Archives: February 01, 2007

Gin: the original flavored vodka

Wednesday, 21 February 2007 11:21 PM

I'm not a big gin drinker, but I'm a fan of Bombay Sapphire. Yes, it's pricey, but it's also crisp and has pleasing herbal flavors. Ten botanicals, to be exact: almonds, lemon peel, liquorice, juniper, orris, angelica, coriander, cassia bark, cubeb berries, and grains of paradise.

The grains of paradise make the drink, of course.

How much do I like Bombay Sapphire? I have a spritzer of Bombay Sapphire perfume. No, it's not just gin in a perfume bottle. The Bombay Spirits Company had a promotion a few years back, in which an internationally known perfume designer created a cologne that evoked the sensibility and scent of Bombay Sapphire. Or something to that effect. You could buy it for a limited time in certain international airport Duty Free shops, or you could fill in a form to try to win a bottle.

So I filled in the form, and I won. It even has the signature of the perfume designer on it, in gold marker.

So if you notice that I smell like a nice Martini first thing in the morning, now you know why.

But back to our current story. The main flavor of most gins is juniper berries -- they're the key difference between gin and vodkas, the simplest of the distilled spirits. Various gins blend in other herbs as well and this is what distinguishes one high-end gin from another.

If you're having a drink that uses a flavorful mixer, like a Gin and Tonic, a Tom Collins, or a Gimlet, then a middle of the road gin will do fine -- you wouldn't taste the subtles herbs anyway. But if you're having a Martini or a Gibson, then it's worth your while to pick a special gin.

As much as I enjoy my Sapphire Martini, sometimes I want variety. In this frame of mind, I recently picked up a single-serving bottle of Hendrick's at the checkout counter. The bottle is practically medicinal-looking: dark amber, round and slightly squat, with a very old-fashioned label. It looks like something milady would call for when she's overcome with the vapors.

Hendrick's doesn't smell much different from Bombay Sapphire, but boy, does it taste different. It's distilled in Scotland, so one might expect it to have a bit of bite. What one might not expect is the massive pine flavor it carries. Kind of like chewing on a branch of Christmas tree, or maybe a sprig of rosemary.

Once the pine calms down, the juniper comes in, and the drink tastes like gin again. The offical website talks about cucumber and rose petals, and they might have been there but they aren't the main players. The pine flavor, on the other hand, sticks around to the bottom of the glass. A Hendrick's Martini is not one that goes down quickly; rather, it insists on slow sipping, savoring, contemplation.

So has Hendrick's replaced Sapphire in my liquor cabinet? It hasn't replaced it, but I'm inclined to keep Hendrick's on hand, for thoughtful evenings. It could become my winter gin -- an alternative not to other gins but to a bourbon by the fire.

Book centipede

Wednesday, 21 February 2007 03:22 PM

Saw this at Pinky's Paperhaus -- I still haven't finished logging my library in LibraryThing, but marking up this list seems doable.

But who came up with this wacked out list?? Such bizarre choices.

Rules: "Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of."

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) (Can this book please go away?)
2. +Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)+ (This book was formative for me.)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) (War, war war!)
5. +The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)+ (And why are these three books listed in this out-of-order sequence?)
6. +The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)+
7. +The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)+
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) (Also formative for me, although I'm sure I'd never get through it now.)
9. *Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)*
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)*
11. +Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)+ (I really enjoy the Potter books, despite the poor writing in the first few.)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. +Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)+
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) (Only kinda want to read this.)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. +Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)+
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)*
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. +Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)+
20. +Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)+ (I will always love Rochester.)
21. +The Hobbit (Tolkien)+
22. +The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)+
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)+ (I've had this on my bookshelf for ages -- I wonder if I really do want to read it.)
25. +Life of Pi (Yann Martel)+
26. +The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)+ (Among my favorite books ever.)
27. +Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)+
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. *The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)*
37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)*
38. *I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)*
39. *The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)*
40. *The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)*
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. +Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)+ (Another big favorite.)
55. +The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)+ (Ooh, and this one.)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)*
57. +Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)+
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) (Finished it, but didn't like it.)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) (I'm about ready to think about rereading this one.)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)*
66. +One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)+
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. +Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)+
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)*
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. *Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)*
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)*
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)*
90. *Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)*
91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)*
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. +White Oleander (Janet Fitch)+
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. +Ulysses (James Joyce) + (This I want to read, but I also sort of fear it.)

Liveblogging the Pittsburgh Symphony

Sunday, 18 February 2007 05:21 PM

A quick note from the blogging event at the Symphony: You should be here.
I'm very sorry you're not. We've enjoyed amazing performances of three wonderful
works, plus the bonus of meeting the composer Christopher Theofanidis. For the
second work, Beethoven's Concert No. 1 in C major, the soloist was Yefim Bronfman,
who I am learning is a star. Today he played with such delicacy and wit --
and was kind enough to come back out for an encore. And then the Mahler? Fabulous.

Now we're
hanging out at a reception in a delightful little side room, with cookies
and coffee, plus a special wi-fi network set up just for the occasion. People
are talking about the concert, plus the scandal
about the recordings of Joyce Hatto -- in brief, recordings that she claimed
to have made have recently been revealed to be recordings by other people ...
one of them Yefim Bronfman, to tie it to today's concert.

I'll write more later, about today and last night's performance by the Butler
County Symphony Orchestra. Right now I'm going to be a little less anit-social
and get off the blog. Back soon.

What to do this weekend

Wednesday, 14 February 2007 11:50 AM

Three activities this weekend that will make it worth your while to dig yourself out from the snow:

1. The Muckleman is playing at City Theatre through February 18. At the opening night party I asked some people at the bar to help me summarize the play in ten words. We came up with this:

Naked man,
in sand:
Twilight Zone meets Splash
in Newfoundland.

If you'd prefer a real review, check out the Post-Gazette, the Trib, and City Paper. There's also a mysterious website dedicated to the play, to get you in the mood.

2. If classical music is more your style, on Saturday, February 17, the Butler County Symphony Orchestra will be presenting "Gold." The music will include Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 and Shostakovich's “Age of Gold Polka,” and the guest performer will be glass harpist Jamey Turner, who plays brandy snifters and wine glasses and must be seen and heard to be believed.

3. And then on Sunday afternoon, the Pittsburgh Symphony will be presenting Bronfman Plays Beethoven, which will include works by Mahler and Christopher Theofanidis. Plus, "Accompanying the performance of Theofanidis's "Rainbow Body" on Heinz Hall stage, the PSO will show spectacular images of dying stars taken by the Hubble Telescope." Interested local bloggers can attend free -- see the announcement on Pittsburgh Bloggers for details. You'll need to sign up by Friday at 2pm for the free tix.

Photo courtesy City Theatre. Pictured (l to r) Nathan Blew, Tami Dixon,
Robin Walsh. Photo credit: John Schisler.

Spirited Cuisine: Brandy

Tuesday, 06 February 2007 09:21 PM

This is the fourth installment in the Spirited Cuisine series from Sri Bala (Shaman) and me. Each round, I select a liquor or spirit, and Sri creates a dessert recipe incorporating it. Find Sri's posts at his blog and mine here within the Lush Life category.

Brandy is the world's oldest spirit -- as old as distilling itself. It's made by distilling wine or fermented fruit mash: Brandy made from wine is "brandy," while brandy from other fruit goes by the fruit's name, like "cherry brandy." There are variants -- for example, Cognac, which comes from the Cognac region of France. Oh, and don't forget Armagnac (another high-end French brandy), and Metaxa and Ouzo from Greece, and Calvados (France again), and applejack (America), and kirschwasser (which I adore).... On and on it goes.

Plus there are those crazy brandy snifters, which look cool but seem challenging to drink properly from. Am I supposed to cup it in my hand? Hold the base? Or maybe the stem? How long am I supposed to sniff? How goofy do I look while sniffing?

No wonder the average drinker is thrown off.

Our lack of familiarity with brandy is a real shame, because brandy is as flexible as liquors come. You can substitute it for bourbon, whiskey, vodka, or most other liquors in almost any cocktail for a neat twist on your standard drink. And it's the best option for oomph in punch recipes like champagne punch, sangria, eggnog punch....

Brandy is the go-to-guy of the bar.

Brandy is also the main ingredient in two of the classic cocktails: the Sidecar and the Stinger.

The Sidecar is kicker of a drink. It has a balance of citrus tang and sugar sweetness -- from a combination of Cointreau and either lemon or lime -- backed by the smoothness of the brandy. People can debate whether it's a "girly drink," but it has all the muscle any drink needs. I like mine mixed like this:

Sidecar

2 parts good brandy
1 part Cointreau
big squeeze of lime

Stir with ice, strain into chilled, stemmed cocktail glass. Skip the garnish and start sipping ... slowly.

As for the Stinger, it too is deceptively strong but still sophisticated. According to Esquire's Handbook for Hosts (published in 1949, "A Time-Honored Guide to the Perfect Party"):

Formerly a quiet member of the "horsey" set, an also-ran in the cocktail derby, the Stinger buzzed into popularity when wartime pilots discovered how well it lives up to its name. Even though Army-Navy plane clothes have been doffed for plain clothes, the ex-fliers still like to check out on the Stinger.

I like it after dinner, because it tastes of mint and seems to help digestion. Besides, if I have one or two before dinner, I find that the meal flies by without me remembering to eat.

Stinger

2 parts brandy
1 part white Creme de Menthe

Stir with cracked ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Get ready to buzz.

Brandy plays extraordinarily well in food too, as demonstrated by Sri's culinary creation for this round: Brandy Bread Pudding with Apples and Spice. In addition to the recipe being tasty, the photo essay that accompanies it is a wonder. I promise your mouth will be watering as you read. Enjoy.

Our next inspiration for Spirited Cuisine: Galliano, that crazy yellow stuff in the too-tall bottle.

"I've never thought twice about the safety"

Tuesday, 06 February 2007 02:14 PM

I've been on a video shoot this morning, so I haven't read much of anything about the convention center collapse in Pittsburgh. But from what I've read so far here here and here, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center seems to be turning into Pittsburgh's version of Boston's John Hancock Tower.

The building's most dangerous and conspicuous flaw was its faulty glass windows. Entire 4' x 11', 500 lb (1.2x3.4 m, 227 kg) windowpanes detached from the building and crashed to the sidewalk hundreds of feet below. Police closed off surrounding streets whenever winds reached 45 mph (72 km/h). According to the Boston Globe, MIT built a scale model of the entire Back Bay in its Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel to identify the problem. The exact cause of the malfunction was never revealed due to a legal settlement and gag order. Most now diagnose the problem as a combination of the double-paned glass construction method, and the pressure differentials between the inside and outside air. [citation]

At least it was cheaper and didn't take as long as the John Hancock. And our deathtrap is much prettier.

BlogFest 9

Sunday, 04 February 2007 03:54 PM

It's time for the first BlogFest of 2007!

WHAT: Pittsburgh Blogfest 9
WHEN: Thursday, February 22, 2007, 5:30 PM to 9:30 PM and beyond!
WHERE: Finnegan's Wake (near PNC Park, 20 General Robinson St., North Shore, 412-325-2601), in the Pub Room
WHO: All local bloggers
AND: Creating Text(iles) (in absentia), Inner Bitch, My Brilliant Mistakes, and Have a Good Sandwich.

As always, if you plan to attend, please send an e-mail to blogfest AT closkey.com.

AND SAVE THE DATE: BlogFest 10, May 10, 2007. Same time and location, same charming company.

Copyright © 2004 – 2007 Cynthia Closkey