Category: classic

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Classic Recipe: Piña Colada

Today’s forecast is 95 and sunny, with more of the same (and even hotter) for the next two days.  When this part of the summer comes around, I resort to standard survival methods:  crank the air conditioning; put out the inflatable backyard pool; and blend up some frozen drinks.  To help you in your fight back against the heat and humidity, I offer you a recipe for the classic frozen cocktail:  the piña colada.

Piña Colada

The piña colada combines pineapple and coconut flavors with ice and rum and – through the power of these tropical flavors and the position the drink has come to occupy in the collective imagination – mentally transports you to a breezy tropical island.  Suddenly, the blazing heat and humidity of the Washingtonian jungle feels right – almost as if you really are at the beach:

Tropical island

Even if all you are really doing is filling your inflatable pool for that inflatable-pool party you’re hosting later (but trust me, this is a good idea – it helps with the tropical-island fantasy):

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Classic Recipe: The Martini

As promised in my recent review of Requin’s martini service, today’s post shows you how to make a martini at home.  This cocktail is a true classic, well more than a hundred years old.  In fact, by 1891, the Kansas City Star could chastise the “thirsty New Yorker” for being taken with the martini on the ground that the cocktail was “not very new.”  (The same article nevertheless acknowledged the versatility of the drink.  It conceded that the martini was the form in which “the casual, the occasional, the weary, the enthusiastic, the going-to-bed-now, or the just-up New Yorker takes his poison.”)

Not surprisingly, a drink with such history has enjoyed multiple iterations.  The typical recipe uses gin, for example, but some spies—er, drinkers, prefer vodka.  Proportions also vary, anywhere from a one-to-one ratio of gin and vermouth to essentially all gin, with vermouth supplied only (if at all) by an atomizing sprayer or, as Winston Churchill preferred it, by observation “from across the room.”  Garnishes, too, have varied, including lemon peel, olives, and cocktail onions.  Even the method of combining the ingredients – shaking or stirring – is subject to modification.

What follows is my preferred approach.  But the critical drinker may wish to take a cue from experience and tinker with the particulars.  My classic martini is made with gin, dry vermouth, and orange bitters, and garnished with an olive.  When done right, it looks like this:

Classic Martini

Here’s how to do it.  Put an olive or two in a martini glass or coupe.  Add a barspoon of olive brine (or more if you prefer a “dirtier” drink) to the glass.  In a mixing glass, combine a dash of orange bitters, 1/4 ounce of dry vermouth (I used Dolin) and 2 3/4 ounces of gin (I used Botanist).  Add ice to the glass and stir.  Strain into the glass with the olives.

Enjoy!

Classic Martini Recipe
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Classic Martini

This is a recipe for a great martini, my favorite cocktail, featuring gin, a tiny bit of vermouth, a dash of orange bitters, and a couple of olives.
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: Spirit-Forward
Servings: 1 cocktail
Calories: 175kcal

Ingredients

  • 2 3/4 oz. gin I used Botanist
  • 1/4 oz. dry vermouth I used Dolin
  • 1 dash orange bitters I used Fee Brothers

Instructions

  • Place two olives and a bar-spoonful of olive juice in a martini glass.
  • Combine the gin, vermouth, and orange bitters in a mixing glass with ice and stir.
  • Strain into the martini glass.
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Classic Recipe: The Aviation

The Aviation is a classic cocktail, named after its unique hue – a light shade of something between blue and violet, reminiscent of the morning sky.  It is more than a century old at this point, reportedly printed for the first time in a 1916 book by Hugo Ensslin, the head bartender of the Hotel Wallick in New York.

Despite its early birthdate, the Aviation had faded into obscurity for a time due to the difficulty in obtaining a key ingredient:  crème de violette.  This violet-flavored liqueur gives the drink its signature color but, for many decades, was not widely available in the United States.  But renewed interest in the Aviation was sparked by Paul Harrington and Laura Moorhead’s 1998 book, The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century, which covered the Aviation among many other traditional cocktails.  And today, a number of crème de violette options are available, including one by Rothman & Winter, which is the ingredient used in this recipe.

The drink has a strong floral, herbal taste.  It shares three of its four ingredients – gin, Maraschino, and citrus (though here lemon instead of lime) with the Last Word, and as such there are some overlapping flavors here.  But the use of crème de violette instead of Chartreuse pushes the drink in a more floral direction.  Note that, for my preference, less is more with the crème de violette, so if you are tinkering with the portions here, you probably want to exercise restraint in increasing that ingredient.

Here is the recipe:

The Aviation recipe
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Aviation

Recipe for the Aviation, a classic, century-old cocktail with an herbal and floral taste, made from gin, lemon, Maraschino and crème de violette.
Prep Time5 minutes
Total Time5 minutes
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: Sour
Servings: 1 cocktail
Calories: 200kcal

Ingredients

  • 2 oz. gin I used Botanist
  • 3/4 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1/2 oz. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
  • 1/4 oz. crème de violette liqueur I used Rothman & Winter
  • cherry

Instructions

  • Combine the gin, lemon juice, Maraschino and crème de violette with ice in a mixing glass and stir.
  • Strain into a coupe or martini glass.
  • Garnish with a cherry.

Enjoy!