Quarantine Cocktails
Throughout these ongoing Covid times, as the pandemic ebbs and flows and people feel like things are maybe going back to some form of “normal” and start flocking to restaurants and events only to be brought back to reality as pandemic complacency sets in leading to a rise in the next variation and a spike in hospitalizations and deaths, it can feel safer to just hunker down and stay home.
For those lucky enough to be able to work remotely, and especially people for whom health concerns mandate and minimize their exposure risks, keeping to the program of quarantine remains the best option.
As the relative safety of outdoor summer events (blazing heat waves excepted) shifts back into the chill of a long covid winter, how can one make those long weekends and evenings trapped at home feel a little more special? Sometimes, during this continued period of social isolation, I’ve found that it can help to settle down with a little something to drink and imagine yourself on a little vacation from reality.
Over the pandemic time, I’ve been browsing our library’s ebook collections for some useful and inspiring cocktail manuals exploring the drinking cultures of the world for a bit of armchair world travel in a glass. Whether alcoholic or alcohol free, enjoying a bracing or refreshing beverage can really help transport you, and these resources will provide you instructions for best crafting something memorable along with a garnish of interesting cultural and culinary facts.
Browsing a book like Drinking French lets you imagine yourself at a Parisian cafe or troquet (dive bar), for instance, even if you’ve (like me) never been to France. My fav of the books discussed here, Chef David Lebovitz writes in an engaging, witty way, making this compendium of French libations more than just a guidebook. Far from just discussing wine, Lebovitz discusses the history and customs of coffee drinking, tisanes, hot chocolates, and iced drinks, as well as the many regional French aperitifs from the common (vermouth) to the obscure (Maurin Quina), in addition to infusions and, of course, cocktails using French liquors like chartreuse. There are even some recipes for some snacks and bar syrups. Along with the recipes and background info, the book is packed with plenty of interesting cultural tidbits about French life, cuisine, and visits to restaurants, distilleries, and other destinations in France.
I enjoyed making some spiced tangerine syrup and rosemary syrup, as well as a few cocktails like the evolved revolver and the voila, and am looking forward to trying the rhubarb cordial currently infusing from our first harvest of fresh rhubarb from the garden.
In The Japanese Art of the Cocktail, a lush, elaborate coffee table type book, bartender Masahiro Urushido explores and celebrates his craft and details his development as a culinary innovator from rural Japan to New York City. In addition to going over the history and ideals of Japanese cocktails, including sake, shochu, and Japanese whisky, Urushido shares the philosophies that guide his flavors, including ice and celebrations of seasonal ingredients. Much of the work explores the cocktails he developed for his New York Japanese-American bar, Katana Kitten, which would definitely make it hard to choose which one to go for should I ever have the chance to visit.
These recipes, the heart of the book, are mostly on the advanced end of bartending, not something you would tackle due to a spur of the moment whim or craving. Even the simplest highball or boilermaker drawn from Katana Kitten’s menu are complex and time consuming, nearly all calling for at least one housemade ingredient yielding cups of infusions and tinctures. While they sound delicious, trying them out would require far more commitment and expense than some casual experimentation, though I could see it as being highly inspiring to culinary professionals. In addition to Urushido’s creations, he also includes some from various mentors, pioneers, and colleagues among Japanese bartenders, some of which are a little easier to tackle.
It would be fun to tackle one of Urushido’s boilermakers or something like the October Fizz, when I’m ready for a real challenge. Mostly, I’m inspired to hopefully visit the establishment someday.
A quick primer on an increasingly trendy liquor, Mezcal and Tequila Cocktails focuses on integrating mezcal into various typical cocktail forms. Discussing a little background on mezcal, including tequila, its most well known form outside of Mexico, author Robert Simonson details it as a complex and interesting beverage with a long history of craft in its native Mexico, more than just its US reputation as cheap booze for strong shots. Fermented from various forms of native agave, Simonson illustrates a heritage as deep and varied as US bourbon or French liquors only now becoming sought after by foreign markets.
As seen by its title, though, the bulk of the book consists of cocktail recipes taken from top bartenders and mixologists around the US, accentuating its range of flavors, from the smoky to the subtle. There are some interesting and tasty concoctions included, ideal for someone just trying out their taste for mezcal, but little is discussed on actual drinking traditions in Mexico, so it would be less useful as a cultural exploration of the subject.
While Wisconsin might be right next door, it’s home to some unique customs regarding booze, differing even from us in Minnesota, so it’s always an adventure to cross the St. Croix or Mississippi to visit our friendly rival, in this case through its cocktails. Author Jeanette Hurt’s Wisconsin Cocktails is an interesting account of the idiosyncratic drinking habits of Wisconsin, shedding light on the history of Wisconsin bar standards like the brandy old fashioned and the bloody mary. A state infamous for heavy drinking, even by the standards of the Midwest, I have good memories of enjoying typical Wisconsin libations while visiting the state capitol of Madison, so I was interested in Hurt’s detailed research on how these strange customs developed.
In addition to the history, Hurt compiles recipe examples of the various forms of cocktails endemic to the state, from vintage dairy based Supper Club creations such as the Brandy Alexander and the Tom and Jerry to more contemporary ones drawn from culinary professionals throughout the state. All in all, many of the recipes focus on Wisconsin-made ingredients which would limit their usefulness for those outside the Midwest, though I feel they could certainly be adapted. Also, the majority of them are definitely on the sweet side (with the exception of the savory Bloody Mary variations), so if you are looking for lighter or drier flavors, the Wisco style might not quite be the right fit for you.
Tiki drinks, with their retro exotic aesthetics and tropical flavors, definitely fit the bill for quarantine cocktails, relying on building a global ambiance to transform your space into a hidden vacation destination no matter the dreary circumstances outside. Chloe Frechette’s work Easy Tiki provides an interesting history of the tiki style, which was far more mysterious than I had known, including a variety of recipes to help create your own tiki cocktails.
Known for their complexity, layering dozens of flavors from the four categories of sour, sweet, strong, and weak in each drink, drawing in “tropical” inspiration from traditional Caribbean rums and pan-Pacific ingredients, much of the mid-twentieth century bartending innovations of such characters as Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic had long been lost. As tastes shifted to simpler “boat” or “resort” drinks later in the century, many of the more labor-intensive techniques for creating drinks like the zombie were forgotten. Frechette describes the painstaking research work by aficionados in piecing these lost beverages back together. However, little is said of the culturally appropriative orientalist nature of tiki, or how one might untangle the style from its explicitly colonialist atmosphere.
As for the recipes themselves, while aiming to provide simpler versions of the infamously layered concoctions, the number of various rums and juices required for even the simplest would make this most useful for people willing to devote a lot of their time and money to the art of tiki for a while, though I am quite interested in trying out some of the recipes listed for homemade syrups, such as the orgeat. Frechette also includes a list of tiki-style establishments to visit throughout the world (circa 2020, at least).
If all of this imagined world travel is making you yearn to get out of the house, heading out on a camping trip can be one of the safest quarantine adventures, and we are lucky to have a lot of well maintained and picturesque state parks within a day’s drive within all directions of the Twin Cities. Even when it seems everyone else has the same thought, the wide outdoor spaces keep risks down and the biggest worry is making sure you can get reservations early enough. While alcoholic beverages are technically not allowed in Minnesota state parks, I’ve never noticed anyone pay too much attention to what campers might have in their flasks, which is where Emily Vikre’s Camp Cocktails comes in.
A co-founder of Vikre Distilling, one of Minnesota’s coolest craft distilleries, Vikre’s vibrant collection provides some fun ideas for taking your bartending into the wilderness. Nestled picturesquely under the Lift Bridge in Duluth’s Lake Superior waterfront district, Vikre would be a great starting point for some outdoor adventures along Minnesota’s North Shore and their products would, of course, be ideal in many of the cocktails included here.
While there isn’t too much new in terms of the cocktails themselves (including various interpretations of common standards like boulevardiers, margaritas, old fashioneds, and white russians), the advice presented for taking them with you whether you’re backpacking, boating, sitting around the campfire, or going up to the cabin are useful and fun. The information given on using seasonally foraged ingredients in your beverages was particularly interesting, adding a cool new activity to any hiking or camping trip.
So, how about something a little more otherworldly than simply the great outdoors?
Silly but fun, Shawn Engel and Steven Nichols’ cocktail grimoire Witch’s Brew brings the current enthusiasm for witchcraft into craft cocktails. While I might not believe in the “energy of objects” or that rituals really affect anything, I am definitely a fan of the occult ascetics of “folk magick” that Engel and Nichols infuse into each of these mystically themed recipes.
However, in addition to making sure each recipe adheres to the symbolic significance of their themes, such as including the correct lunar phase to best harness the potential of each beverage, there are some innovative and interesting uses of ingredients and flavors here that seem unique. From the tarot to divination, with my favorites being the elements, each cocktail included is a mini-ritual intended to enact certain energies, though just enjoying the act of crafting a drink can affect your mood. I also really enjoyed that, for each recipe, a nonalcoholic variation was included, making it useful even for magical teetotalers.
Speaking of teetotalers, Lovecraft Cocktails is a boozy follow-up to Mike Slater’s Cthulhu Mythos-themed cookbook Necronomnomnom (reviewed in my entry on Pop Culture Cookbooks a couple of years ago). Showcasing some eldritch cocktail alchemy, like Slater’s previous culinary work, the spooky concoctions included here rely heavily on puns to reference the work of H.P. Lovecraft and his various acolytes for things like the “Pickman’s Modelo” and the “Doom that Came to Sazerac.” As noted by Slater in the preface, there is little here to appeal to the “uninitiated” as the references come in long and deep. Complimented again by Kurt Komoda’s atmospheric art, each recipe is parsed as an occult ritual in an ancient book of secret knowledge, though they are a little easier to parse than Necronomnomnom, and all in all, I find the results a little more appealing.
Still, the results are often sweet, sticky, and artificially hued, calling for a lot of ingredients popular during the “dark ages” of mixology like peach or peppermint schnapps, raspberry liquor, and blue curacao. I’m not really sure I need to subject myself to the candy coated booze of a “sunken island iced tea” or a scaley naval, though some really do forge some unique and interesting flavor combinations, like a “De Vermis Mezcalis” or “Kill it with Fire.”
Basing a cocktail book around the work of a notorious teetotaller is a bit funny in itself, but as Slater writes Lovecraft had a number of unfortunate opinions (link to Lovecraft blog), so maybe he should have tied on a few? Frankly, I’m not sure that would’ve helped matters, but who cares what Lovecraft thinks when we can have fun making themed mixed drinks based on his neuroses?
It can be nice to have some nonalcoholic elixirs though, and for much of our quarantine time my partner and I were working for a baby, so I also checked out some resources for making elaborate mixed drinks without the booze. Whether attempting to riff on popular cocktail types like mojitos and palomas or simply fusing bright, aromatic syrups and juices for a refreshing or stimulating effect, the advice contained in works like Clare Liardet’s Dry, Caroline Hwang’s Mocktails, and Maureen Petrosky’s Zero Proof were great ways to keep having fun beverages during those periods where my partner had to abstain. Both Dry and Mocktails have a seasonal focus, arranging their libations to complement spring through winter tastes. Hwang arranges her recipes in Mocktails with dynamic, simple photos listing each ingredient visually in addition to textually, which I found particularly useful and my favorite visually of the bunch.
Working with shrubs, fresh fruit and herbs, and even salt and spice mixes, each creates vibrant drinks in which you can hardly miss the booze (well, mostly anyway). Liardet includes a few cocktails that focus on Seedlip or other alcohol-free spirits that have lately come on the market. In Zero Proof, Petrosky even includes a chapter on low ABV cocktails for when you do want a bit of a buzz from a little liquor but don’t want to go overboard, such as the reverse Manhattan.
As can be seen, I’ve had a little time on my hands lately and, along with the stress of keeping a baby safe, I’ve had plenty of time to browse these handbooks and select a few for an evening pick-me-up when needed. As a whole, these books are best checked out of your local library and plundered for ideas, I feel.