The Impatient Chef Cocktail Recipe: Just Peachy

The Impatient Chef bought a new gin last week. It is called Wild Roots Cucumber and Grapefruit Gin. Since Wild Roots London Dry Gin is the Impatient Chef’s favorite martini gin, even beating out Tanqueray, it was natural to try their other gin.

The Cucumber and Grapefruit Gin is decidedly different.

Tasting notes:

• Bitter cucumber, 
• A hint of grapefruit, and 
• Some juniper. 
• It boarders on sour, like a Genever gin, but does not go all of the way there. 

The Impatient Chef loathes Genever gins.

Genever is an older form of gin that largely died out in the US after Phohibition as new distilleries catered to a changed taste in liquor among Americans once freed from the 18th Amendment. Genever remained in production in Europe, and eventually returned to the US with Bols Genever, Aviation Gin, and 12 Bridges by Integrity Spirits (now defunct). It is known for its sourness.

The Impatient Chef still loathes Genever gins.

Wild Roots' Cucumber and Grapefruit Gin’s odd flavor made it a challenge to design a drink around. It clearly could not be the dominant flavor, so a martini was out.

The method:

• Pour 1/2 oz of the gin into a shot glass. 
• Taste it with 3 small sips about a minute apart. 
• Decide whether flavors added should be complimentary, or overpowering. 

I opted for complimentary. The first selection was simple syrup. The Impatient Chef does not go for sweet drinks as a rule. However, simple syrup seemed necessary. The second selection was lemon juice, which would offer a little acid, and tartness. Lastly, a flash of inspiration, and a reason to use another Wild Roots spirit, led me to their Peach Vodka. 

Notes on Vodka: The Impatient Chef avoids it whenever possible.  There is always a more interesting flavor to put into a drink.  Vodka is the alcohol equivalent of Wonder Bread, and Wonder Bread is the equivalent of a flavor lobotomy.  Flavored vodkas are similarly avoided, unless it is New Deal Distillery's Hot Monkey Vodka.  

However, there was a bottle of Peach Vodka lying around after an elaborate dessert recipe steered itself over the guardrails and into the ravine.  So, why not?  

Here’s the recipe:

• 1/2 oz lemon juice 
• 1/2 oz simple syrup 
• 1 oz Wild Roots Cucumber and Grapefruit Gin 
• 2 oz Wild Roots Peach Vodka 

Shake with ice.

This drink works really well. The cucumber compliments the peach in a distinctive and surprisingly delicious way.  Don't think for a moment that the Impatient Chef is going soft on vodka, but this drink is surprising delicious, and quite refreshing.  If you live where you can get these spirits, give it a whirl.  

Enjoy!

The Impatient Chef

The Impatient Chef Comes Out of Hiding with a Gin Review

The Impatient Chef has been on a barely deserved vacation, and has not posted anything in over two months.  So, you might ask, why now?  

Well, why not?

The real reason is that The Impatient Chef forgot his gin while traveling.  The Impatient Chef's alter ego, Gary Quay, moonlights as a photographer, and he was on Washington's Key Peninsula to hang an exhibit, and wanted a martini in the hotel to end the evening (hence the crappy iPhone pic above).  It just so happens that a distillery is a few doors up.

The distillery is called Heritage Distilling  Co.  It hails from Eugene, Oregon, but has a tasting room in Gig Harbor, Washington.  I stopped by to see which gin would work for my martini.  This review will be in two parts: 1)  Tasting notes, and 2) How good is the martini.  Sometimes a gin tastes really good neat (warm from the bottle), but makes a horrible martini.  Sometimes the opposite is true.  

Come on this journey with me from the tasting room to the cocktail glass.  

I tasted two gins.  The first is called Batch 12.  

Tasting notes:

Clean, mild juniper taste, not heavy on botanicals. It has a bright taste similar to London Dry Gins like Bombay and Plymouth, but slightly dirtier (not a bad thing).  My guess is that the juniper is added before distilling, or filtering removes some of the flavor.

The second is Elk Rider.

Tasting notes:  

Clean, heavier juniper taste, peppery flavor, and a darker complexion.  It has a slightly yellow color, usually meaning that juniper is added after distilling, and less is filtered out.  It's similar to London Dry gins like Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire.

I am not afraid of juniper, so I bought the Elk Rider.  

How Good is The Martini:

3 olives, 1/4 oz vermouth, and gin.  Stirred, not shaken, like martinis are supposed to be made.  The drink turned mildly cloudy.  The only other gin that I am aware of acts that way is Joe Penney's Gin from McMennamin's Edgefield Distillery.  That gin revolutionized my taste for gin, and the martini.  McMannamin's calls it an "American Dry" gin.  There is a similar gin style called the "Portland Dry", epitomized by New Deal Distillery's Gin 33, that put Portland, Oregon on the map for gins.  Elk Rider in a dry martini is a cross between Joe Penney's and Gin 33.  The Impatient Chef suggests you buy a bottle of each.  

Martini tasting notes: 

Notes of citrus, and a flavor that makes a nod toward genever gins, but without the astringent sourness that makes them unpalatable in a martini.  It's unusual, but delicious.  In the martini, it was nothing like a London Dry.  The Impatient Chef finds this mildly amusing.  

Conclusion:

If you participate in the heresy that is the vodka martini, or prefer lighter gins like New Amsterdam, you will hate this gin.  The Impatient Chef is okay with that, and loves this gin.  

This gin would work in the Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail.  

The Impatient Chef Cocktail Recipe: The Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail

Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail

Why make a Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail? As many of you know, The Impatient Chef moonlights as Gary Quay who also moonlights as Gary Quay Photography (or is it the other way around?). A staunch devote of film photography, I have watched film stocks dwindle to a trickle since around 2005 as many great emulsions left the market. Kodachrome was the first true color slide film, and as documented by none other than Paul Simon.

"Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give is the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away."

For me, the loss of Kodachrome was like the loss of Pete Seeger, or David Bowie. I had never known a world without them. They were iconic, and widely loved. So, when the last roll was developed in 2011, I came up with the idea for a Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail.

Why did it take so long? Remember those nice bright colors? That's why. I wanted the cocktail to be clear, and bright. I did not want to use vodka because the drink needed flavor. Above all, it had to have a hint of purple. My first attempts were less than stellar. Some ended up gray as different colors ganged up to defeat my Prime Directive. Some tasted awful. I tried off and on, for a couple of years, and then abandoned the pursuit as an impossibility.

In 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, I had a splash of inspiration. I had been trying to make purple out of a combination of red and blue liquors. I had the answer all along in my cabinet: Parfait Amor. It's a purple liquor that has a sweet, orange flavor. I needed the right gin, a bittering agent to cut down on the sweetness, and maybe an apéritif to give it some balance.

The right gin.

Oregon has had a vibrant craft liquor industry for over a decade.  These three Oregon gins will work in this cocktail:

• Joe Penney's Gin by McMennamin's Edgefield 
• Elk Rider by Heritage Distilling Co.
• Ransom Dry Gin

This cocktail requires a gin with some flavor, but not a Genever, or an Old Tom.  Use ONLY one of the 3 gins mentioned above.  I can't vouch for it with other gins.  

You must use a gin from the list above for this drink. It really does not work with a light gin like New Amsterdam, or Hendrick's. You could get away with using Tanqueray, or Beefeaters, but you would need to add a few dashes of orange bitters, and some of the magic would be lost.

The Impatient Chef Presents: The Kodachrome Memorial Cocktail.

3 oz Gin (Portland Dry)
1/2 oz Parfait Amour (Marie Brizard)
1 oz Lillet Blanc
8 drops citrus bitters (Bitterman's Hopped Grapefruit Bitters works best)
Stir with ice.
Garnish with a lemon twist.

The impatient Chef makes big cocktails. You can cut this one in half if you desire.

The Studio Setup.  

Note on the lens onto which the cocktail is placed:  It's a Voigtlander Euryscop Portrait lens, made in the sometime between 1888 and 1898.  

Thanks for reading!

--The Impatient Chef

The Impatient Chef Cocktail Recipe: The Glorious Bastard

The Glorious Bastard

The Glorious Bastard

Why invent cocktails?  Why not?  Why does one climb a mountain?  Death wish...  Er...  I mean, because its there.  Being creative is a positive on its own.  So, here goes:

I call this the Glorious Bastard (because why not?).

One of the problems with inventing new cocktails is that it's really hard to know whether someone has already used your ingredient list.  All you can really do is do an online search for the spirit combination, and hope that nothing comes up.  Did I do that?  No.  

The recipe:

.75 oz lemon juice (fresh or bust)

2 oz gin (I prefer New Deal No. 1, but it just can’t be a “smooth” gin)

1/2 oz Kirschwasser

1/2 oz Chambord. 

4 dashes orange bitters

Shake well with ice

Serve.

Gloat.

The Impatient Chef and the Art of the Martini

The Impatient Chef and the Art of the Martini

James Bond has it wrong.

All Great Martinis Have Halos, Really.

The Impatient Chef is right.

The Impatient Chef loves martinis, that's why he had to quit drinking.  But, still, the art of the martini is unchanging, and if done right, is absolutely delicious.  I want to begin by saying that if your shaken, vodka martini floats your boat, you have my blessing to keep doing what you love.  I merely seek to bend your ear to the joys of gin, vermouth and olives, and, hopefully to broaden your horizons.

Stirring vs. Shaking.

There is a rule about clear drinks versus cloudy drinks with a fruit juice base.  Clear equals stirred, cloudy equals shaken.  Some mythology exists about why this is necessary.  I have heard folks say that one doesn't shake the martini because it "bruises" the gin.  Methinks the scientific method was not employed for this hypothesis.  There is, however, a taste difference between a shaken martini and the stirred martini.  The shaken martini tastes slightly harsher.  I did a comparison a couple years ago where I used the same amounts of gin, vermouth and ice by weight.  I shook one, and stirred one.  There was a definite difference in taste.  I have to say that I liked the stirred drink better.  Shaking aerates the drink, and adds more water.  To me, it tastes slightly harsher.  These are the only differences.  I weighed both drinks after mixing.  And then I drank them both.

Vermouth.

I like a dry martini.  A "dry" martini is not named for dry gin, which usually comes in the form of London Dry Gin, but a Portland Dry Gin style has emerged as of late, which is quite tasty.  "Dry" or "wet" martinis are based on the amount of vermouth in the drink.  Winston Churchill was famous for his love of the martini.  Apocryphally, he said once upon a time that he liked a very dry martini, where you fill a glass with gin, show it the bottle of vermouth, and drink the gin.

I prefer a small amount of vermouth in a martini.  I just fill a bar spoon high enough to let it drip over the edges just a tad.  That's enough.

I use(d) good vermouth.  If it costs less than $15.00 per bottle (give of take a couple), it tends to be a why bother.  My vermouth of choice was Dolin dry.

Gin.

This is where I plant my feet.  If you use vodka, it's not a martini.  You may drink it, and you may love it, but it's a different drink.  Your martini will only be as good as the gin you buy.  Here are some of my favorites:

Tanqueray London Dry
New Deal Gin 33
New Deal Gin # 1
Brokers London Dry
Joe Penney's Gin (McMenamin's)
Aria Gin
Boodles
Tanqueray 10
Big Gin
Small's Gin
Beefeater 24
Gomper's
Big Bottom

I like a hit of juniper, and botanicals that don't overpower everything.  If you don't like a gin martini, try a better gin.  If you want to drink one at a bar, never let them use the well gin.  If you really like vodka, start with New Amsterdam gin, or even Hendricks if you have deep pockets, and branch out from there.  New Amsterdam is a "smooth" gin.  It's goes light on the juniper, and has a clean taste.  It's like gin with training wheels.

Beware of gins called "genever" if you are just starting out.  These are a case of old-style gins.  The best known of these are Bols, and Aviation.  If you are trying a martini for the first time, or switching from vodka, genever gins won't be your friends.  They work best in fruity drinks.

Old Tom Gins are another acquired taste.  They work well in certain drinks, but not in martinis.

Olives.

A martini is garnished with olives.  They will have pimentos.  

Dirty Martinis

Ew.

Discovery

Martinis can be multi-faceted drinks with a variety of flavors based on the gins and vermouths you choose.  If you don't like one gin, or the one the bartender used because his boss wants him or her to cheap out, try a few more.  It took me a long time to settle on my favorites, and I ran into some duds along the way.

My introduction to the martini happened in Port Townsend, Washington about 8 years ago.  I ordered one at a restaurant because I wanted to know what was all the fuss.  I wouldn't say I was enamored by it, but I was intrigued.  There was a hint of something more in there, and I wanted to discover what that was.  It turned out that the gin they used was Gordon's.  First bought Bombay Saphire, then Beefeater, and then Boodles.  I liked Boodles more than the rest.  Then I started trying local gins from Portland.  New Deal Distillery stands out as an early favorite.  I often made a martini where I mixed both Boodles and New Deal Gin 33 with the vermouth.

Then, I discovered McMenamin's Joe Penney's Gin.  It completely revolutionized my view of the martini.  It has a massive flavor, and isn't for the faint of heart.  It, along with New Deal Gin 33, and Small's, is a style known as Portland Dry.  These tend to be juniper forward, and rich with botanicals. After trying Joe Penney's, I began seeking out bigger flavors.  I tried Tanqueray, finally ignoring early-on advice to avoid it, and liked it a lot.  It too has a big flavor, although not quite as big.

Should you choose to branch out into martinis as they were meant to be, be adventurous.  Seek out new gins, and new vermouths.  Go boldly.  Sip with gusto.

Cheers!

The Impatient Chef.