Witte Screwdriver

I'm not usually one to incorporate beer into my cocktails, but sometimes the occasion calls for it.  One of the newer bars that we've been frequenting is called Sweet Afton.  It has a good atmosphere, knowledgable staff and these deep fried spicy pickles that are to die for.

Anyway, Heather and I learned that they serve brunch on the weekends and some of the items looked intriguing.  We get there and Heather orders the blueberry pancakes, which she ended up loving and pining after ever since.  I got a burger, which really isn't fantastic brunch fare, but I was happy.  The happy hour cocktail menu has plenty of fun brunch cocktails to try, ranging from your standard bloody mary to something called an oatmeal martini.  One of the best parts is that the cocktails are no more than six dollars a piece.

I see on their menu of brunch cocktails that they have something called a Witte Screwdriver.  A screwdriver, as I understand it, incorporates vodka and orange juice.  This concoction goes a step further and replaces the vodka with Citron and adds lemon, ginger and beer to the mix.

The beer they use is Ommegang Witte.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's a belgian-style wheat beer that is very light in color.  The yeast is prominent in the flavor and it has mild notes of citrus.  The cocktail they serve me is delicious.  Looking at the ingredients, I felt that I could play around with the proportions and recreate this pleasant cocktail.  A 25 oz. bottle ran me about $6.99 at the local grocery store which seems kind of pricey especially considering that the original cocktail only ran me five bucks, but I did get the tactile pleasure of popping a cork and having it fly across the room.  It makes me feel like I've accomplished something.

Witte Screwdriver

adapted from Sweet Afton

-2 oz. Absolut Citron

-1/2 oz ginger syrup

-2 oz. orange juice

-juice of half a lemon

-Ommegang Witte

Pour Citron, ginger syrup, orange juice, and lemon juice over ice in a pint glass or other tall glass.  Fill with Witte and gently stir.

One of the goals I have in life (outside of memorizing Hall and Oates' entire catalogue and learning scrimshaw) is having a cocktail recipe at the ready for whatever situation I may be in--morning and early afternoon included.  I admire this cocktail for its deft combination of flavors.  The beer itself is a very prominent flavor, which is good because it's a premium beer.  The other ingredients serve to enhance the flavor by complementing the citrus, and the ginger is the unexpected twist.

Perhaps this has shifted my entire worldview on beer as a mixer.  Sure it's great by itself--no one's denying that.  But perhaps it can exist in piece and harmony with liquor and juice.  Perhaps it's not the lone wolf I thought it was.  If beer can learn to play nice, then perhaps there's hope for all of us.

Boozy Cupcakes

Okay, so I haven't been 100% honest with all of you. Remember how I spent all of August cooking healthy, vegetarian food? Well the vegetarian part I was very dedicated to. The healthy part...

August 13th marked Will's 26th birthday, and what was I supposed to do, hand the boy a dish of hummus with a candle in it? Birthdays require cake. Yummy cake. And I'd be damned if he wasn't going to have some. The original idea was simple, instead of a cake that has layers that must be stacked and must be carefully wrapped if not eaten at once, I would make cupcakes. So easy to store! So easy to assemble! So how exactly did it end up a 4 hour process?

The trouble started when I decided, instead of just picking a very simple cupcake recipe from America's Test Kitchen and a very simple frosting, I would just look at the Smitten Kitchen archives, just to peek. That's when I found the holy grail of grown-up cupcakes. A cupcake with such wonderful ingredients so perfectly arranged, all I could think was that I could not be responsible for them not existing. I could not have on my conscience that I had known of these cupcakes and walked away. I discovered the Irish Car Bomb Cupcake.

Guinness cupcake. Whiskey ganache. Bailey's buttercream icing. I stared at the computer screen with my mouth agape. Will needed that cupcake.

The real complication here is that 3 separate parts must be made from scratch, and then you actually have to gouge a hole in the cake, stuff it with ganache, and then ice the whole thing without smearing the ganache into the icing and making a streaky mess. I don't do baking like this. In fact it has only been about a year now that I've even attempted baking that wasn't from a box labeled "Sara Lee". My eating a can of frosting days are not all that far behind me, but Will deserved something a bit fancy, especially after I made myself a Maderia Almond Cake for my own birthday in February.

I was a bit late getting started. Having bought Will tickets to a Phillies game that night at Citi Field, we had friends meeting us at the apartment at 5:00. "If I start before 1:00," I thought, "I'll have over 4 hours to bang these guys out." Somehow it was 1:15 before I had the first ingredients on the stove.

Step 1:
Guinness Cupcakes

Ingredients:
- 1 cup stout (you know, Guinness)
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 large eggs
- 2/3 cup sour cream

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture a little bit at a time and beat at slow speed. Once all flour is added, use a rubber spatula to fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Bake cake until tester inserted comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 17 minutes. Cool cupcakes completely.

It took me a little longer then 17 minutes, probably more like 19. You want to be completely sure the cupcakes aren't mush, they need to have a bit of structure for the next step. The cooling completely also got to me, as time ticked by I got impatient. I may have rotated the cupcake tins into the freezer to expedite the process...

Step 2
Whiskey Ganache

Ingredients:
- 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
- 2/3 cup heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons butter at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons Irish Whiskey (Jameson would be most traditional, I used a brand from Clontarf)

Directions:
Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate you can pop it in the microwave for 20 seconds) Add the butter and whiskey and stir it until combined.

Cool the ganache until it is thick but still soft (putting in the fridge for 10 minutes speeds this along). Use a 1" cookie cutter or apple corer (finally, a use for my apple corer) cut the center out of the cupcakes. You want to go 2/3 of the way down. Smitten Kitchen suggests using a small spoon or grapefruit knife to help get the centers out, I found a fondue fork worked pretty well. Put the ganache into a piping bag, or if you are like me and don't own one, a gallon ziplock bag with the bottom corner cut out. Fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.

Step 3
Bailey's Frosting

Ingredients:
- 3-4 cups confectioners sugar
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 4 Tablespoons Baileys

Directions:
Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes until light, fluffy, and creamy. Turn the mixer to its lowest speed and slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.

When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, drizzle in the Baileys and whip it until combined. It this makes the frosting too thin, beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar.

By this point it was after 4pm, and I was getting nervous. The poor birthday boy had to help me ice the cupcakes, half because of time constraints and half because I flat out sucked at it, constantly getting the ganache whipped up into the frosting in dark streaks. We developed system, Will would put a giant blob (about 3 Tablespoons) directly on top of the hole with the ganache, and then spread it down the cupcake top. At this point he would hand it off to me and I would drag a spatula around the top to make it smooth and pretty. We finally got them all iced and arranged with 5 minutes left on the clock. Just enough time to wipe the sweat from my brow and shove my hair under a Phillies cap.

On Smitten Kitchen Deb writes: Do ahead: You can bake the cupcakes a week or two in advance and store them, well wrapped, in the freezer. You can also fill them before you freeze them. They also keep filled — or filled and frosted — in the fridge for a day. (Longer, they will start to get stale.)

I probably should have worked ahead on these, unless it's a really rainy chilly day (like St. Patrick's Days can tend to be) I probably wouldn't make these all in one day again. As a treat though, they killed. Everyone who ate them raved, and a coworker who took one home to her boyfriend came back to report I had received a proposal of marriage. Seriously, these are compliment garnering cupcakes. The guests seemed a little tipsy after eating. And the birthday boy seemed happy they did not contain eggplant.

Brandy Sidecar

This past couple of weeks has been good for our liquor cabinet.  Regular readers will recall that I recently received absinthe and pear brandy for my birthday.  I would like to add that I came to visit PA and my mother gave me a bottle of Courvoisier and Danny Devito's Limoncello.

It occurred to me as I was staring at my Courvoisier that I've never made myself a proper sidecar.  I've read about it numerous times, but I always opt for something else.  For the longest time, I associated it with gin--like a singapore sling or a bronx cocktail.  Irrational I know, but it's what happened.

The drink originated in France in the early 1920s and moved west from there, being featured in--amongst other things--The Savoy Cocktail Book published in 1930.  A cocktail automatically wins points with me if it can invoke a prohibition-era mystique.  The cocktail is also made extra attractive if you drink it while wearing a fedora and an Eliot Ness style trench coat.

Sidecar
adapted from epicurious.com
-2 tablespoons superfine sugar
-1 lemon wedge
-1 1/2 oz. cognac
-1 oz. triple sec
-1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice

Rub the rim of a cocktail glass with the lemon wedge and dip the rim in sugar.  Shake cognac, triple sec, and lemon juice with ice in a cocktail shaker and strain into the prepared cocktail glass.  Use lemon wedge for garnish if desired.

I love visiting Heather's mother's house for a number of reasons: we can sleep at night without listening to Indian pop music and disgruntled youths, Heather and I can both be in the kitchen and actually move around and it provides attractive backlighting for photography.  A nice little change of pace for me.  It makes an already attractive drink appear even more so.

I constructed one for myself and one for the matron of the house, who responded with emphatic approval.  Not one for sweet drinks, hers was served sans the sugar rim.  Though the drink is fairly sweet, the tart from the lemon keeps it in check.  Triple sec, while very sweet, isn't quite as sweet as sugar syrup.  The cocktail would probably benefit from the use of Grand Marnier or Cointreau instead of triple sec, but it worked just fine for our purposes.

Well readers, as you read this, we are well on our way to Avalon, NJ for a relaxing (and well deserved if you ask me) shore trip.  With any luck, I should be bursting with several fascinating topics to discuss before the trip is over.  Bon Voyage.

Indian Pumpkin Split Pea Stew

Happy September! It's the last day of healthy vegetarian cooking! It's been quite the adventure this past month, walking staight past the meat case, playing with all kinds of edible plants and legumes. It's working pretty well on the diet front, I am weighing in at 132.9 as of this morning, which means I reached the goal of 132.2 to133.2 that I set for myself at the begining of the month. I hope to keep going, though maybe at a slower pace, until I get back down to the wedding weight of 129. I have carefully gone through the archives of this blog and more clearly tagged the low cal recipes as Diet, and the Vegetarian recipes, so that they are easier for you, my wonderful readers, to find if you are looking for such recipe ideas in the future.

I have a very exact cookbook wish list. Very exact, and a little expensive. They range from the Ad Hoc at Home to out of print stuff, from the newest most in-fashion food to the forgotten vintage recipes. Every once in awhile I do sweeps of NY bookstore The Strand to see if I can pick up one of these cheap, and recently I made two big scores.

Ever since Julia Child became the one to democratize French cooking and bring it to the states, people like to figure out who is the "Julia Child" of other sections of cooking, which usually means "wrote the best and most complete cookbook on the subject." I've been hunting for the cookbooks of two such women, Marcella Hazzan, otherwise known as the Julia Child of Italian cooking, and Julie Sahni, the Julia Child of Indian cooking. The comparisons do not hold up that well, as Julia Child was an American who learned to cook French and brought it back with her, these women actually represent the cultures they are teaching you about. They are, however, the women with the most complete cookbooks, and that meant I wanted them.(Funny side note, this isn't just a cooking thing. I recently took an exercise class with the "Indian Jane Fonda". Good class! A lot of dancing.)

The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking I will have to tell you about later, I haven't cooked from it yet. August was, after all, the month of healthy vegetarian cooking, and I kept drooling over the meat sauces. There probably were some healthy recipes in there, but I kept flipping straight to roasts and heavy cream and lots of butter. Don't worry, these recipes are coming. While I have been searching for Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking for quite awhile, that was not the book I stumbled across this past month. Her follow up, Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking stared back at me from the Strand's shelf. I was reading it by the time I was on the subway.

I haven't played much with Indian cuisine since last year's attempt at Chicken Tikka, but now that I own the spices, I notice them cropping up in more and more recipes. Full on Indian cooking might not be hugely popular, but its influence is being found everywhere. Food Network even finally found itself a chef who knows what curry is, though it took them a competition show to do it (Congrats to Aarti Sequeira by the way!) Digging through the book, there were certainly recipes that felt like they would be a bit challenging, or too spicy for my somewhat weak pallate. Finally I stumbled across a recipe that would be more mild, and perfect for a certain Fall fruit now tumbling out of my farmer's market. Pumpkin and Split Peas with Camphor Basil. Will gave me a dubious look as we walked home. "You are going to cook a pumpkin?"

It's true, my previous pumpkin cooking has all been:
A. Using canned pumpkin, and
B. Dessert

And my last gourd chopping experience went badly. Like me staring at a butternut with a knife jutting out of it after a long struggle and wanting to chuck the whole thing in the trash and order Chinese kinda badly. That was the night of the Butternut Squash Lasagna of last October. Things have changed a bit since then though. For one, Will and I are much better with knifes. For another, I am much better with planning. As my beloved friend Stef was going to be in town on Monday night (an Indian food addict if I ever saw one) I made a very wise decision, I chopped the pumpkin on Sunday night. This was not nearly the warfare I had experienced with the butternut. Will split the thing down the center for me, as I tend to have a bit less muscle. I was going to attack it with a peeler, but cutting the skin off with very shallow knife cuts was a much more efficient and less maddening process. Then I scooped it out (reserving the seeds for toasting) and diced down into 1 inch pieces, which I stored in Ziploc containers in my fridge. The whole process probably only took 20 minutes, and that was 20 minutes I didn't have to spend while cooking the next day.

Unfortunately, despite a trip to our local Patel Brother's grocery, I could not locate Camphor Basil. It is a more bitter basil that's not easily found in the states, which Ms. Sahni recognizes by offering a substitution of Sweet Basil and Star Anise. I did not have Star Anise, but I did have Anise seeds on hand, so I worked with that. The results were still delicious, so I stand by my alteration.

Pumpkin and Split Peas with Basil
Adapted Slightly from Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking

Ingredients:

- 1/3 teaspoon anise seeds
- 1 cup yellow split peas
- Pinch turmeric
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 small yellow onion, peeled and chopped
- 2 cups of water
- 2 pounds pumpkin (you can substitute butternut squash if needed) cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup water

For the spice-perfumed ghee
- 5 tablespoon ghee (if you can not get this in your area, Alton Brown has a recipe for it here)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
- 2 tablespoons shredded fresh ginger
- 2-4 hot green chilies, finely diced
- 1/3 cup packed fresh basil, then take the leaves and cut into 1/4 inch wide shreds

Directions:
Put the split peas, turmeric, bay leaves, onion and anise seeds in a deep pot with 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Cook over medium heat, partially covered, for 20 minutes.


Add the pumpkin pieces along with 1 cup water, sugar, and salt and bring to a boil again. Lower the heat and continue cooking, covered, for 20 more minutes. Turn off heat. Transfer to a serving dish or individual bowls.

Measure out all the seasonings for the spice-perfumed butter and put them right next to the stove. Heat the ghee in a small frying pan over high heat. When it is hot, add the cumin seeds. When the cumin turns dark brown (about 15 to 20 seconds), add the finger and chilies. Reduce the heat to low and let the herbs sizzle for 30 seconds. Add the basil and let the mixture fry for 30 seconds.

Pour all of it over the pumpkin-split pea mixture. Mix with a fork just once or twice to streak it with the spice-perfumed butter. Serve immediately.

OK, so ghee, if you didn't know, is basically clarified butter. And that's a good bit of butter. Therefore, this might not be the healthiest of all of my recipes this month. But it was yummy. Stef ate 2 bowls kinda yummy. The serving suggestion Julie Sahni makes in the book is to pair this stew with an Indian bread, she suggests a Kale Bread that is in another part of the book, but as this was a weeknight meal I wasn't about to bake some bread too but that's the luxury of living in Little India. I popped some frozen Garlic Naan in the toaster oven and presto, side dish.

This dish was a bit on the heavy side especially as it was 90 degrees out, but with fall ready to kick down our door I can see this being a repeat recipe on a chilly fall day. It will be a nice vegetarian distraction, because right now I'm jonesing to get my hands on some meat. I want to roast it, saute it, stick it in a pasta sauce, I am ready to resume my carnivorous kitchen. Just as soon as the temperature drops out of the 90's so I can turn my oven on. Come on Fall, I'm waiting...

Champagne Cocktails

Yesterday, Heather and I attended the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor's Island, an event at which the attendees are encouraged to dress up in period clothing--1920s or so--and enjoy live jazz music and dancing as well as some vendors and various planned events such as a tug of war.  They had all sorts of food, beer, and other refreshments, but only one type of cocktail.

One of the event's sponsors was a liqueur called St-Germain.  If you are unfamiliar with St-Germain, it is a sweet liqueur that is made from elderflowers.  The literature that was available at the table said that the drink was aptly named The St-Germain Cocktail and it lists the recipe as follows:

The St-Germain Cocktail
-2 parts Brut Champagne or Dry Sparkling White
-1 1/2 parts St-Germain
-2 parts Club Soda

Fill a tall Collins Glass with ice.  Add Champagne first, then St-Germain, then Club Soda.  Stir completely.  Garnish with a lemon twist, making sure to squeeze the essential oils into the glass.

The cocktail was good.  A little sweet for my taste but good.  It reminded me that I had been meaning to try some champagne cocktails of my own.  It's a subject I've dabbled with in the past.  There was a time just after college when we were knocking back Hpnotiq and champagne.  We were doing a lot with Hpnotiq back then; it was a good way to sweeten up whatever you were drinking, but ultimately we grew out of it and stopped buying it.

I enjoy a good mimosa from time to time.  Heather loves them.  For her, it's the most exciting part about getting champagne.  "This is really good, but don't kill it.  I want mimosas tomorrow morning."

Mimosa
-3 parts champagne
-1 part orange juice

Combine in a champagne flute and enjoy.  If you're feeling really ambitious, add a dash or two of peach liqueur.

This past New Years Eve, we rang in 2010 in our apartment watching Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest while enjoying a drink called the Benediction.  We discovered it in a New York Times article about Benedictine.

The Benediction
-3/4 oz. Benedictine
-dash orange bitters
-Champagne to top

Add Benedictine to a Champagne flute, add the bitters, then fill with Champagne.

In doing research for my absinthe post, I found a recipe on the Wikipedia page for a drink called the Death in the Afternoon Cocktail.  It was created by Ernest Hemingway and calls for you to "Pour on jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass.  Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness.  Drink three to five of these slowly."  A jigger is a measurement that I took to mean one ounce, but I think I may have overdone it a little bit.  The absinthe overpowered the cocktail a little bit.  For next time, I would use about 1/2 to 3/4 oz.

When I purchased my bottle of absinthe, I also picked up a bottle of pear brandy.  It was the kind with the pear inside the bottle.  I was researching some of the things I could do with it and one that kept popping up was adding Champagne directly to the brandy.  Simple, easy, basic.  Lately, these Champagne cocktails have been finding me.  Heather really liked this one.  It packs a punch but it has a nice syrupy sweetness.  It would serve really well as a dessert cocktail.

Pear Brandy Champagne Cocktail
-1 oz. pear brandy
-Champagne

Add ingredients to a Champagne flute and garnish with a pear wedge.

I love Champagne, but there are a few people in my life who don't like it as much as I do.  And for those people, it's nice to have a few ideas like this in my back pocket to supplement the dryness and fortify the Champagne with a little more kick.

Vegan Corn Soup

I didn't start out trying to rid my kitchen of meat. Once I got started though, I couldn't stop! It became a challenge: how long can I keep the meat-free kitchen going? And so healthy eating month gradually became Vegetarian Cooking Month, with the eggplant, squash, and chickpeas dominating my cooking. And boy howdy has it worked. That's right ladies and gentlemen, with a week to go I weighed in at 132.3 this morning! Two asterisks here. One, there's been some serious gym attendance involved. Like 6 out of 7 days last week type of gym attendance (after returning to yoga for the first time in several months, I could barely lift my arms the next day).

And two, I am not a vegetarian. Not even temporarily. I have been eating meat, I'll order it when we go out and I'll grab a turkey sandwich for lunch at work. As far as cooking goes, however, I have been meat free since late July and since I prepare most of my own meals, that means a significant reduction in overall meat consumption. Apparently I am not alone on my quest to cut back on meat without cutting it completely from my diet. I heard a story on NPR about Meatless Mondays, a movement to reduce meat consumption across the country by 15%. The idea is to take Monday, a day where you are starting fresh and making good choices, and reducing the amount of saturated animal fat that you consume. Once this month of meat free cooking is over, I think I'll continue on by joining this campaign!

Strolling around the local farmers market last Sunday, I realized with horror that I had been neglecting one key late summer veggie. Corn. How could I have forgotten about sweet, fresh, summer corn! It's one of the first things I ever learned to cook when I moved out on my own, and yet the only time I've even glanced at it this summer was the experiment with grilling back in early July. I've been cheating on corn, running around with that little hussy the eggplant and those trampy chickpeas. As the farmer dumped a fresh bag of corn out on the table I dove, begging corn to take me back. $2 and 5 ears of corn later, I had just the dish to make things right with the betrayed.

I wanted to make a corn soup. My first thought was corn chowder, with its creamy deliciousness. As I shopped recipes, however, I quickly realized most of these required ridiculous amounts of heavy cream. Heavy cream that has 50 calories per tablespoon. Not the slenderizing soup I was looking for. Finally I hit upon a recipe that called for only low fat milk, and most of the comments said the milk really wasn't necessary at all. Swap out the chicken stock for vegetable stock and suddenly my soup was fully vegan. Score.

Vegan Corn Soup
Adapted from Bon Appetit

Ingredients:

- 1 1/2 teaspoons of corn oil
- 1 small yellow onion, chopped
- 1 small fresh Poblano chili, chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, chopped
- 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
- 5 ears of sweet yellow or bi color corn, kernels cut from cob
- 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
- Chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:
Heat oil in a large heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, chili, garlic, and cumin and saute until onion and chili are tender, about 10 minutes.

Add corn to the pot. Stir in broth. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat until corn is very tender, about 45 minutes. Use immersion blender to puree soup until fairly smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls; garnish with cilantro and serve.

If you like, you can garnish with an avocado. It complements the flavor nicely!

A few side notes. If you don't own an immersion blender you can puree in batches by transferring to a blender or food processor. I heart my immersion blender every time I make a pureed soup and don't have to haul hot liquid, clean a blender, or worry about steam blowing the lid off said blender. If you make a lot of sauces and soups, this thing is great. Since it isn't a closed device, however, you don't get nearly as smooth a blend as you would if you used your other blending appliances. I liked a slightly chunky corn soup, Will felt it could have been smoother. Use your own judgement. Also the original recipe called for mixing in the milk at the blending phase to get the soup to a desired consistency. If you don't care about the soup being vegan and you want something creamier, you can add about 1 1/2 cups of milk at that point. Personally I thought the soup was a little on the thin side anyway and did not require additional liquid, and a taste test confirmed it was excellent without the milk. But the option is open to you.

The soup was a lovely late summer treat, very sweet (which could change depending on the type of corn you buy) and almost indulgent, without being indulgent at all. Will asked the question that always lets me know the truth of whether or not he's liked a dish. "There's more of this, right?"

Absinthe

I celebrated my birthday about a week and a half ago. In the weeks leading up to it, my parents were trying to decide what to get me. I sent them a list of stuff on my amazon.com wish list, but I also told them that there were a bunch of spirits that I wanted as well--things that I've wanted but couldn't work up the nerve to spend money on right now. Things like 15 year single malt scotch, Hendricks gin (I've been meaning to develop a taste for gin and I've been hearing good things about this one,) and a premium tequila (Patron or Don Julio for example.)

I spoke to my dad on the phone before my birthday and he told me that they didn't have a chance to swing by the liquor store and that he would send me a check. Perhaps they didn't have time to do it, or perhaps they didn't want to encourage what can best be described as my enthusiasm towards alcohol--at least not directly. The check comes and I weigh my options. When considering things to buy, I wanted to make sure that I made my spending count. What was something I've always wanted but never had the wherewithal to get. It hits me: Absinthe.

Absinthe is one of those spirits of legend and myth. It has a sexy mystique to it due in part to its ban in the United States in 1912. The controversy was around a chemical compound called thujone that is alleged to have hallucinogenic properties. The ban was lifted in 2007, but with a caveat: U.S. imports can only contain a maximum thujone of 10 parts per million. An article was printed around then in Time Magazine that shed a little light on the subject.

Since the ban was lifted, I was excited about being able to try absinthe. After doing some research, I decided to go with a brand that seemed reputable--Lucid. I was hoping to get a bottle that seemed more old-timey and vintage looking. You know, something that you might find in your grandparents attic. A relic that was previously undiscovered. But as it stood, Lucid comes in a big dark green bottle with ominous feline eyes at the top. It's pretty badass in its own way. At 62% alcohol, it definitely packs more of a punch than most of the other liquors on my shelf at home. The section of the store the bottle was in also contained several different types of absinthe, varying in color, price and alcoholic content.

One tools necessary for the appropriate preparation of absinthe is a slotted absinthe spoon. They come in a wide range of different designs but share some features in common. The heads are flat with little holes to allow liquid to easily pass through them and they are large enough to rest comfortably on the rim of the glass. "How cool," I thought, "to have one of these spoons with which to prepare my absinthe. I suppose I'll have to improvise with a regular spoon or something." However as soon as I had this thought, I noticed that the bottles of Lucid behind the first bottle had something sticking out of them. I inspected and, much to my surprise, each of them came with their own absinthe spoon. I feel like I'm part of a community now. A community of spoons.

The traditional French way to serve absinthe is to pour 1 oz. of absinthe into a small glass, place the absinthe spoon on top of the rim, place a sugar cube on top of the spoon and slowly drip 3-4 oz. of ice water on the cube, dissolving the sugar into the drink. The drink will then turn a bit cloudy. That is just the anise and other herbs coming out of the drink. The bottle itself recommended that we use 1.25-1.5 oz. of absinthe to 5 oz. water but I figured I would heed my research.

An alternate way of preparing the absinthe--which is less authentic but more fun to watch--is to soak the sugar cube with absinthe, set it on fire for a moment, dump it into the absinthe then extinguish with a shot of ice water. It tastes roughly the same but a tad more caramelized and with the satisfaction of setting something on fire.

The taste was as you would expect, licorice and sweet, and it had a nice cloudy green hue. As far as hallucinations, I think that the effects are largely exaggerated...and the purple gremlin dancing next to me concurs. Since we only drank a total of 1 oz. of absinthe a piece, we were not feeling buzzed from that drink alone. Diluting it with water brought the alcohol down to a manageable level.

The allure of absinthe lies not in its physiological effects, but in the concept itself. it taps into a much larger idea. It harkens back to another time and place--one with great artists and intellectuals. A dreamlike state that can be perceived with total clarity. There's something that seems a little dangerous about it too. Absinthe represents all of these things and should be enjoyed with that in mind.