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Meyer Lemon Whiskey Sour

20 May

While I would not classify myself as a collector of cookbooks, it cannot be denied that at least one of our dining room bookshelves has been noted to contain more cookbooks than books of a non-recipe variety.  Most of these cookbooks have been procured during the years that my husband and I have been married, with a few notable exceptions.  I brought into our marriage a half dozen or so vegetarian cookbooks and a couple of copies of Joy of Cooking, and my husband entered our union with this:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that, were there points awarded for most useful and interesting books brought into a dual partnership agreement, the tally of points at the end of the inaugural round would look something like this:

Me: 15 points

Husband: 1,000,000 points

This book is, in short, fantastic.  In addition to containing nearly 800 classic cocktail recipes, the book also contains a hefty 100 or so pages dedicated to the history, lore, and usage of different liquors, wines, beers, and accompaniments, and how those different items can be used to complement one another (totally useful). There is also an added hors d’oeuvres chapter, which includes separate sections on both caviar and foie gras (slightly less useful, but still appreciated).

Best of all, this book, written by Playboy’s longtime food and drink editor and culled from previously published articles dating back as far as 1955 (the book’s original publication date is 1971), reads like an instruction manual for those looking for tips on how to be a consummately urbane gentleman of the world—five decades ago.  You enjoy vodka and clear turtle consommé.  You serve daiquiris on your cabin cruiser, and precise and masterly cocktails at your June bachelor dinner.  You are a man of all seasons.  Not a conspicuous fusspot, the book clarifies, but a man of refined tastes.

Admittedly, not everyone will enjoy this book as much as I do, especially if one is offended by references to Canadian whiskeys having a strong appeal for the distaff side (it’s sweet and soft, you know, for the ladies), or is annoyed by a drink being classified as perfect “for unwinding after 18 holes on the fairway.”  While it’s true that those statements are mildly obnoxious, I have no problem reading past them.  Then again, any book that cautions a fellow against drinking for quantity rather than quality, and also takes the time to distinguish a drink as being a “postprandial” fit, is always going to be a winner by me.

Earlier this week, when the temperature hit 70 degrees for only the fourth time this year, I, fortified with knowledge about the mature American drinking man, and in possession of some dashing and petite Meyer lemons, decided to unearth the cocktail shaker and take my first step towards entering the “method school for the modern man at his drinking cabinet.”

Not surprisingly, my education started with me completely blowing the recipe apart.  Not having blended whiskey or the required number of lemons, I improvised a bit.  When I found a nearly empty bag of frozen sour cherries in the freezer, there was no way I couldn’t include them.  The more ridiculous things I did to the standard cocktail, the more delicious it looked.  And, in the end, it was a delicious drink, though not exactly what I think Mr. Thomas Mario had in mind.

Meyer Lemon Whiskey Sour

Inspired by Playboy’s Host and Bar Book

I am not a huge fan of sweet drinks, so my version of this drink is on the tart side.  If you wish to make a sweeter drink, increase the amount of sugar as directed.  Alternately, I’ll bet that if you used all Meyer lemon juice, as opposed to the half-lemon-half-lime combination that I used, you’d end up with a drink that is much less tart (Meyer lemons are not nearly as sour as their standard lemon counterparts).  If you do this, dial back the sugar initially and see if your all Meyer lemon juice drink is sweet enough.  If it’s lacking the sweetness you desire, go ahead and add a bit more sugar, ¼ teaspoon at a time, then re-shake and re-taste until you find the drink acceptable.

1 large or 2 small Meyer lemons

1 lime

½ to 1 teaspoon sugar

3 sour cherries, fresh or frozen

2 ounces whiskey

ice

Juice your Meyer lemons and lime until you have a combination of ¾ ounces of freshly squeezed juice.  Combine juice, one half of an already squeezed Meyer lemon, your desired amount of sugar, and 2 sour cherries in a cocktail shaker.  Using the handle of a wooden spoon, muddle the citrus, sugar, and cherry mixture for roughly 10 seconds, until the sugar has been pulverized into the other ingredients.  Add whiskey and a handful of ice to the shaker, cover, and shake vigorously.  Taste to adjust sweetness.  For a less tart drink, add more sugar, re-shake, and taste again.

Strain into a short glass filled with ice.  Garnish with 1 sour cherry.

Makes 1 drink.

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Quick and Easy Citrus Crepes with Berry Sauce

6 May

While I am no stranger to the concept of tackling a recipe that may require what seems to some people a ridiculous or unreasonable amount of wait time (although I will defend to the death the argument that granola really does taste best when baked at a low heat for two hours, and that the flavor of bread really does rocket to a whole new level of tasty when started with a sponge), there are times when even I look at a recipe and think, “You want me to set this batter aside for 6 hours before I use it?  Are you kidding me?”

Such was my reaction when trying to hunt down a simple and satisfying recipe for crepes one weekend morning.  Logic may dictate that the more intelligent thing to do would have been to look for an appropriate recipe the evening before (when resting crepe batter in the fridge coincides with resting yourself in bed), but, and I am sure I am not alone when I say this, I didn’t know I wanted crepes for breakfast when I went to bed.  Since, however, I certainly knew I wanted crepes for breakfast right then, I quickly hit our cookbook shelves and started the process of rapidly finding and rejecting recipes.

Alice Waters wanted me to add beer to my batter and let it rest overnight.  Deborah Madison wanted the batter to rest for at least two hours.  Another recipe chided the reader to never—EVER—make a crepe with regular flour, because only buckwheat flour would produce a worthy and authentic crepe.  All of the recipes implored the potential crepe-maker to cook their crepes in a special crepe pan or, at the very least, in a nonstick skillet, neither of which I happen to own.

That’s right.  No nonstick cookware.  I won’t bore you with the reasons why, but about three or four years ago we retired our last nonstick pan and it’s a decision we’ve never regretted.  We have two cast iron skillets (one of which is enameled) and one stainless steel-clad sauté pan and we have yet to find the need for anything else.  But moving on.

Eventually, my crepe saving grace was found in the pages of Joy of Cooking.  Another admission: I have two copies of Joy of Cooking, one from 1985 and one from 1999.  Why, you ask?  Well, because between the years 1985 and 1999, ideas in cooking underwent a huge change, as they are wont to do in any given 14 year period.  The two version of what are seemingly the same cookbook are fantastically different, and there are recipes in both copies that are unique to those particular editions.  Not surprisingly, the crepe recipe in the 1985 version was decidedly less fussy than the one in the 1999 version so, in the end, that’s where I found the winner.

Which is not to say I didn’t still feel the need to do a bit of tweaking.  The recipe you see below is a super simplified version of the one I eventually decided to use as inspiration.  It produces crepes that are light, delicious, and infinitely adaptable.  We ate the crepes with a simple sauce made from a mix of frozen berries unearthed from our freezer, but I would imagine there is no bad way to dress these fellows up—lemon curd, lightly sweetened mascarpone cheese, unadulterated fresh berries, cinnamon sugar, the list of possibilities is nearly endless.  All that time you won’t spend waiting for your crepe batter to rest, you can instead spend thinking up any number of wonderful ways to fill and dress your next special breakfast, which might perhaps happen to fall this Sunday for a certain lady in your life who goes by the name Mom.

Quick and Easy Citrus Crepes with Berry Sauce

Partially adapted from Joy of Cooking 

Crepes

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons powdered sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup milk

1/3 cup water

1/2 to 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon or orange zest

Vegetable oil, for brushing the skillet

Place flour in the bowl of a food processor and pulse half a dozen time to aerate the flour.  Add salt, baking powder, and powdered sugar to the food processor and pulse half a dozen more times to combine.

In a medium bowl, add beaten eggs, milk, water, and lemon zest, and mix to combine.  With the food processor running, slowly pour the milk and egg mixture into the flour mixture.  Allow the mixture to process until combined, about 5 to 10 seconds total.  If you spot a few lumps, don’t worry.  Don’t try to keep processing the batter in order to eliminate all lumps–that will just make the batter tough.

Thoroughly heat a small or medium skillet over medium-low heat.  Lightly brush the pan with a small amount of vegetable oil.  Add a small amount of batter (about 3 tablespoons), pouring it directly from the bowl of the food processor.  Tip the skillet and let the batter spread over the bottom, or use a spoon to very gently coax the batter out into a wide circle.  Cook the crepe until tiny bubbles begin to form and pop on the surface of the crepe.  Flip crepe and cook until underside is lightly browned.

Repeat process with remaining batter, making sure to lightly brush the pan with oil before cooking each crepe.  Crepes can be stacked and set aside, covered lightly with foil, while the whole batch cooks.

Berry Sauce

3 cups mixed berries, fresh or frozen (we used a mixture of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries)

3 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and place over medium heat.  Cook, stirring constantly, until the fruit just begins to fall apart, roughly five minutes.  Transfer mixture to a blender or food processor and puree until about half of the mixture is blended into a liquid and the other half remains slightly chunky.  If you are not a fan of textured sauce, feel free to puree the sauce until it is completely smooth, or until your desired texture has been reached.

To serve crepes as shown, lightly butter each crepe (we used these orange and mint butters), then fold twice into quarters.  Arrange crepes on a plate and drizzle with berry sauce.

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A Trio of Flavored Butters

14 Apr

What I am about to say may get me kicked out of every food-appreciation club in America, but here goes: I am not an enormous fan of butter.

Now, it’s really as cut and dry as that.  I do, of course, enjoy the way butter adds an unmistakable flavor to a recipe, and, obviously, you can’t bake (and enthusiastically devour) as many things as I do without a fine appreciation of butter, but the habit of positively slathering a biscuit, pancake, or slice of bread with enough butter to create the look of a frosted cake is not really my idea of maximum deliciousness.  While not in any way anti-butter, I so have fairly set standards for where my enjoyment of butter starts and stops.  A light slip of butter atop a slice of warm bread?  Yes.  A biscuit soaked through with a prodigious slick of dripping butterfat?  No.

I am sure this proves some sort of fault with my tasting capabilities, and it no doubt points to some sort of loss of my ability to enjoy the most basic things about simple food and plain ingredients, but I am fine with that.  Why?  Because that possible weakness in my taste preferences leads me to do the type thing that I did yesterday afternoon, which was spend a very pleasant half an hour coming up with creative ways to flavor butter.  Just like that, my loss has become your gain.

The idea here is to use each butter sparingly.  The subtle briskness of the mint, the fresh shot of citrus, the layered combination of the lemon and basil—these are all meant to coax your butter into something a bit more satisfying to the palette than what ordinary butter provides.  If you are not sure that anything in the world can ever top the simple pleasure of plain old butter, I certainly don’t disparage that opinion.  What I do suggest, however, is that you take a few minutes to at least make and try these wonderful flavored butters, as it might just change your opinion about what butter can do.

 

It certainly altered my opinion of the joys of butter, a turn of events that has, not surprisingly, managed to almost work against me.  Whereas I used to eschew butter on my bread 90% of the time (with the exception of fresh, hot bread newly released from the oven), I now find myself looking for reasons to spread these lovely flavored butters on everything I can.  If, previously, my loss was transformed into another’s gain, it seems as though my weakness has now become, well, my weakness.

It would be a crime to relegate these butters as being toppings for just baked goods.  I have visions of any of these butters making for an absolutely dreamy combination when lightly dolloped on poached fish, steamed new potatoes, or roasted asparagus.  I plan to get right on those experiments, and I encourage you all to get in on it as well and let me know how it turns out.

Orange Butter

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted, softened, room temperature butter

2 heaping tablespoons finely grated or chopped orange zest

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice

pinch sea salt

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl.  Thoroughly combine by beating vigorously with a wooden spoon or sturdy spatula.  If you want your butter to have a lighter consistency, whip butter combination with an electric mixer until fluffy.

Mint Butter

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted, softened, room temperature butter

3 heaping tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

small squeeze of lemon juice

pinch of sea salt

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl.  Thoroughly combine by beating vigorously with a wooden spoon or sturdy spatula.  If you want your butter to have a lighter consistency, whip butter combination with an electric mixer until fluffy.

Citrus Basil Butter

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted, softened, room temperature butter

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil

1/4 teaspoon finely grated or chopped lemon zest

small squeeze of lemon juice

pinch of sea salt

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl.  Thoroughly combine by beating vigorously with a wooden spoon or sturdy spatula.  If you want your butter to have a lighter consistency, whip butter combination with an electric mixer until fluffy.

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