I do so love me a glass of bubbly and since every day is a celebration around these parts (CARPE THAT DIEM, BITCHES!), there's almost always a bottle in my fridge. And since there's almost always a bottle in my fridge, that bottle is generally an inexpensive (ok, cheap) sparkling wine. Do I wish every bottle was a bottle of Moët Impérial? Of course I do. Am I made of money? Of course I'm not. But I've found that one of the easiest ways to elevate that bottle of Cristal(ino) is by adding stuff to it!
The concept is simple: Put stuff in a glass (from a splash to half-full (or half-empty, I suppose), depending on how much you want your cocktail to taste like other stuff). Top glass off with bubbles. Simple.
One of my favorites is this, which I will now dub... Blueberry Pom Royale.
As you can see, the "stuff" is just Blueberry POM Wonderful.
Some other traditional variations include:
Mimosa: Just add OJ!
Bellini: Fresh peach puree!
The classic Champagne Cocktail: Pop a sugar cube in the bottom of your champagne flute and shake 3 drops of bitters onto it. Add an ounce of Cognac and fill'er up with French Champagne. Feel classy!
French 75: Stuff includes 1 1/2 ounces of Cognac, 1/2 ounce simple syrup, and 1/2 ounce lemon juice. I <3 you, French 75!
Um, whatever this monstrosity was. ANYWHO, I think you've gotten the point.
Have you ever had a Negroni? No? Well you should get on that, because it is the perfect cocktail for summer. But you don’t have to take my word for it; Tim Carman totally agrees. I’ve been drinking my own bastard cousins of the Negroni for the past three or four years, but on this hump day I thought I’d give you this year’s slight variation on the classic.
For one delicious drink you’ll need this stuff:
Which, more specifically, is:
2 tbsp. gin
2 tbsp. Campari
2 tbsp. vermouth
a couple shakes of bitters
Normally you're supposed to shake up your ingredients with ice and then strain the concoction into a martini glass to be enjoyed straight up, but it’s HOT AS BALLS (sorry for the imagery Manmaw!) outside, so I just pour it all into a jelly jar and garnish it with a slice of lime.
Hello, gentle readers. My name is Kat and I’m a boozeaholic. I’m addicted to boozeahol. And why wouldn’t I be, dammit? Booze is DELICIOUS. Or rather, DELICIOSO. Because today we’re making margaritas! From scratch! And you know why? Because it’s HOT AS BALLS out there right now, and I could really go for a nice cold margarita. Or two, for which you’ll need:
The juice of 3 limes 6 ounces of tequila 2 ounces of triple sec or Cointreau
First up, your PRO TIP of the day: If you zap your whole limes in the microwave for about 15-20 seconds, you’ll be able to extract waaaaaaaay more lime juice out of them.
ONWARDS!
Mix together all that stuff I said you’ll need.
Muddle some fruit in the bottom of your chosen drink receptacle and salt the rim (but not in that order, and only if you like).
Divide your boozy concoction between the two glasses, give it a stir to incorporate your optional fruit, and fill ’er up with ice.
Dude, margaritas! (Someone bring me one now please kthxbai.)
(Dude, my boyfriend has lost a lot of weight since last year. Go him.)
Happy Derby Day! Last year we celebrated the Preakness with a mighty tasty Black-Eyed Susan, so this year I thought it might be nice to introduce you to the classic mint julep. But, as with everything on this here website, please take this recipe with the following caveat (emptor; hi, Scott!): this is not the "traditional" way to prepare a mint julep. No, like most things Southern-with-a-capital-S, the traditional mint julep is prepared with a level of pomp and circumstance reserved for weddings and funerals (four and a, if you're counting). And since I lack the proper silverware, you'll just have to roll with me on this one.
LET'S GET DRINKING. For each cocktail you'll need:
2-3 oz. of the Bourbon of your choice
1-2 teaspoons of simple syrup (I err on the side of less sweet)
8-10 mint leaves (I grow my own, of course)
Ice, preferably crushed
So, gather your ingredients and glassware.
(My boyfriend and I have slightly different tastes in both, apparently).
Add the mint leaves and simple syrup to your glass.
Now, muddle the mint with a muddler until the leaves are bruised, but not falling apart into pieces (that will later get stuck in your teeth like the obnoxious leaves that they are).
Now add the bourbon.
Now add a little ice, and vigorously stir that all up until it's nice and chilled.
Now fill up your glass with some more ice until you're pretty much full.
And now it's time to make your bets! (I put five bucks on the filly. GIRL POWER!)
Appropriately I am writing this while mildly inebriated, but perhaps mildly inappropriately I am drunk on whiskey. But dude, what can I say, I like whiskey. Oh my God, whatever, etc.
ANYWHO.
This particular recipe is a treasured one in the Team Slommins teamdom, if for no other reason than with every sip it brings us back to that magical land called Brussels, the land of waffle vans and really old walls and obscenestatues and ginormous beers, the place we both decided was the most magical and wonderful place on the planet we've ever ever visited, and OH MY GOD CAN I GO BACK YET? (I also wrote about that particular trip here and here and here and here and here and here.)
So yeah. Brussels is awesome. But mulled wine also happens to be awesome IF you don't add a billion pounds of sugar to it. Which pretty much every recipe I've ever encountered does. SO. I bring you mine, which is relatively standard except I don't add 2 cups of sugar or 1 cup of sugar or even 1/2 cup of sugar. In fact, what you'll need is this:
which is this:
3 3-inch sticks of cinnamon, or the number of sticks of cinnamon it'll take you to equal about 9 inches of cinnamon lined up end to end, like you were measuring the distance to the moon or the circumference of the Earth or whatever those meaningless statistics Fig Newtons and whomever use to tell you just how many Fig Newtons or whatever are sold each year
10 whole cloves
10 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon allspice berries
2 bottles medium- or full-bodied red wine (e.g., shiraz, pinot noir, zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, oh my God, whatever, etc.)
4 healthy strips of orange zest
1/4 cup sugar
brandy
First up, toast the cinnamon sticks, cloves, peppercorns, and allspice in a heavy-bottomed, non-reactive saucepan (i.e., dutch oven) over medium-high heat until it all starts smelling like a GLAH-DAY candle. This should take about 2 minutes.
Add your wine, orange zest, and sugar. Stir the pot up every once in a while to dissolve the sugar as you bring this up to a simmer.
Then, partially cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for an hour until the wine is infused. DO NOT LET IT BOIL. (I don't know why, I just know that if you let this boil it gets all harsh and brassy and I guess that's why you shouldn't let this boil. Go figure.)
After an hour, give it a taste; it should be a little sweet and a little spicy and not overly... anything. It's hard to explain. But if you'd like it a little sweeter add a very little bit of sugar at a time, but not before...
you add some brandy! See, you pretty much cook out most of the alcohol as you're mulling your wine, and one of the homiest bestest parts of drinking mulled wine is the warm homeyness that spreads through your chest with each sip. (Seriously, this is like the best anti-depressant IN THE WORLD.)
So add a glug or two of brandy to your mug and then ladle in some hot, steaming mulled wine and take a sip.
And then put on some Christmas music and prepare to be transported to your own personal winter wonderland. (Or add a little more sugar as is your wont. But I don't advise it (says the girl who hates fruity drinks).)
(By the way, this is supposed to serve 8. But we're alcoholics so we drank up the whole pot last night while catching up with all the crap television on our DVR. Hence tonight's whiskey.)
It's Preakness Stakes day! And the very best thing about this second leg of the Triple Crown is the booze. Seriously. I don't even like fruity cocktails but this one is delicious. Seriously. So let's go to the liquor store.
1 ounce Cointreau
1 ounce rum
1 ounce vodka
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup pineapple juice
First off, have your kitty gather together all of your ingredients.
Then, mix them all together and pour over ice. And garnish if you like. I like. (I mean, really, why be half-assed about it, ya know?)
Then, you know, drink. Lather, rinse, and repeat to drunkeness. Awww, yeah.
We like us some Irish coffee. We like us some Irish coffee A LOT. In fact, now that it's playoff season we'll be spending the majority of our time before games at the pub around the corner, sipping a couple of these:
(1 p.m. games = 10 a.m. Irish coffees.) (Also, LET'S GO CAPS!)
Another thing we like is ice cream. We like ice cream A LOT. In fact, just this last summer Winston (cutest kitten in the whole wide world) bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday so's I could do awesome things like PUT BOOZE IN MY ICE CREAM. Because booze is awesome.
Time to go shopping (for booze).
For about a quart of ice cream you'll need:
3 cups of fat-free half-and-half (usually I use 1 1/2 cups of whole milk and 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream, but I went this route just to see if it would work. And it did.)
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups whole coffee beans (I meant to use decaf, but the boyfriend brought home the wrong stuff.)
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons Irish whiskey (any more and your ice cream won't actually freeze. But the resulting Irish coffee milkshakes will be equally delicious. And way boozier. Just not frozen.)
1/4 teaspoon finely ground coffee (you can press regular grinds through a fine mesh sieve, or use espresso grinds. Also, "grinds" is a funny word.)
First, you're gonna wanna pour yourself a glass of that there whiskey. Gotta make sure it's not poisoned, right?
Next, heat up 2 cups of fat-free half-and-half, all of the sugar, the coffee beans, and a pinch of salt in a medium saucepan until everything gets all warm and steamy, but not boiling.
Then, put on yer lid, remove the pot from the heat, and let the whole shebang steep at room temperature for an hour to let all the coffee goodness get good and coffee-y.
Pour the remaining cup of fat-free half-and-half into a large bowl, and set a mesh strainer on top. Set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together.
Reheat your lidded coffee mixture, now unlidded, on medium heat, until again hot and steamy (heh). When you've gotten all hot and steamy (heh) slowly pour a little of the mixture at a time into the egg yolks, whisking constantly so that the egg yolks are tempered by the warm milk, but not cooked by it. If you pour too fast or whisk not enough, you'll end up scrambling your eggs, which is good for breakfast but not for ice cream (as far as I know).
Now to make a custard! Scrape that all that back into the saucepan, stirring it constantly over medium heat with a silicon spatula, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot as you stir. In about 10 minutes, you'll notice the mixture has thickened considerably. Once it coats the spatula so that you can run your finger across the coating and have it not run, you're done. (With this step, anyway.)
Now pour your custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. Press down on the coffee beans in the strainer to extract as much of the delicious coffee flavor as possible. (You'll notice that the fine mesh will also catch any pieces of scrambled egg you may have accidentally cooked.) Then you can toss the beans in the garbage. Or better yet, the compost heap! Finally, mix in the vanilla, Jameson, and finely ground coffee, and stir until cooled.
Here's the big secret to making ice cream at home: the colder your base is before you put it in the machine, the better. So wrap up your bowl in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge at least overnight. Or, as Jack Bauer has taught us, 24 hours is better. Then, fix up your ice cream maker however you're s'posed to fix it up, flip that baby on, and pour your custard in.
And watch the magic happen!
Also, listen to the magic happen!
Magic is loud!
After 20-30 minutes of loud magic, you'll have this!
Which is about the consistency of soft-serve. So you can either eat it right away, or scoop it all into a container and stick it in the freezer for another couple hours. Either way, YUM.
