who fancied himself a Caribbean version of Rick from Casablanca (weapons scandal and all).

Even as it fell into disrepair in the early ’80s, the Oloffson remained a destination for reporters and aid workers needing a safe place to stay near the heart of the city. Today, it’s where many American journalists are staying as they cover the earthquake that has devastated the country.

LUPEC hopes to partner with member chapters in other cities in the coming weeks to prepare a fundraiser of our own, allowing you to sample some of Haiti’s fine alcoholic heritage, from Rhum Barbancourt to cordials like Combier and Grand Marnier, which source bitter oranges from the tiny republic. Stay tuned for updates, and in the interim, enjoy one of these.

OLOFFSON’S PUNCH

2 oz Haitian dark rum
1 tsp maraschino liqueur
3 oz orange juice
1 1/2 oz lime juice
0.5 oz simple syrup

Shake in an iced cocktail shaker. Strain into a goblet and fill with crushed ice. Serve with straws and garnish with twists of orange and lime.

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What Would Jackie Drink?*

Posted in Weekly Dig, tagged , , , , , , , on September 16, 2009| 3 Comments »

*LUPEC Boston’s latest ruminations, in case you missed ‘em in this week’s issue of The Weekly Dig.

Jackie Kennedy-Onassis and Michelle Obama are two of LUPEC Boston’s favorite First Ladies, so we jumped at the chance to participate in a recent fundraiser at the Boston Center for Adult Education, celebrating these ladies as style icons. What’s a good fundraiser without a good cocktail? LUPEC stepped in to supply the drinks, prompting us to ask: What would Jackie/Michelle drink?

Answering that question for Michelle Obama proved a bit more difficult (which we’ll address next week), but we know that during her White House years, Jackie Kennedy famously enjoyed daiquiris. If images of hot pink frozen concoctions come to mind when you hear the word daiquiri, think again. In its original incarnation, this classic is a far cry from the Ultimate Mango Berry variety found at T. G. I. Friday’s. A simple mixture of rum, fresh lime juice and sugar, the daiquiri is both classy and accessible, much like the late Jackie Kennedy.

There are many legends about the history of the daiquiri cocktail, all of which link the drink to a region of Cuba that was a strategic landing point for American troops during the Spanish American War. One story has American engineer Jennings S. Cox inventing the drink for a colleague with the few resources he had in his storeroom (lemon, sugar and lime) while working in an iron mine called Daiquiri in 1896. In another, an American general named William Shafter discovers the regional specialty while deployed in the town of Daiquiri, Cuba, in 1898. A third blames Havana-based barman Constantino Ribalaigua Vert for popularizing the drink at his El Floridita bar, albeit in a slightly different incarnation—with crushed ice and maraschino. Ernest Hemingway famously took a shine to a variation of this version, requesting his as a double with no sugar and calling it “Papa Dobles.”

None of these legends can be proven, of course, but the simple marriage of rum, lime and sugar made this pre-Prohibition classic an excellent solution for the rum that flowed into the US post-Noble Experiment. The version we served with Cruzan Aged Light Rum (from nearby St. Croix) were a hit with the fashionable ladies who attended the BCAE event. Pop on a pillbox hat and mix up one of these at home

DAIQUIRI

2 oz Cruzan Aged Light Rum

0.5 oz fresh lime juice

0.5 oz simple syrup

Shake and strain into a coupe.

CIN-CIN!

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