photo by Sunny Yau

The Bloody Mary is pretty much the only savory cocktail most people are familiar with, and as such, it’s subject to about a million variations. The traditional Bloody Mary is relatively simple, calling for just lemon juice, vodka, and tomato juice. There’s a lot of room for improvement and experimentation there, so feel free to play around and create your own version. If you want an idea of just how many variations of the Bloody Mary there are check out this New York Times article. Personally, I use thai basil infused vodka (previous article on how to infuse) instead of plain vodka, and substitute the celery salt rim with a mixture of salt and smoked paprika.

Bloody Mary

• 2 Oz. Vodka
• 4 Oz. Tomato Juice
• lemon juice to taste
• Worcestershire sauce to taste
• Hot sauce to taste
• Celery salt

Rim a highball glass with the celery salt, and fill with glass. Mix the remaining ingredients together and pour into the highball glass.

Photo from dia.org

This year marks the 125th anniversary of the DIA, and Sak’s Fifth Avenue is opening up their new Contemporary Collection’s as well. To celebrate, they’re teaming up to throw one of the biggest parties of the year with designer Robert Robert Rodriguez.

From the Founder’s Junior Council:

Thursday, August 26, 6 pm At Saks Troy Celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the DIA and the Grand Opening of SFA’s new Contemporary Collections with cocktails & hors d’oeuvres, live DJ, a personal appearance by designer Robert Rodriguez and the hottest fashion show in town!

Tickets include a $25 gift card to Saks.

Tickets are available here. For more information, contact Tim Burns at 313-833-4025.

Photo via Flickr user ReeseCLloyd

Unofficially the national drink of Bermuda, the dark and stormy is a perfect sip on a hot summer afternoon. It’s absurdly easy to make (if you can make a gin and tonic, you can make a dark and stormy), delicious, and about as refreshing as it gets.

Since it’s just two ingredients (dark rum and ginger beer), you really have to make sure to use high quality ginger beer. Homemade is best (really good recipe here), but if you don’t want to make your own, there are some high quality ginger beers available for purchase at a lot of grocery stores. The traditional brand for dark and stormy’s is Barret’s, but other flavorful ginger beers will work just as well.

For the rum, dark is really the only choice. Your best bet is Black Seal rum, but if you can’t get that, Cruzan Estates, or Brugal are perfectly acceptable.

Dark and Stormy

• 1.5 oz. Dark Rum
• ginger beer to taste
• Lime wedge (optional garnish)

Fill a highball glass with ice, and add the rum. Pour in the ginger beer to fill the glass and stir gently. Garnish with a lime wedge (optional).

So you just moved into your own place, just turned 21, or decided you actually wanted to get serious about making drinks; what do you do next? If you’re just planning on doing making mixed drinks, and don’t plan on buying any liquor to sip on straight, you can get by spending a little less (skip the single-malt scotch unless you know you want it), but not too little or you’ll end up with undrinkable crap.

Here’s what I suggest you get if you’re planning on having something decent. You can even do it for under $100: (more…)

Commercial flavored vodka is tends to be pretty gross. I’ve tried many different types, and after I drank one sip I almost swore off of flavored spirits altogether. Yet, upon reflection, there’s no need for the entirety of flavored vodkas to be represented by commercial drinks–take limoncello, a lemon-infused liqueur.

The trick to limoncello, along with a whole slew of other flavorful liquors and liqueurs is a basic technique called infusion. Infusing is basically a fancy way of saying “I left something flavorful in a bottle of high-proof alcohol and waited a few days.” Try it at least once, because I can’t think of any more useful or easy way to vary up your bar and impress guests.

Photo by Flickr user Cloudforest

Probably one of the simplest infusions I can think of is limoncello, an Italian lemon liquer, which looks beautiful and tastes great. For limoncello, you basically just need to soak a lot of lemon zest (lemon ‘skin’ for those not familiar with the term) in some sort of high proof grain alcohol for a couple weeks—vodka or everclear work great. Be careful not to get any of the white, bitter pith in. After you’ve done that, strain your liquid and add simple syrup. Upon addition of the syrup, the citrus oils emulsified in the liquor should fall out of suspension and make the liquid cloudy; this is a good thing, and it means you’ve made your limoncello right, so pat yourself on the back and put the limoncello in an air tight bottle in the freezer. Serve it ice cold. If you’d like a proper recipe, this one works just fine.

Photo by Flickr user Chris JD

If you’re entertaining, another easy and cool flavored liquor is Skittles Vodka. All you have to do is:

1. Take a large bag of Skittles, and separate by color.

2. Soak them in vodka for a day.

3. Strain the mixture, and marvel at your brightly-colored, Skittles-flavored vodka.

That’s it.

I also like to infuse fresh herbs for uniquely flavored cocktails that you just can’t make with store-bought alcohol. One of my favorite herbs in general is thai basil, and it’s super easy to infuse. All you need is a bunch of basil, and a fifth of vodka.

Recipe: Thai Basil Vodka

• 1 cup thai basil leaves
• 1 fifth vodka

Pour the vodka into a pitcher or large mason jar, and keep in a cool dark place for about a day. Strain the mixture back into the original bottle, or into another air-tight storage container, and use for some damn good cocktails.

Other herbs and spices to try: Basil, rosemary, mint, coffee, star anise, pretty much anything you can think of.

Highly acclaimed Chef Grant Achatz (of the famous Alinea Restaurant in Chicago) just announced two new restaurants for the area: Aviary and Next.

It appears as though Next will be an exploration of world cuisine, and Aviary will be something resembling a cocktail lounge. However, instead of bartenders, chefs will prepare the cocktails. Next will have a menu that changes four times a year, inspired by a different cuisine each time, and the tickets for Next will have a flexible price dependent on what time and day of the week you eat there. Presumably, busier times will cost more and less busy times will cost less. Prices for Next are expected to range from $40-$75 per person, and prices for Aviary have not been announced; both are expected to be much more moderately priced than Alinea ($150-$200+ per person).

The only other information so far is a brief FAQ and a somewhat cryptic video on the website, see below:

The Margarita is one of my favorite cocktails, but it’s nearly impossible to find a decent one.  This is probably because every part of it has been commercialized. First off, margarita salt is a waste of money; yes, salting the rim is important, but it’s as easy as using flake salt and lime juice.  If you’ve been making your margaritas with bottled sour mix, please throw that crap away, it’s tasteless. Fresh limes will give infinitely better results. If you’re at a heavily trafficked bar or nightclub you might be able to expect a sub-par margarita, but never ever make one for yourself at home. There’s no reason to; it’s so easy to make something great-tasting. Seriously, do it right, throw away those neon green monstrosities and actually enjoy a real margarita.

Ingredients

• 2 oz. tequila (I used Repasado, but for a cleaner taste use a silver tequila. Make sure your tequila is 100% agave, regardless of brand. Patron is overpriced.)
• 1 1/2 oz. triple sec (Cointreau is preferred, and never use Grand Marnier–the cognac is overpowering)
• 1 oz fresh lime juice
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• ice
• lime wedge for garnish
• rocks or cocktail glass
• salt for rimming the glass

The first step to a good margarita is salting the rim of your glass; just run a lime wedge around the brim of your glass, and lightly dip the rim into salt. The key here is to have a nice thin layer of salt, not a thick crust. After that, combine enough ice to fill the shaker halfway with your tequila, triple sec, lime juice, and sugar in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for about 10 seconds. Strain the cocktail shaker into your salt-rimmed glass, and garnish with a lime wedge.

photo by Winnie Jeng

Photo by Winnie Jeng

Okay, so that’s probably not a good idea, but you can participate in the internet’s most creative cocktail party.

One Monday a month bloggers get together and post cocktail recipes revolving a central theme. There have been some pretty cool themes in the past including: absinthe, tea, champagne, and money drinks. This Monday’s (3/22/10) was punch, and I’ll post a link to the compiled results as soon as they go up.

Mixology Monday was started by one of my favorite cocktail blogs, The Cocktail Chronicles in 2006 and has been a staple with food bloggers ever since.

Check it out here.