mmm, butter...

The conservative drinker will probably never try a Hot-Buttered-Rum. Well, that's too bad, my unadventurous friend.

For the rest of us, this cocktail is a combination of ingredients that speaks directly to the heart (or heart attack). It has the warmth and fuzziness of grandma's house, with an apple pie in the oven and a fluffy cat on the window.

It has rum, traditionally a New England specialty, now mostly imported from the Caribbean. Here at UpStairs we make it with a combination of Blackstrap and Spiced rums that balance each other in a way that only rum can (try mixing Scotch and Bourbon and you'll see what I mean).

It has sugar. We use our demerara syrup, with tons of raw cane flavor as opposed to, you know, plain sugar. Life is just too short for plain sugar in our Hot-Buttered-Rums. If you're using apple cider, you can skip the sugar altogether but I recommend leaving the cider in a quiet corner (for another time) and letting the sugar/spice/butter do the talking. So a little hot water will help bring everything together and a little Sezchuan pepper adds another layer to every sip (think of it as bitters in a Manhattan). A less exotic spice can be used: cloves and cinnamon are just fine, but I find that the complex and delicate heat of the Sezchuan peppercorns sprinkled on top of the drink seasons the cocktails' familiar flavors with a hint of something a little less trivial. It lifts Grandma's house out of the suburbs and lands it in Vineyard Haven.

Then, there's the butter. Sinners will think of using anything other than real, unsweetened butter. But I am not easily tempted into such evildoing, so if you order one from me, expect a nice inch thick cube of butter to be floated into the cocktail at the very moment of serving. It will be left to melt as you drink, not stirred into the cocktail.
I don't expect hot-buttered-rums to become the next big think in the posh lounges of the urban World. It sure would be fun to watch the gorgeous waitresses holding trays full of these hot-buttery little angels above the heads of well-heeled patrons. But in truth, I don't think that's going to happen. Besides, this is not the cocktail equivalent of a black Jil Sander suite. This is like that comfy old sweater. No other, from any store in SoHo or from the cold, cold Copley Mall can replace it but maybe Grandma could make you one.

Hot-Buttered-Rum

3/4 oz black strap rum
3/4 oz spiced rum
1/2 oz simple syrup
3 oz hot water
3 tbsp unsalted butter
pinch of ground Sichuan pepper

Ginger Spice

Ginger is a good thing, as Martha would say. Halfway through the 20Th Century, a drink that was in fashion, especially in England, was gin and ginger beer. How such a drink fell out of popularity, I don't understand. Actually, I do - all it takes is a sip of some of the ginger beers available out there. No spice, no ginger, no love.

I've tried-believe me- I've spent time searching for something with a little more punch, only to find that most quality ginger-beers are made in such small batch that it is either too expensive or simply to difficult to always have it in stock.

Another problem I faced with existing ginger-beers is that they fell in the same category as sodas, therefore limiting it's usage, mostly because it'd loose the bubbles if I shook it to mix with other ingredients.

So my ginger beer not only needed spice to give you something to drink for, it also needed to be shaker-friendly, so I set out to make my own. It was the first of many ingredients I attempted to create from scratch and after a few tries, I became satisfied with the results.

When I made the trial versions at my house, back in my early days in Boston, my roommates would go crazy waiting for it to get done so we could finally drink some dark-and-stormies. The smell of ginger travelled through the house and lingered the whole afternoon, we'd sit on the porch , cocktails in hand, and could still smell it at dusk.

Steven Brand was the man with the secret ingredient. Part of a recipe for ginger syrup he used in New York was adapted into the ginger beer base I had concocted and the rest is history. Stop by the bar anytime and I'll give you the recipe.

Speaking of history, an early 21st Century revivalist (Audrey Saunders, if we're going to name names) created the Gin Gin Mule. Looking at the recipe, you can't help but think of the popular British thirst quencher the Mid-Century drinkers downed on their porches.

Gin Gin Mule

1/2 oz lime juice

1/2 oz simple syrup

6 mint sprigs

3/4 oz non-sparkling ginger beer

1 1/2 London Dry Gin

Splash of soda water

In a cocktail shaker combine the juice, syrup, mint, gin and ginger beer. Shake well with ice, strain into a highball glass filled with ice and top with club soda. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Agricole Rum

This summer's rum tasting was way better than last year's. Last year about 15 people came, this year we sold out the Jewel-box bar with more than thirty people, a couple of them last minute walk-ins. The line up of rums was better too. Last year we sampled rums from all over the world but this year we decided to concentrate on Martinique rums. These rums are classified A.O.C. Martinique and controlled by the same organ of the French Government that assures the quality of wines from Champagne to Provence. We had on board Ben Jones, distiller at Clement and J.M., both equally recognized houses in Martinique. Ben knows how to work the crowd and by the end of the night we had a group of happy people, which is why we do what we do.
The tasting started with a shooter of orange sorbet and Clement Shrubb Orange Liqueur as an amuse-bouche. Emily, once again saved my life and made the sorbet with almost no notice.
The format after that was the same as last year, four small plates paired with 2 rum cocktails and two rums neat. The first cocktail was made with Clement Premiere Canne, their silver rum. I mixed it with honey, cucumber and lemon juice, which made for a fresh and light cocktail with the great aromatics of the rum and the cucumber inviting a taste of the peppery rum, and the zesty swing of lemon juice and dark wildflower honey. We paired it with Steve's house-cured salmon with cucumber, cherries braised in honey and creme fraiche.
Next, was time for the Clement V.S.O.P. to shine on its own, we served some ice on the side, just in case. This rum, though very light, is a serious sipping spirit. The ageing process calms down the rum's original spice and start to give way to earthier aromas, still very complex. Just like the rum, Steve trusted excellent asparagus to very little tweaking, just enough to transcend it from excellent to perfect: some sesame seeds over Yuzu emulsion.
The next rum to be featured was J.M. Blanc, J.M's equivalent of Clement's Premmiere Canne. The main difference is that J.M.Blanc is not watered down to 80 proof as most other rums and it has a real kick to it. I decided not to neutralize it's kick but to play off of it, so I simply mixed it with my house-made ginger beer that most people have already tasted. If you haven't, here's still time to get your dark-and-stormy with dignity (dark-and-stormies are like white pants: the hip factor expires at the end of Labor Day weekend). Anyway, that cocktail was really sharp, a high summer cocktail and we paired with some raw Ahi, caramelized bananas and a clove spread that played nicely with the clove tones of the ginger beer.
It seemed like it couldn't get any better, but lo and behold, it did. J.M. 1997. That's right, a single vintage rum. Even cognacs don't usually come in single vintages (with a few great exceptions, of course) so you can imagine how exciting it was to be able to close the tasting with a spirit that may redeem rums for ever from the curse of Cuba-Libres. Emily's nutmeg flan with pineapple caramel was excellent, light and creamy.
We had our friends from Receita-de-Samba playing bossa-nova in the Monday Club after the tasting and most people stayed around the bar for another round or two. I couldn't decide between a dark-and-stormy and a caipirinha so I ended up having both. Ben Jones lingered with friends over some J.M. 1997 while the band played Gilberto and Jobim tunes. That night, for a few of us, Cambridge was somewhere between Fort-de-France and Rio de Janeiro.

Name that drink

People love polyjuice and butterbeer. I don't know if that's how polyjuice is spelled but at this point, it doesn't matter. Harry Potter happened in Harvard Square and now it's over. What I mean is we had a huge festival in the square with three Harry Potter themed bands playing in Harvard Yard, which made a usually steady summer night in the square turn into complete madness. Marci can tell you more about the event than I could since she was the organizer, besides I only read one of the books and she is a real enthusiast.
What I did notice was that at least one person from every table in the restaurant ordered polyjuice or butterbeer. At the bar too, people were taking pictures of their polyjuice. Some of the people who couldn't get at table or a seat at the bar came in just to buy butterbeer to go, which I sold by the quart!
That made me think that one could spend more time thinking what to name a cocktail than actually experimenting with ingredients and it wouldn't affect the overall satisfaction of the person who ordered it. It's a scary thought. We're at the peak of the new golden age of cocktails and in the early 90's the names of new drinks slowly started to turn back into grown-up's stuff. During the three previous decades, the names of cocktails revealed the overall relaxed attitude about mixology, which at times can be refreshing but in the 70's it turned into, you know, disco. And the names of the cocktails were relaxed too, Sex On The Beach is from that era and it's a relatively mild one. I couldn't publish most of those names in this blog.
This leads me to our program at the restaurant. The list I inherited from Lolly Mason had a few pre-disco classics, like the Side-Car and El Presidente, and a few original creations. Lolly's most famous drink, the "Jackie O" is still on our list and is one of the prettiest cocktails I've ever made. When the effervescense of the freshly shaken drink meets champagne, I want to take pictures.
The current list is made-up of original drinks only. That means a lot of naming happens when we change the list, most of it good. Brooklyn Haze is a variation of the Brooklyn cocktail, with the addition of hazelnut liqueur. I think it's a pretty good name; Reiser (our wine director) named it. The Aprile, a Meditarranean concoction of Aperol, Grapefruit and Rosemary was named after my friend April Watchel (Aprile means April in Italian).
Another less fortunate cocktail named after a living person was the Momma Sonia, named after Frank Queris' (the drink's co-creator) mom. The drink was good and we had a good story behind the name but it didn't take off so I pulled it from the list. If you like the classic Bronx cocktail, order a Momma Sonia next time you come in.
I just started working on the drinks for the Fall '07 list and that means some of the more summery drinks will have to come off the list. The Aprile will come off as will the Paulista, named after the natives of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Misty Kalkofen of Green Street has a drink called Carioca on her list, named after the natives of Rio de Janeiro, which I like a lot, by the way. The Lolita will stay as it has become the Monday Club Bar's signature cocktail. The house-made strawberry liqueur and champagne combination is all that the name implies...
By the way, a local newspaper awarded the "Venus In Furs" the best named cocktail in Boston, if you don't know what it's named after, you can ask me next time you're at the bar.

Stone Color Cocktails

We had a cocktail party for Tiffany & Co. not too long ago to celebrate (and sell) some of their new line of jewelry, and as part of the contract we had to serve three "jewel colored" cocktails. When creating a cocktail I usually keep in mind that the appearance of the final product should be a reflection of its taste, and I prefer the honest looking cocktail to the deceiving one. For instance, we stir our gin martinis because they look silky and dangerously clear. A "Jackie O", on the other hand looks composed until you float some champagne on top, when it opens up in a smile. Nothing irritates me more than a cocktail that looks great and disappoints when sipped (anything made with generic green liqueurs and puckers will always taste like chemicals). I certainly didn't feel like irritating people shopping for seven-figure necklaces so I set to work on the perfect balance between jewel color and great flavor.

For pink, I brought back a spring favourite, the Fellini. It has fresh squeezed blood-orange juice, house-made pomegranate liqueur and good old dry Champagne. We served it on a champagne flute, garnished with a rose petal and called it the Pink Diamond.

One down, two to go. Next I went for blue. The reason I did that is because Blue Curacao is a legitimate substitute for triple sec and any orange liqueur based sour is good by me. I used lime juice to balance it and the twist came from apple-flavored vodka (no we didn't make this one here, but we used Citadelle which is a great brand). We served that with a sugared rim and called it the Sapphire Cocktail. So far so good.

The last one was the trickiest one. The bartenders and I had come up with a green drink (emerald ?) but the Tiffany's people wanted something purple. Purple is easy. We carry an excellent Creme de Cassis and I have a new-found respect for Chambord, I can do purple! So I thought. "It needs to be jewel-color" said Mary Catherine examining a cocktail that, I swear, was my best rendition of the color. To make matters worse, Tiffany's was promised a lavender flavored cocktail. That sounds great but I was kind of stuck at the last minute. Along comes Emily, and her genial syrups: from the pastry area on the 3rd floor, came down a syrup that tasted very much of lavender, with a good amount of sweetness and the color was perfect. I had about three minutes to create a drink with that syrup before the menus got printed. For a quick second my eyes rested on a bottle of Luxardo maraschino liqueur and I felt the Jerry Thomas in me, I was struck with inspiration. "Lino, we're printing the menus now". I snapped back. Mr. Thomas, we'll have to try that maraschino, gin and lavender later, for now I played safe: I used vodka for the base, lavender syrup for sweet, lemon juice for sour. Easy as lemonade. We named it the Amethyst cocktail and it was of course the best-seller of the night. When people asked me how I got the color to be so perfect, all I could tell them was that I used a magical syrup that came from upstairs.

More than a mixer

Tara Feely, brand ambassador for Chambord was at the bar last night, having a nice salad and a glass of wine when our beloved bartender Daisy Crowder dropped what he was doing and started to write down a recipe Tara was giving him, a drink recipe he's been trying to get for a while. Daisy first tasted the cocktail at a discussion group he participated with other local bartenders to use Chambord as an ingredient in Cocktails.

Every bartender knows Chambord, the blackberry and raspberry liqueur made in France. We know the bottle, designed to look like it just rolled off the time-machine from Charlemagne's hands (or like a Christmas-tree ornament), always on the back-bar (because it doesn't fit most wells). And we sure know to reach for the purple and gold ball with a cross on top to make a French Martini. To most bartenders, Chambord is thought of as a mixer. The key word on the discussion Daisy joined is "ingredient". When the word "mixer" is used to describe bar ingredients, the overall respect for the craft goes down immediately, and the underlying idea is that you have some cheap booze that needs to be cut with anything you can find.

Chambord's sweet berry taste can cut many strong tasting booze but it is as a piece of a well-balanced act that the liqueur really shines. I admit when Daisy showed me the recipe I was skeptical. I never thought the delicate taste of green tea could live up to basil or a powerhouse like lime juice, and a vodka base doesn't attract many a respectable mixologist's attention, but in the right proportion, everything comes together very gracefully. "I couldn't think of something better to drink in the summer" Daisy said, and the drink surely is refreshing. I have a feeling he'll be making lots of these.

Recipe adapted from the original by bartender Chris Lamb from Proof on Main:

1 oz vodka


1 1/2 oz green tea


4 leaves of basil


1/2 oz lime juice


1 oz Chambord



Bruise the basil, mix all ingredients except for the Chambord in a cocktail shaker full of ice, shake it and strain into a highball full of ice. Pour the Chambord on top.