A Hungry Bear

blackberry tequila cocktail

It’s almost winter isn’t it? The perfect time for me to pull out some of the farmer’s blackberries that I froze back in the summer, to remind me of all that I miss about summer.

Recipe adapted Food & Wine, a drink called the “Agave Negro Cocktail” from Social Hollywood in LA.

Ingredients: 3 blackberries (thawed if frozen), tequila, 1 fresh lime, simple syrup, Chambord, club soda. (more…)

highland’s fall

This smoky scotch drink is exactly what you need to warm up fast when it’s freezing outside. Adapted from Bon Appetit.

Ingredients: Laphroaig smoky scotch, 2 ounces blended Scotch (Johnnie Walker Black), juice from half a lemon, 1 ounce St. Germain elderflower liqueur. (more…)

pink st germain cocktail

I made this drink recently to celebrate a friend’s engagement. The classic St. Germain cocktail mixes the elderflower liqueur with champagne and club soda - I think it’s a little more festive when you use a sparkling rose.

Ingredients: 2 ounces champagne or sparkling wine (white or rose), 2 ounces St. Germain liqueur, splash of club soda. (more…)

chambord vodka soda

My standby drink when I don’t want to mess with muddling or mixing is an ordinary vodka soda with lime. If you’re feeling too lazy to slice a lime, you can make an even easier but more exciting version by adding a splash of raspberry flavor from Chambord.

Ingredients: vodka, Chambord liqueur, club soda.

Fill a highball glass with crushed ice. Fill it one third of the way with Chambord.

Then fill the next third of the glass with vodka. Top with club soda and stir.

white russian

It’s been a while since I posted a Friday happy hour drink hasn’t it? Let’s stick to something simple, to ease ourselves back into the boozing. This is one of my favorites to serve after dinners with friends - especially if it kicks off some Big Lebowski quotes…

Ingredients: vodka, kahlua, whole milk. (more…)

new vieux cocktail

I know, I know, another whiskey drink… But these days, when I’m browsing for new cocktails to try, more often than not it’s the smoky, edgy whiskey drink that’s going to grab my attention. This one mixes a liqueur I’ve never heard of before, Benedictine - first made by monks in the 1500’s, with 27 different herbs (thanks wikipedia!). It’s a very simple drink to make, but it has so many interesting layers of flavor.

New Vieux cocktail, adapted from Food & Wine.

Ingredients: 2 ounces whiskey (the original calls for rye whiskey, but I used Maker’s Mark), 2/3 ounce apricot brandy, 3/4 ounce Benedictine liqueur, 3 dashes Angostura bitters. (more…)

peach margarita

Our farmer does a really good job including a variety of vegetables in our produce share, including some weird things I’ve never heard of before (like Chinese long beans, or pink okra, or white eggplant…). But even he can’t escape the fact that we’re in Georgia, the Peach State. For the past few weeks we’ve received more peaches than I can manage to eat (although I think I could eat these pork chops with peach compote every day), so I’ve had to turn to drinking them. This peach margarita is an edgier version of a fuzzy navel - and dangerous too, since you can’t taste the alcohol.

Ingredients: 1 ripe peach, tequila, peach schnapps, agave syrup (or simple syrup - or just skip it and use a splash more peach schnapps), Cointreau or other triple sec, orange juice. (more…)

elderflower manhattan

I recently discovered St Germain, an elderflower liqueur. I had seen it in a few obscure cocktail recipes, and picked up a bottle during my last stock-up trip at the package store. This stuff is amazing, and so far anything I have mixed it with has become 10 times better. It’s a little sweet, but not in a manufactured completely gross way. I went looking for more ways to work this into drinks, and came across a website with at least 20 different recipes. Since I love Kentucky bourbon, this drink has become my new favorite.

What you’ll need: Kentucky bourbon (Maker’s Mark or something similar - this is a new small batch bourbon called Basil Hayden’s, which is fantastic), St Germain elderflower liqueur, bitters, a maraschino cherry for garnish. (more…)

vodka thyme lemonade

Herb-flavored simple syrups, where have you been all my (bartending) life? Discovering this technique is one of the greatest breakthroughs in the bar - or in the kitchen - that I’ve had in along time. And it only takes a couple of minutes! My new plan is to make up a big batch of simple syrup, and divide it across 3 or 4 different small containers, each stuffed with a different herb, then try and make a new drink out of each. If that’s not interesting to you - just try this cocktail. It is so refreshing, so unique-but-not-too-weird, and definitely easy.

Adapted from foodandwine.com recipe archives.

Ingredients: Stoli Oranj (or another citrus vodka), one lemon, club soda, 4 sprigs of fresh thyme, some freshly made and still warm simple syrup (i.e. 1/2 cup each sugar and water). (more…)

absinthe manhattan

The only time I’ve ever tried absinthe, I got in trouble for it. Last year I was stopping over in Dubai for a day at the tail end of a business trip, and I wanted to check out the Burj Dubai (the world’s tallest building, currently under construction). There was a cool “tourist bar” next door - the UAE, as a Muslim country, is only allowed to sell alcohol to tourists in venues with special licenses - and they had at least 20 different absinthe cocktails. The newly legalized version of absinthe, from what I understand, is similar to the old concoction in its licorice taste only - no hallucinations! No matter how many times I explained this to A, he was NOT convinced. So the only way to prove to him that the new absinthe is safe for happy hour is to make him a great drink at home with it.

I found this recipe featured as the cocktail of the week on Gourmet.com back in March (this variant of a Manhattan is actually called “The Waldorf”, invented by a bartender in Seattle).

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