Mixology Monday- The Screen Door Cocktail

I know that I've been MIA for the last couple of MixMo's. My schedule has been completely crazy recently, with my consulting for a restaurant that just opened, helping to open another one due mid-July, my day job, etc etc. I could make excuses all day, but when I saw that the fine gentlemen at Scofflaw’s Den had chosen to host Mix Mo with a Bourbon theme, well, count me in. I'm probably missing some other deadlines somewhere, but I had to be a part of this.
Recently, I've been experimenting with a lot of Jerry Thomas' old drink recipes, especially a number of the ones featured in David Wondrich's great book, "Imbibe! From the Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash..". I've been interested in incorporating modern ingredients or styles into classic recipes. If you look past the unusual preparations on some of these ingredients, you'll see that this is simply a Fancy Whiskey Cocktail, nothing more, nothing less.
I also need to add a caveat to this cocktail. I'm using a bacon bourbon for this cocktail, and, while I would like to take credit for bacon bourbon, I actually saw Jim Meehan and Don Lee do this at the Grand Marnier Mixology Summit in Vail this year. I had been experimenting with fat washing before, and I am bacon obsessed, so when I tasted their bacon bourbon, I knew I had to attempt some of my own. For this batch, I used Bulleit bourbon as I felt both the flavor profile and the price point lent themselves to fat washing, and I'm very happy with the result.
In order to make your own Bacon Bourbon, the process is really pretty simple. Get some good bacon (I bought a pound of bacon at Whole Foods), cook it off, reserving the bacon fat, let the fat cool (but do not let it solidify), add to a fifth of bourbon, cover and keep in a cool dry place for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, place the container of fat/bourbon in the fridge overnight, then strain the bacon fat out from the bourbon using a coffee filter lined chinois. Voila! You've got bacon bourbon, and thats the basic idea behind any fat washed liquor.
I was inspired to create this cocktail after a visit to the Screen Door, a wonderful restaurant here in Portland that makes a praline bacon with brown sugar and pecans that is to die for. Its one of the greatest bacons that I've ever eaten, and I wanted to take some of the qualities from this bacon (sweet, smoky, pecan) and translate this into a drink.I already had the bacon bourbon, so I had to find a way to get some smokiness into the cocktail. While a classic Fancy Whiskey Cocktail uses plain gum syrup, I decided to smoke some brown sugar, turn it into a simple syrup (1-1) and cold infuse it with toasted pecans to try to achieve the flavors that I want to create. Hot smoking the brown sugar isn't the easiest thing to do, but after 3 hours of hickory smoke, I had a large, rock hard cake of brown sugar with a heady barbecue aroma of hickory smoke. I shaved the cake of sugar back down into granules and made a 1 to 1 simple syrup to which I added some toasted pecans, and then did a 2 week cold infusion in my refriegerator in order to extract as much flavor as possible from the pecans. I will add one caveat to anyone attempting to recreate this simple syrup. However many pecans you decide to toast, double it. You'll thank me, as the cold infusion takes a lot of toasted pecans (I used 1 c pecans to 1 1/2 c simple) for the flavor to pull through.
Lets get to the recipe shall we?

The Screen Door Cocktail
2 oz Bacon infused Bulleit Bourbon
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1/2 tsp Citronege
1 tsp Hickory Smoked Pecan Simple Syrup

garnish with a lemon peel over the top of this cocktail

I felt like this cocktail achieved what I was setting out to do. I didn't end up with a cocktail that was sickly sweet, instead, its a balanced cocktail with depth from the smoke and pecans. The lemon oil really seems to brighten some of the background flavors. Overall, I'm really happy with this one. I drink this and imagine myself sitting outside on the porch, somewhere on a humid, August night in Mississippi (I lived there once), watching fireflies dance in the air and listening to the symphony of cicadas as the sun slowly sets. Some drinks are just evocative of a time or a place, and for me, the Screen Door Cocktail has done just that.

Thanks for reading.

Drink Du Jour- The Mad Monk

Today I took the world's best dog (ok, maybe not the best dog, but definitely the world's best great dane), Huckleberry, to a new groomer. Huck hates to go to to the groomer and he hates being bathed, so I leave that to the professionals. As he is so large (140 lbs), bathing and grooming sessions usually run around 2 hours for him, usually giving me plenty of time to kill.
I decided to go see if I could find a Russian or Eastern European market. I didn't have any ideas of what I was looking for, but I hadn't been to a Russian market in some time and I was curious to see what I could find. I harbor a fantasy of someday walking into a Russian market and being offered a stash of homemade buffalo grass vodka or some such nonsense, but thats never happened to me. Instead, I drove out to SE 82nd ave and drove around until I found I market with windows covered in Cyrillic lettering and a sign that said," Good Neighbor Market".
Let me preface this by saying that I love Russian food. Its a rare treat when I get to eat it (its hard to find a good Russian restaurant on the west coast), so I relish the opportunities that present themselves. While I consider myself a pretty good cook, unfortunately, my repetoire does not yet include Russian cuisine.
Good Neighbor Market was exactly that, a quiet, friendly and well stocked market filled with Russian and Eastern European pickles, meats, seafood, vegetables, candies and more. I don't read any Cyrillic, so the meat case and seafood were a mystery to me, although some of the smoked fish behind the counter were some of the most tantalizing specimens that I've ever seen. Other things, like the cheese counter, did have a few labels in English. For instance, a large, round, white wheel of cheese was simply labeled, "city cheese", which meant nothing to me. I'm going to have to find a tour guide to fully appreciate the treasure that I uncovered today. As it was, I was reduced to checking canned and dried products for a stick on label in english, which gives a name of the product and some basic nutritional information. I stocked up on some new and interesting things for the pantry, and then I came across the beverage section. A label stood out to be, "KBAC". I don't understand Cyrillic, but I knew that this was the spelling for what we call kvass.
Kvass is an old Russian beverage. Its essentially a peasant drink, and a cousin of beer. It was originally brewed with rye bread, although in modern times I understand that actual bread has been replaced with a dark malt and other flavorings. During the time of Peter the Great, kvass was the most common drink in Russian society. Kvass is mildly alcoholic (.05-1.4%), and I'm sure that the kvass I purchased was on the lowest end of that range. If you do happen to run across kvass, it also might be labeled as Russian soda.
Kvass is a wonderful beverage on its own. Its full flavored, full of rye and malt flavors, it almost tastes like a delicious glass of liquified rye bread. Its full bodied, yet refreshing in a way most of us with Western palates are unused to. To put it simply, I'm a fan. Its a very food friendly beverage, I started imagining good lox on rye bread, blinis with melted butter and caviar, and cabbage rolls while I was drinking it.
I decided to create a cocktail using kvass as a mixer. I obviously wanted to not only create a cocktail that tasted great, but also used appropriate ingredients for Eastern Europe. While a good Russian vodka is an obvious choice, I actually didn't have any in the house (ok, I'm not much of a vodka fan to be honest). I do happen to have a bottle of Bardenay vodka from Idaho, which I think may be one of the finest vodkas that I've tasted, so I decided to use that instead.
Next, I selected a bottle of aquavit from a local producer, House Spirits. Their Krogstad aquavit has nice caraway and star anise overtones which I thought would place some nice notes into this drink.
Lastly, as every cocktail needs a bit of bitters, I chose Angostura Orange Bitters. I don't think these have been released to the American market quite yet (I think they are a month off but I could be wrong). I love the pairing of rye with orange, so the match made sense in my opinion. Plus, among the orange bitters on the market, I find Angostura's to be the most complex, carrying notes of a well made English marmalade, and quite dry.
The resulting cocktail won't be for everyone. You'd better like flavors like rye and caraway if you are going to try this one, but if you have an appreciation for flavors like these, I think you'll be in heaven. This is a tasty little cocktail, and it will be very food friendly to boot. Without further ado, I offer up the Mad Monk.

The Mad Monk Cocktail
1 oz Russian vodka
1 oz Aquavit (I recommend Krogstad)
4 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters
4 oz Kvass ( I used Ochakovo)

1) In a double rocks glass, add vodka, aquavit, and bitters, stir to incorporate
2) add ice
3) top with kvass, garnish with an orange wedge (optional)

Barrel Aged Orange Bitters Update

Well, I've left the barrel outside all week, I'll probably bring it into the garage now, but I want it to experience some weather to bring the madeira in and out of the wood.

I put together my bitters recipe Wednesday night. I'm going to let this soak for a month, and then into the barrel in June. Here's what I'm doing-

2 750 Ml bottles of Everclear
5 orange peels
8 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
1 bay leaf

Its in the basement right now, sitting next to the Bacon Bourbon. More on that soon.

So what do you do when you make bitters and end up with 5 peeled oranges? I make dessert.

Navan Oranges
5 oranges, peeled and sliced into rounds (if this was for a dinner party, I'd slice the pithy edges off, but at home I leave it as is)
3 oz Navan Liqueur
3 dashes Angostura Bitters

1) In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly to incorporate
2) Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours
3) Serve and enjoy. Best topped with a little whipped cream spiked with Grand Marnier.