It’s the September Instructor meeting, and I’m LATE. This is a problem because I’m supposed to lead the start of this particular instructor’s meeting with some demonstration of Mixology. New drinks, bold ingredients, something they’ve never seen before. Teaching teachers is stressful enough without being late, and at this particular moment I want to crawl into Borders and read Japanese comics and surfing magazines until I feel better. Surfing magazines are very soothing, particularly if you (like me), do not surf.
It’s not exactly my fault that I’m late, well it is, but I didn’t consider the consequences of dragging what feels like 30 pounds of alcohol through the subway and trolley from my quiet little heaven in Northern Liberties to the headquarters on City Line. It was right before I got on the L that I noticed that..Something was leaking. I frantically rummaged through my bags, and I thought the culprit was the Calvados Pays D’Auge, with its ostentatiously inefficient screw top/cork hybrid seal (you’d think between both of those things, they’d get it right). I put the culprit in the lime bag, transferred the limes, and wiped everything down with my much abused Tuaca bar rag. A little while later, about to climb the stairs to the trolley, as the bag started to smell distinctly like Scotch, honey, and herbs, I realized the true culprit was the hastily sealed Drambuie. I immediately made the necessary adjustments, and immediately missed the trolley.
As I rushed into the classroom, I think for the thousandth time how much I like our instructors, new and old. Rich, who heads the program with a hard nosed technical exactitude that goes back to his training as a chef. Stacy, who counterbalances this with effervescence and intuition about the students’ needs. Warren, who looks like a big guy and moves like a little kid, who religiously reads the blog and provides endless encouragement. Jim, who quietly absorbs every word like a sponge, and makes up for his apparent shyness with an unshakable calm. Carol, who flits silently back and forth past the hallway outside my office, poking her head in, always graciously asking if I need anything. Andre, with his machismo and leadership. Cardell, with his swagger and easy confidence. Erika, who was kind enough to take all of these pictures. And of course, my mom, Ariel, who leads the meeting in my place with such an effortless grace that I wonder again if we’re really related.
I want to give them something special. I take out my bar kit, which is a little…elaborate and honestly deserves its own post, but today I have something special planned. I’m wearing my Japanese Rolling Stones shirt, which gets its usual weird stares and complements, and makes me look more confident than I am.
The first recipe we’re making is a Caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink, and I’m making it in the Brazillian style. There is some debate about this, but Tony Abou-Ganim’s Caipirinhas always call for crushed ice. The problem is, our giant ice machine makes ice in one texture, cubed.
I decide to show the staff a Lewis bag. A Lewis bag is a canvas bag that Mixologists of old would put ice in, and then hit with a giant wooden carpenters mallet until it was pulverized to their satisfaction. A google search for Lewis bag will offer a variety of relatively expensive options, canvas bags recreated from the 1940s, and a variety of giant wooden mallets to crush ice with.
You don’t need them. As my dad, former fibrous materials researcher at Drexel, told me when he gave me a nylon poncho for water gun fights when I was twelve, nylon will do just fine. Any drawstring gym bag will do, so I used my Ferrari bag. And don’t believe that you have to carry an old wooden mallet around with you. A solidly made ice cream scoop will do just fine.
I started smashing.
A lot of people think Caipirinhas are like the much better known Mojitos, but they really are a markedly different drink.
You start by cutting the little nubs off the limes, and then cutting them lengthwise. Then, and this to a Mixologist is nearly as important as gutting a fish, you want to take out that horrible, evil spongy spinal cord of the lime, the pith. The outside of the lime, the incredibly concentrated oily, flavorful zest is what you want, the pith is the enemy of taste and balance and flavor. With other drinks you may be able to mask its flavors, but for a Caipirinia, for such a simple drink, this nuance is essential. After you take the pith out, taste it, taste how bitter and woody and awful it is, and then be glad you have removed it. Bravo!
Then, quite simply, you cut the lime into little pieces, usually 6-8, and throw them into your glass, a rocks glass in this case. Then add two heaping bar spoons of sugar. Brazilians will use white sugar, but I prefer a granulated Demerara, it muddles better and imparts a more distinctive warmth and flavor.
Then you take the business end of your muddler, and really mash everything into a paste. This is different from muddling mint for a Mojito, because in that instance you’re just releasing the flavor that comes from those tiny hairs on the mint, without over muddling and making the drink grassy. But here there is no such thing as muddling too hard. The more you smash everything in, the better. Remember in great bartending, the violence is part of the fun!!
Then we add our gorgeous crushed ice and our Cachaca, or Brazilian rum made only from the sugar cane juice, as opposed to the Molasses of traditional rum. Leblon is popular, and it’s wonderful, with it’s smooth light, floral, mixability. But I prefer Pirassununga Cacacha 51. It’s a little rougher, more authentically Brazilian (it dominates the market there at a whopping 30% of sales), and of course cheaper than Leblon.
And then, the very last step for this drink, is simply taking your bar spoon and lifting the limes up out of the bottom of the glass and integrating them through the rest of the drink.
And there we go! Caipirinha:
We loved the strength of this drink, it really is a much shorter drink than the lengthened Mojito, and though they have the same level of alcohol, Caipirinha’s feel much stronger. One of the things you should always do as a Mixologist, as Stacy is demonstrating, is use a straw to periodically taste and check the quality and consistency of your drinks.
The next drink, a Philly Caipirinha is made in exactly the same way, but with all Philly ingredients. The first is Sailor Jerry. I did a very quick post on this in the past as part of my drink log:
http://mixologywine.tumblr.com/post/680310477/oris-drink-log-sailor-jerry
But I did a little more research about it since then, and discovered that Sailor Jerry, a brand created around the body art of Norman Collins, was started by a small company based in Philadelphia, where the one and only storefront remains. It also has wonderful vanilla, cream soda, and caramel notes which makes it overwhelmingly my favorite spiced rum.
After you make the Philly Caiprinha with rum, you top it off with Hanks Vanilla Cream Soda. Ice Cream Soda is a Philadelphia invention, first invented by Hank M. Green in 1874 for our sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary. I chose Hanks because it’s amazingly flavorful, and also a local product, based in Trevose, PA.
The combination of lime and cream soda works perfectly, though it seems a little weird. It’s helped and balanced by the accents of Sailor Jerry. The staff actually liked this drink better than the original Caipirinha, which was a great feeling because the original is such a classic.
BUT…
We saved the best for last:
I am the rose of Sharon, a rose of the valley.
As a rose among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters.
As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons; in his shade I delighted and sat, and his fruit was sweet to my palate. He brought me to the banquet hall, and his attraction to me [was symbolic of] his love. Sustain me with flagons of wine, spread my bed with apples, for I am lovesick.
- The Song of Songs
The lines, of the Old Testament’s Song of Songs, or the song of Solomon go back and forth between a man and a woman, but they are also symbolic of God’s love for us.
I wanted to make a completely new signature drink for everyone, and the Jewish New Year is coming up so I wanted to make a drink with apples and honey.
I started with 2 parts of Calvados. In Normandy, the weather isn’t conductive to wine. Instead, they have endless orchards that produce small, bitter apples that the French use, blended with a little Perry (pear brandy), to make the worlds best apple brandy. We’ve used Calvados in another recipe, the burnt cider:
http://mixologywine.tumblr.com/post/195460133/burnt-cider
But for this recipe I wanted something much stronger. I mixed 2 parts calvados with 1 part Drambuie, with the warmth of Scotch, the richness of honey, and the accents of herbs. And then I used a few dashes of blood orange bitters (1 dash per ounce, then one more dash for good measure) to help the flavors blend together. Bitters in a drink act like salt and pepper in cooking, you don’t notice their presence, but you would notice their absence.
This is an example of when a drink SHOULD be stirred. The ingredients all have alcohol, and have a similar consistency. They don’t need to be thoroughly, violently, emulsified. They just need to have a nice velvety consistency and should be less diluted than a shaken drink.
Then we strain the drink out with a Julep strainer into a rocks glass filled with ice.
Rich was kind enough to core apples, cut them into very thin slices, soak them in honey, put them right on top of the drink, sprinkle a dash of Cinnamon and serve. This is an example of when tongs are excellent tools for bartenders, when a garnish is soaked or infused, they’re a great help.
Andre asked why not put them in the bottom of the drink like the Caipirinha, and it’s an excellent question. When you have the apples on top like that, you get wonderful fresh aromatics of fresh apples, honey, and cinnamon, and the customer has the option of eating it right away, before even delving into the rest of the drink.
I was really nervous about how the drink would be received because it’s very close to my heart, but everyone loved it. It packed enough of a punch for the guys, was sweet and floral for the girls, and complex enough to keep everyone from getting bored, but all of the individual ingredients could still be savored.
It was an incredible meeting. We followed up with more ways to improve technique, training students with new drills, increasing performance and communication. Everyone was brilliant.
Now I have to start worrying about October :)
