A few months ago Jon was looking through a book of cocktails and found an interesting but slightly complicated drink that itself a variation of another cocktail called a Boulevardier. Apparently a classic, but one we’d never heard of, we decided to try the original drink immediately, and have made it many, many times since. We still haven’t made the variation.

The Boulevardier is like a combination of a Negroni and a Manhattan: rye, vermouth and campari. And it has many of the best qualities of both drinks. The campari is what I taste first, with its fruity bitterness, then the rye’s warmth comes up from underneath. Every sip seems a little bit different. Our recipe says not to garnish the drink, but I like it quite a lot with a good twist of orange peel.

We’re not the only ones enjoying this drink recently – there was a nice discussion of it in the New York Times last week. See how fashionable we are?

Boulevardier

• 1 ½ oz rye or bourbon (some recipes call for 2 oz)
• 1 oz sweet vermouth
• 1 oz campari

Stir all ingredients with ice, then strain into either a cocktail glass or over ice into a rocks glass. Garnish, if you like, with orange or lemon peel.

Guest post by our house mixologist, Jon!

I first discovered cardamom as a freshman in college. I was making a recipe from the Tassajara Recipe Book for an apple-cardamom quick bread. A trek to the More-4 (the grocery store in Northfield at that time) proved successful, and I immediately fell in love with the spice.

Fast forward a couple decades to my current fascination with the world of cocktails. Bitters are a key ingredient in many cocktails (some would argue that a true cocktail, by definition, has bitters in it). I started with Angostura, of course, and then tracked down bottles of Peychaud’s and Regan’s Orange Bitters #6. And then I heard about Scrappy’s. Scrappy’s is a local company (in Seattle), and they make…cardamom bitters!

I must have some of these cardamom bitters, I said to myself. And I’ve kept saying it to myself for the past year. You see, the only places I’ve found that carry Scrappy’s? They’re all out of the cardamom bitters. The bars where I’ve been able to taste it? They’re running low. From what I can tell, Scrappy’s cardamom bitters have been a victim of their own success. Supply can’t keep up with demand.

Meanwhile, life has gone on. I’ve looked up recipes on how to make bitters (including Jamie Boudreau’s ridiculous recipe that makes over 5 liters of the stuff), but the time was never right. And then a couple of weeks ago, the snow fell. And fell. And fell. School was cancelled for a week. Our one significant outing took us by a liquor store that had one bottle of Everclear, and I bought it.

And the experimentation began!

I started by following the recipe for a cardamom tincture in Left Coast Libations. That recipe says to steep 1 Tbs of decorticated cardamom seeds in 2 oz of neutral grain spirits (Everclear) for 4 to 6 weeks, shaking everyday. I was prepared to believe it, but the mix was noticeably colored after just a few days, and I just had to taste some after a scant week – already very strongly cardamom scented and flavored. I forced myself to leave it for most of another week, while I got a second tincture going. This one was coriander seed, in the same quantities, and I let it steep for just one week.

The original plan was to have equal quantities of the two, with which I could then experiment with blending until I found just the right proportions. A mishap while filtering cost me about a quarter of the cardamom tincture, though, and I didn’t really want to waste what I had left fussing over ratios. Okay, okay. I got impatient. I mixed my remaining 1½ oz of cardamom tincture with ½ oz of the coriander, and called it good. It may not truly be “bitters,” since it has no gentian, or milk thistle, or any of the other bizarre ingredients used to add bitter flavor, but it is good. Very good.

At this point, the only way I’ve tried the finished cardamom-coriander tincture is by adding a few drops to a glass of seltzer (which frankly, is a really nice way to enjoy them).  I bet they’d be good with rum, and they’ll make an exciting change to an otherwise classic Manhattan. The remaining coriander tincture I envision using in a gin-based drink – perhaps with Hendricks and cucumber. We’ll report our findings.

It’s always nice to find a new place to drink beer. Not that we have any lack of beer up here in Mount Vernon, but when you’re in need of a place to hang out in the Ballard/Greenwood/Fremont area of Seattle it’s handy to find a good casual beer joint. The Dray on 65th Street is that sort of place – lots of regulars, warm wood walls and fixtures, soccer on the TV at all times, a short sandwich menu, and a really fine selection of beers on draft. The first time we stopped in they had Pliny the Elder, a hard-to-find IPA from Russian River that tends to disappear fast wherever it crops up, despite its slightly high price tag. Last time I was there I had a Green Flash Hop Head Red, an extremely excellent beer for those of us with a taste for the bitter. And they also had the Weed IPA, which I haven’t ever seen outside of the Weed Alehouse. The kegs change pretty briskly, from what I’ve seen, so you never know what you might be able to get there.

Also, there’s a squirrel on the wall of the bathroom. You might want to see it first while sober, so it doesn’t take you by surprise later.

I had various ideas for posts to put up this week, but then it snowed and everything went to hell. Which is basically what happens when it snows in Western Washington. Whether it’s half an inch or twenty inches, schools close, people stay home from work, grocery shelves get depleted, and Twitter and Facebook turn into unending streams of complaints and snow pictures. We stayed home, turned on the fire, and made cocktails.

It’s been a while since Jon has done much drink experimentation – we’ve been happy with our repertoire of drinks, with an occasional new addition. But the unexpected down time this week inspired him to try several new recipes. Here are the ones we tried (and lest this list seem alarmingly long, keep in mind we’ve had all week to get through these):

The Day Off

• 1.5 oz bourbon (we use Bulleit)
• 0.5 oz Aperol
• 1 oz pomegranate juice

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist. (Note: the drink in the picture was shaken, not stirred, which is why it has foam on top. We recommend stirring for a clearer cocktail.)

Snowed In

• 1.5 oz bourbon
• 1 oz Averna
• 0.5 oz Carpano Antica formula vermouth
• 0.5 oz pomegranate juice

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

The Snow Day

• 1 oz rye
• 1 oz Lillet blanc
• 0.5 oz lemon juice
• 0.5 oz triple sec
• dash absinthe

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Jon’s note: “I think this one may still want a little tweaking. The concept is good, but the balance isn’t quite right.”

The Pitchfork

• 0.75 oz aquavit
• 0.75 oz Carpano Antica formula vermouth
• 0.75 oz Averna
• 3 dashes rhubarb bitters

Stir with ice and serve on the rocks.
Jon’s note: “This is my variation on the Trident, which is itself a variation of a Negroni. The Trident takes the Negroni recipe and swaps aquavit for the gin, dry sherry for the vermouth, and Cynar for the Campari, and then adds peach bitters. I’ve brought back the vermouth, used Averna instead of Cynar and rhubarb bitters in place of peach.”

Manhattan variation:  Averna instead of vermouth, and rhubarb bitters instead of Angostura. Served on the rocks, no garnish. This was nice.

Brooklyn variation: St. Germain instead of vermouth and Averna instead of Torani Amer.

And finally, my favorite discovery of the week: the Norwegian Sunset. Imbibe Magazine just posted this as part of their online newsletter and we made it immediately. It’s wonderful – the rich vermouth and amaro balancing the caraway of the aquavit. I loved it. Will make again.

Norwegian Sunset

• 1 1/2 oz. aquavit (we used Linie, but we’re guessing that Krogstad would be even better)
• 3/4 oz. Aperol
• 1/2 oz. Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
• Garnish: 5 drops Regan’s orange bitters

Combine the aquavit, aperol and vermouth in a shaker and stir with ice. Strain into a chilled coupe and garnish with the bitters.

On Tuesday of last week, we had driven to Issaquah to pick up my work from an art show and decided to go home by way of Seattle. We ended up in Capitol Hill exactly at 5 o’clock, just in time to get a seat at the bar at Canon, Jamie Boudreau’s new place (which is in the old Licorous location, btw). And if that weren’t cool enough, our bartender turned out to be none other than the legendary Murray Stenson, previously of Zig Zag Cafe. He said he had only worked half a dozen shifts or so at Canon, and he was still feeling his way around the bar, but it was a true pleasure to finally get to watch him at work.

The cocktail menu had some interesting drinks on it, but none of them seemed quite what we wanted. Murray pierced us each with a penetrating stare and asked a few pertinent questions (clear or brown? bitter or sweet?) After a short interrogation, he determined that what I wanted was a drink made with either bourbon or rye, bitter or herbal in tone, but soft and easy. He whisked away and poked around in the shelves, returning shortly with a cocktail. A version of the Currier (this was the only drink name we were able to get out of Murray all night), it had Buffalo Trace bourbon, Rose’s lime juice, fresh lime and kummel, a caraway-scented liqueur. Really interesting, balanced and complex.

Jon’s first drink was a gorgeous concoction of excellent rum and amaro and I forget what else. It was delicious. I have no memory of his second drink, except that I know it had Campari in it. Dang, I knew I should have been taking notes. I do remember that we had a plate of ricotta gnudi with kale and shiitakes that was truly delightful and paired rather well with our first round.

As we sat admiring the liquor collection, my eye was caught by the tequila selection almost immediately over my head. I asked if I could have something with tequila for my second cocktail, and Murray’s eyes lit up. “Oh yeah!” he said, and dashed off. The drink that appeared before me definitely had tequila and green Chartreuse, but I’m not at all sure what else. Some sort of juice, and a bit of lime zest. It paired perfectly with the Barron Point oysters we were eating.

Needless to say, Canon is an amazing bar (dare I say, even on a night when Murray isn’t working). We are SO going back as soon as possible.

When you’ve just spent a substantial amount of time quietly freaking out about something, getting unexpected good news may well send you straight to the nearest bar to try to process the emotional reversal. Last week, after spending the afternoon at Virginia Mason Hospital and being reassured by a reliable source that my husband would most likely NOT need a horrible sounding medical procedure, we headed right for Barrio and began consuming celebratory cocktails, including one made of extremely ferocious ghost-chile-infused tequila. Plus a lot of their most excellent guacamole.

Then we went to Volunteer Park and sat together, enjoying the view.

For a long time I wasn’t really sure what a daiquiri was. I first learned of its existence from old Doonesbury comic strips, back when Duke was governor of Samoa and went through gallons of banana daiquiri. I thought it sounded exotic but disgusting, and never tried one. Recently I became aware that, while there are still horrible sugary-fruity-yuck versions of the daiquiri floating around, the original really didn’t sound that bad: just rum, lime juice, sugar. An actual drink for grownups: a little tart, a little sweet. Huh. We had a bunch of limes left over from our party, so one sunny afternoon I asked Jon to make me a daiquiri. He did. And it was good.

Classic Daiquiri

Loads of versions out there, obviously. This one is from Speakeasy, by Kosmas & Zaric. It was tasty. And large.

• 2 ½ oz Flor de Caña rum (or some other rum, but this is a nice light one)
• 1 oz fresh lime juice
• ¾ oz simple syrup
• 1 lime wheel for garnish

Shake the rum, juice and syrup with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with the lime wheel.

We’ve just begun to recover from our week-long road trip to Santa Cruz to visit my brother-in-law. We spent two days driving south, a few days there, then three days coming back. We hit an astounding number of brewpubs along the way. Here’s a (rather long) photo essay of some of the week’s eats and drinks.

We left Mount Vernon bright and early, with our first stop at Hopworks in Portland. It was pouring down rain (my feet got soaked just going the short distance from the car to the door), but the brewpub was bright and cozy and the Women’s World Cup was just starting. We could happily have stayed there all day, but we dragged ourselves away at halftime.

The sandwiches were excellent, especially the chicken ancho, and the salad had chunks of Rogue Creamery blue cheese almost too big to eat. Plus their beer is amazing – I had a pint of Evelyn’s Sunshine Imperial IPA, which was badly needed after our drive through the storm.

After a long drive through Oregon, we stopped in Grants Pass, where a friend of ours is in the midst of an internship. We didn’t have any particularly good leads on food here, so we checked out the Wild River Brewpub. The beer was decent, especially the IPA, and they had the best coaster wall I’ve ever seen. The food was so-so: my fish tacos were only redeemed from fatal mediocrity by the vast quantities of fresh guacamole piled next to them. I’ll put up with a lot if it comes with guacamole.

We spent the night in Medford, had a very dull breakfast in the motel office accompanied by FOX news, then headed off through the rain across the Siskiyous. We had an early enough start that we managed to get to Chico by lunchtime, so as to try out the Sierra Nevada Brewery taproom.

It was large. And fancy. We tried some of the few beers not available at our grocery store at home, ate some really good onion rings, then got a lamb pita and a barbecue beef sandwich.

The pita, which had been advertised as “petite” on the menu, was so big that the waiter asked me how I planned to fit any part of it into my mouth. I ate half of it and took the other half away to eat in the motel the next morning. We continued on to Santa Cruz.

When we’re in Santa Cruz one of our favorite places to go is Kelly’s French Bakery. One morning we walked down to the ocean and back, then stopped at the bakery and got polenta with poached eggs, plus a bowl of perfectly roasted potatoes with more eggs on the side. Another morning we had croissant sandwiches. If this place was just down the street from our house I’d be in big trouble.

One day my brother-in-law’s partner took me to lunch at a favorite Mexican place. We sat on a sunporch overlooking a creek, and I ordered machaca, something I’ve never seen before. It was a tasty pile of shredded beef, scrambled eggs, peppers and fresh jalapenos, with rice, tortillas and beans on the side, for under $7. I ate maybe half of it and took the rest back for breakfast. When I ordered it the waiter became very concerned that I should be warned about the jalapenos, and I had to reassure him that I did actually want to eat them. They were excellent.

After lunch we stopped by Penny Ice Cream to pick up a pint or two for that evening. This is a pretty amazing place – I tried the basil ice cream and the strawberry-pink peppercorn, and both were wonderful. Robert tasted the bourbon-bacon-chocolate which I was distrustful of, but he seemed to like it. We got the strawberry-pepper and some chocolate sorbet for the rest of the family, both of which went over very well indeed.

On another day we went to lunch at Cafe Cruz in Soquel. It’s a very nice place, known for its rotisserie chicken. My husband and his brother intelligently ordered salads, which looked amazing, but I of course had to get the chicken and green chile sandwich which turned out to be as big as my head and was buried in onion rings. I would have regretted it deeply if it hadn’t been so goddamn tasty.

Our order was a little slow coming, as there was a food photographer in the courtyard doing a shoot for the restaurant website, and the kitchen seemed preoccupied with taking him gorgeous plates of food. One of these plates included a pile of fresh homemade potato chips that was driving me mad to look at – I kept wondering who was going to get to eat them.

When we left Santa Cruz on Friday it was foggy and a bit chilly. By the time we were well up into the Sacramento Valley it was 98 degrees. We had bought a salad at Kelly’s and were keeping an eye out for a nice place to pull out and eat it, when we happened to stop in Winters. Much to our surprise and pleasure, it’s a really nice little town. We ate our salad in a green park under shade trees, then walked across the street to a charming little place called Steady Eddy’s where they refilled our water bottle with ice and made us really excellent iced lattes. Their pastries were good, they had a nice selection of beer and a panini menu that looked really promising. We were also enticed by the tapas place next door and the wine place on the other side, but it was the wrong time of day. Alas. If we ever get the chance to stop in Winters again you bet we will.

We stopped in Weed, CA for the night. Partly just to break up the trip, but also because my great-grandparents lived here back in the 1940s and I was curious what it was like. We ended up spending the evening in the Weed Alehouse, drinking remarkably good beer from the Mount Shasta Brewing Company and listening to live music.

Of the beers we tried, I liked the Mountain High IPA best, but the Golden Ale was really pleasant and the jalapeno beer had an intense green chile flavor and kick. The food menu looked pretty basic, but we didn’t try anything as we had just had Sichuan leftovers in our motel room.

(It was ma po tofu and a-choy from O’mei in Santa Cruz. Really spicy and really, really good.)

We had intended to go by way of Crater Lake the next day, but a loud party next door combined with a truly atrocious AC unit kept us from sleeping much. We slept in later than we had planned, then consoled ourselves with breakfast at the Hi-Lo Cafe down the street before heading north towards Portland.

If I hadn’t been gathering rave reviews from all over the internet, I would never have gone into this place. But as it turned out, the food was fresh and well cooked, the coffee was…well…drinkable, and the orange juice was incredibly good (they had a weird orange robotic-looking juicer behind the counter). I had corned beef hash and Jon had biscuits and gravy, and both were excellent. The hashbrowns were a little disappointing, being cut a bit wide for my taste and not as crispy as I would like, but I was hardly in danger of starving.

We stopped off in Eugene to visit the Ninkasi Brewery. This may be our favorite beer in the world, so I was really excited to try their full line. The Quantum Pale, which they have not bottled, was very good and had the advantage of not being quite so alarmingly high in alcohol as most of their other beers.

They don’t have a kitchen at the brewpub, but they host various food carts in their patio and they keep a selection of locally made soups, pretzels and pasties on hand. We tried the pasties, made by Cousin Jack’s Pasty Company, in the Steak & Ale, Wild Mushroom, and Broccoli and Cheese flavors. Not bad at all, and excellent ballast for beer drinking.

We celebrated the final night of our trip with drinks and dinner at Beaker & Flask in Portland. I’ve been wanting to go here for ages, but it’s a little tricky to get to when we’re in town without a car. They have an exciting list of original cocktails and a beautiful, carefully planned menu of both small and large plates. We had an amazing dinner, starting with the smoked trout deviled eggs and ending with panna cotta and beignets with strawberry-basil sauce. I’m not sure I can even talk about everything else we had. Let’s just say, it was good.

We made it home the next day, tired of the car and happy to see our kitties again. But it was a good road trip.

We’ve missed the last few Mixology Mondays, for various reasons, but when we saw that May’s theme was floral cocktails (hosted over at The Barman Cometh), we made a special effort to get something together. There are quite a few floral-based cocktails we like, particularly the Deep Blue Sea (violet) and the Vieux Mot (elderflower). We thought it would be fun to come up with something new with one of those flavors, so Jon did some experimenting these last couple of weeks, then wrote this:

As Jessamyn has already mentioned, I recently got a copy of the very fine book Left Coast Libations.  While many of the recipes therein have immediately grabbed me, demanding to be made, other recipes have remained more aloof.

Case in point, the Pear Sonata.  I’m just not a big fan of dusting a drink with ground cinnamon, and even if I were, there’s no way in hell I’m going to make pear foam.  Pear foam?  Really?

However, after letting the recipe percolate in my mind for a while, I began to recognize that for all of its weird trappings, the Pear Sonata has good, solid bones to it.  Gin, St. Germain, dry vermouth, and lemon juice.  Nothing wrong there.  What if I were to tweak the proportions a bit, leave off the pear foam (really?), and let the St. Germain shine through?  It seemed worth a try.

I began with a base of Bluecoat gin.  Bluecoat, made here in the US, has quickly become one of our very favorite gins, with a distinctly citrusy note to it, which I thought would work well with the St. Germain, which I boosted to a full jigger’s worth.  Lemon juice and dry vermouth, and in a nod to the original Pear Sonata recipe, just a dash of Clear Creek pear brandy.

A twist of orange to garnish.  I find that I have grown very fond of using orange to garnish drinks containing lemon juice – it’s similar enough not to clash, yet different enough to add a little extra dimension to the drink.  And as I was about to present it, Jessamyn added her own touch: a single lilac flower.

Elderflower Descant

• 1 oz. Bluecoat gin
• ¾ oz. St Germain
• ½ oz. lemon juice
• ½ oz. Dolin dry vermouth
• dash Clear Creek pear brandy

Shake well with ice and strain.  Garnish with a long twist of orange and a lilac flower.

We’ve continued on our recent kick of trying new cocktails, mostly from Left Coast Libations but occasionally dipping back into other cocktail references. The trouble is, if we don’t write down what we’re trying, we forget the names almost instantly. When I went through my photos from the last few weeks to see what I had shot in the way of cocktails, I found several – but I had only a vague idea of which drinks they had been.

This one I’m pretty sure was the Historic Core, created by Joseph Brooke in LA. It had Rittenhouse rye, apple brandy, Chartreuse, Carpano Antica vermouth, Angostura bitters and lemon peel. I remember it as being interesting but not riveting.

This one was a complete mystery to me. I liked how Jon zested the orange, but I had no memory of the drink itself. When I asked, he said it was a variation on a drink called an Ueno San, with rye instead of bourbon, cocchi americano instead of Lillet, orange bitters instead of peach bitters, and Carpano Antica. So there you go. I suppose we might experiment more with that one.

Maybe I should take better notes.