Alice Through The Martini Glass

Surely some cerebral archaeologist would be able to find the mental artifact that explains my fascination with the culture of cocktails.

Born in 1953, I really came at the tail end of the greatest cocktail generation--did World Wars have something to do with that greatness?--yet I'm drawn to not only the drinks of that era but the surrounding accoutrement and tchachkes that went with them. Certainly, my parents and their neighbors did indulge; they were part of the great suburban middle-class where Manhattans and bridge parties were at least weekly events. (My father found himself in possession of a bottle of Slivovitz--nasty stuff--which led to a fond, if bizarre, childhood memory: Mrs. Wright standing on her lawn waving the empty bottle--she was the only one who liked it--and yelling something which mercifully has left my memory bank.) But I can't see that as the missing link because bridge baffles me despite ardent parental attempts to teach me. One no trump? I ask you, what language is that? If I try to read Omar Sharif's bridge column (he was so gorgeous in Lawrence of Arabia), I have a headache after the first line.

But the Manhattans, those I understood. And in part, I think I also understood them as a symbol of relaxation and a genteel sociability. Part of my "Renaissance Man" illusion is a niggling belief that I really should have been born into the gentry so I could dabble in the arts and gentlemanly (womanly) callings without having to earn the buck that is all I ever manage to earn. Failing that, I guess a Martini before the tuna casserole or a Cuba Libre on the plastic-webbed chaise in the back yard struck me as the closest I was going to get. And--this being the '50s--everyone still dressed up a bit even for the neighborhood bridge game: women in shirtwaists and heels; men in white shirts and ties--always ties. Compare that to the way you see people dress today even when they're going to weddings: shorts, flipflops, whatever. What about any of that says "I was destined for better things."

Then there's writing and writers and we all know about them. Maybe I just had a sordid literary upbringing but it seems like every writer I really got turned on by was a drinker. Remember the scene in Julia when Jane Fonda, playing Lillian Hellman, is sitting on the beach with her typewriter in front of her and a shot glass in her hand? Whoa, what's not to aspire to? And Dorothy Parker. She got to be the only woman who was part of the Algonquin Round Table and you just know it was because she could hold her liquor: "I love to have a martini; two at the very most. . ." Etc. Etc. Even writers that most girls growing up in my era never heard of, I loved, gravitated to like a fruit fly to a saucer of scotch (just had to get one bad drinking metaphor in there), like Craig Rice. First female writer to get her photo on the cover of Time. Wrote the funniest, most alcohol-laden mysteries in the '40s. Go look her up. Unfortunately, died fairly young and I don't want to go into the cause, thank you very much.


All this might be trying too hard, however. It's all of a piece: mysteries, martinis, melamine dishes. My favorite things just aren't very '90s or, even worse, '00s. And if I thought I could rock a shirtwaist while typing on the beach. . .watch out world.

Bronx Cheer--No Raspberries

Oranges started it all.
In our new quest for health--having given up on wealth entirely and not being sure wise is terribly realistic at this point--we've been buying lots of fruits and vegetables. The veggies don't seem to be a problem; they get eaten or rot so quickly we don't have time to mourn their passing. But fruit, well, fruit takes longer to go so it sits staring at you for days while it shrivels away, especially oranges, which don't so much decay as become dry hulks with wrinkled skin. I can look in the mirror if I want to see that.

My husband's suggestion was to get a juicer. Mine seemed simpler, cheaper and more elegant: make Bronx Cocktails. My first introduction to Bronxes (hmmm, correct plural?) was making them pretty much like a Martini but with a squeeze of orange juice. Better cocktail minds than mine, however, put it closer to a Manhattan with orange juice. Still, as The Naked Chef would say, the drink is "easy peasy."

So before the oranges suffered another day, I had a Bronx. Ted Haigh, in Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, turns the drink into The Income Tax by adding angostura bitters so if you're feeling particularly dumpish (as in "down in the. . .") because we're near April 15, go for it. I stuck closer to Gary Regan's version in The Joy of Mixology and used orange bitters--Regan's orange bitters, in fact, to give the gentleman his proper due. Thus, on to the recipe:

2 oz. gin (I used Beefeater for this)
1/4 oz. each sweet and dry Vermouth
Juice of 1/4 orange
Couple of dashes of orange bitters

Shake all the above with ice--nice big chunky cubes, so they don't water out too much--strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with an orange twist.

Big important caveat ahead: Use fresh and only fresh orange juice, not reconstituted, bottled or anything which doesn't come with a nubbly peel surrounding it.

There you go, aging oranges rescued; tax time blues abated; and don't you feel healthier already?

Gin & It

Or, perhaps, Gin & IT
Why start writing about cocktails at all? Everyone seems to have an opinion and most express them all too willingly.

Well, I do like to drink--probably more than my doctor would approve. Whenever she asks how much I drink a day, I say "oh, maybe two." Right. I drink mostly Martinis and some occasional Sidecars and French 75's. And in summer, Gin & Tonics and Margaritas (the real ones) so we aren't talking wimpy glasses of wine here. But I also believe in drinking these "the old-fashioned way" (not to be confused with drinking Old Fashioneds--which if I do, it's Whiskey, by the way, not Brandy). Remember "The Thin Man"? Now, Nick and Nora, they knew how to do it right--lots of small cocktails and a healthy respect for ice bags.

But really, I like the culture and literacy of cocktails. I've grown so bored with abstention and abstemiousness. Being a prig is the latest of virtues (ah, see my comments on frugality at grandedameit.blogspot.com. Definitely related) and I'm old enough now to have worn out my virtue gene to a small extent. Robbing banks, weeks of non-stop debauchery, serious binges--all out of the question. Just too tiring.

But a couple of classically made cocktails in the evening before the spinach/tofu dinner (oh, my, maybe I really am becoming a prig), well, that's a sweet moment of the day, a moment that marks the transition from "damn, I didn't get a third of what I needed to do today finished" to "wow, beautiful Spring evening, innit?"

If I'm not too much in my cups, I suspect there are others of you out there who would just like to chat about the glories of gin, the vim of vermouth, or the twaddle of tee-totalling. Enough--alliteration, like virtue, gets boring very fast.