HEALTH RATHER THAN WEALTH

Well, the doctors are constantly on about it, despite some of them drinking like fish. 

Funny expression that...do fish actually drink the water they swim in? As WC Fields once said – possibly more than once – when explaining why he preferred his whisky without water: "Fish *!+^ in it."

I can't actually write what he said...this is far too upright a forum. And Bill Fields was, as most people will know, infrequently upright.

But to get back to the point – doctors and their ilk are always on at the rest of us to lead a healthy lifestyle. So, in the interests of prolonging healthy life, I've concocted a little something that will put years on you.

No, that's not right...take years off you, I mean.

It's a well-balanced cocktail that has resonances in World War II, during which the wealthy and well connected – some of them spies – carried on in the old fashioned way in London's top hotels as if the only thing that had changed was the lack of a decent butler.

Not for us the Old Fashioned...

Not for us the sumptuous, gin-heavy Gibson or Dry Martini.

Not in this blog episode at any rate.

No, what we're after here is using up the ingredients lying around in the (cocktail) cupboard...waste not want not...a bit of make do and mend in the way of our antecedents – not the idle rich sort.

If you discount the alcohol in it, the drink in question might be regarded as a real tonic, a pick-me-up...something you could munch a couple of before you go to work. Assuming you require to be compos mentis at work, that is. But who wants a job like that?

In my case, I had a few things lying about, items that were beginning – as a very tidy person – to get on my nerves. Items such as a small bottle of apricot brandy, untouched and unanticipated; the dregs of a bottle of triple sec and some five-day old fruit.

There are those who would just have chucked the liquid down the sink and the fruit in the bin, yet being a recycling-minded cove, I put my mind to the test.

What to call it though..? I'll keep thinking as I write. 

Meanwhile – and you'll appreciate the essence of the possibility of an early spring here – the working title:

HEALTH DRINK

Ingredients:

2 fl oz apricot brandy

1 fl oz triple sec

1/2 fl oz Rose's lime juice 

Juice of three clementines

Juice of half lemon

Good dash of orange bitters

Method:

Place four ice cubes in shaker

Add remainder of ingredients

Shake vigorously

Pour into cocktail glasses adorned with slice of fresh lemon

Serves four.

Speaking of the war and the inclusion of clementines reminds me of Winston Churchill and his beloved wife, Clementine, or "Dear Clemmie", as he called her by way of an endearment.

We could call this cocktail, therefore, Dear Clemmie, in memoriam of distant times when things were great for some, crap for the bulk.

Take a peek at the following and you'll be desperate certainly for a wee snifter...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUzQy4mmT3Q

Puttin' on the poor mouth


Off to Paris in a fortnight and had hoped to renew our acquaintance with the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz. 
But the horror, the horror... the old place is being renovated and won't be open when we get there. 
Our charming hostess, Chantal, whose mother once had a drink with Hemingway at the very spot many years ago, will have somewhere else to treat us, I'm sure. I will report on that accordingly.
Mais pour maintenant...

The above publication, not long off the presses chaudes of the Ritz a la Place Vendome, alludes to the fab cocktails that can be savoured there. 
To quote: "It is said that the Hemingway bar makes the best Dry Martini in the world." 
Given that the head barman Colin Field was once voted best barman in the world by Forbes Magazine, that might seem a reasonable assertion. 
Yet it is, as are so many other claims about cocktail recipes, somewhat precious.
What makes a good dry martini after all is pretty damn simple:

• it must be as cold as a mother-in-law's stare
• secure the best gin available
• include two or three olives on a stick...
• and oh, I almost forgot – a passing acquaintance with vermouth is occasionally called for.

And you could replace the olives with les petits oignons and call it a Gibson.
Easy.
Whatever! as the young ones say when they can't think of anything else to say.
Maybe it's just as well we're not going to the Ritz – we're far too poor. At 26 euros for a glass of the house champagne, we might need to remortgage the maison if we fancied a night out there.

The following is what they used to say in the old days...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFabjc6mFk4

Chile for some.

The folks in Chile obviously enjoy their cocktails on the cold side. I just read that a guy with a big truck has been nabbed after chipping five tonnes of ice from a glacier in Patagonia to sell as ice cubes for cocktails. 

"Designer" ice cubes, at that, according to the report.

What the hell is a designer ice cube? Is it still a cube? Is it like a Rubik cube or did someone just cross the Rubicon with this little escapade?

I hope they threw the buce at the thief. Did you spot the anagram there? Or did you just think I'm a bad speller?

You may think the following track is about Chile but you'd be wrong. Jimi Hendrix can't spell either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_YD8gVV_r8&feature=fvst

On another track...we're going to a hot cocktail spot in London very soon. According to a chum who's been, they serve the most amazing concoctions and there's no shortage of them.

Watch this space.

Another pleasant stop-off for the weary traveller is in Paris. More on that later, too.

Meanwhile, if you fancy a nice cocktail in Bonnie Scotland, do try Oran Mor at the corner of Great Western Road and Byres Road. Those in the picture are a classic champagne cocktail and two mojitos.

Yum, as they say in the West End.

First Christmas

What to do if there are too bloomin' many of you for Christmas? Why, have another one a week earlier. 
Call it First Christmas. 
Don't invite George Michael...he'll only crash the car getting there. 
Never mind Last Christmas - let's celebrate First Christmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gmARGvPlI

You'll probably want a decent cocktail to celebrate. These wonderful, polite young gentlemen in the picture seemed to enjoy it...and it's pink!

Pink Christmas Cocktail

Ingredients:
4 fl oz Stolichnaya vodka
1 fl oz Triple Sec
2 fl oz Creme de Cassis
Handful of fresh blueberries
Good dash of orange bitters
Juice of half an orange
Juice of 1 lime
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 fl oz double cream


Method:
Place the cocktail glasses in the fridge for at least an hour before serving. I use champagne coupes for this cocktail – they're very celebratory, don't you know.
Place all the ingredients, except the cream, in a blender and whizz briskly. Add the cream and whizz for a few seconds.
Remove glasses form fridge. Place a sprig of mint in each glass then balance on the rim a cocktail stick on which a small wedge of orange (skin on) is skewered amid two fresh blueberries on either side.
Dust the surface of each glass with sieved icing sugar.
Serves six (with, hopefully, a little to spare for top-ups)

Suffice to say, don't overdo it. if you were to have too many you might end up seeing things...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=944cPciN-kw

Won by a neck

Race to it.

As Churchill almost said, “Some horse, some neck!”

This cocktail, famous as it may be, looks nothing like a horse’s neck, despite its taxonomy. Yet, as London Cocktail Week fades to a memory, I thought I’d better throw in my tuppence worth with a classic – but with a twist, naturally.

Click on the picture below for a bigger image.

The neck in question is supposedly represented by the curlicue of lemon peel residing in the glass then hanging out over the rim, in the way that a horse’s neck might.

I mean, who thinks these things up?

What you must have, however, is a small but very sharp knife in order to slice the peel off a lemon in one piece. The phrase ‘Don’t try this at home’ should really apply here but not to the rough tough type who enjoy a cocktail.

"Hey, I just did a 12-hour shift down a tin mine" doesn’t cut it, I’m afraid, with the fearless cocktail provider.

“Just drink this Horse’s Neck and give us peace. But wash your bloomin’ hands first!”

Before we start, have a listen to the following track. I know it’s a Stones song but this version is ten times better…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjpa_OYAEpo

Back to business. The classic Horse’s Neck cocktail is not unlike a Rye and Dry, ergo in my own recipe I like to jazz it up un peu.

On no account, entertain any so-called cocktail barman aficionado who, when commissioned to prepare this recipe, shakes his weary head and sneers, “Yes, hmm, but it ain’t a Horse’s Neck.”

Fact is, cocktail recipes change with the winds that blow these so-called aficionados in and out of town. One Horse’s Neck recipe might suggest bourbon as the main ingredient while another would plump for brandy.

So who cares? Be an iconoclast. It’s your personal taste that remains the only concern.

Here we go …

Horse’s Neck

Ingredients

2 fl oz good bourbon (Jack Daniels will do nicely)

8 fl oz ginger ale (a ratio of approximately four to one in favour of the ginger ale works best for my gang)

Juice of 1 lemon (strained)

Juice of 1 small orange (strained)

4 dashes of Angostura bitters

4 ice cubes

Peel of 4 lemons

Method

Place ingredients – NOT the ginger ale –  in a cocktail shaker and give it a vigorous workout.

Pour into a large jug and add the ginger ale.

Into 4 small tumblers, insert the sliced peel of each lemon, allowing the “neck” to hang out. (see picture above). Fill each glass up with more ice cubes then pour in the mixture from the jug.

Serves four but there will probably be enough left for a top-up. Always be prepared, as good Scouts would.

As with other healthy cocktails in my previous posts, this Horse's Neck can count as one of your five a day.

With trends like these, who needs enemas?

Do not, most definitely, try the following at home …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Z6eJOrP_Q

Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri at True Originals

Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri at True Originals

Berry poetic

THE best strawberries come, some might say, from the Clyde Valley. Others would argue in favour of those from the farms of Fife around the Leven area. Southerners would naturally plump for the strain from the great Garden of England that is Kent.

Plump, however, is the operative word.

Thin strawbs don’t cut it.

Get some quick as there are not many local varieties left now that summer has rapidly disappeared down the plughole.

To the cocktail I’m proselytising about here I’ve added, in elegiac mood, a splash of rosewater. Ergo, the last rose of summer …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYUvAytrgI&feature=fvst

As the great poet of the so-called Scottish Renaissance might have put it...

The cocktail of all the world is not for me.

I want for my part

Only the frozen strawberry daiquiri of Scotland

That tastes sharp and sweet

And goes straight to the brain.

With apologies, of course, to McDiarmid, who perhaps might not have minded, given that he tried just about everything himself. And Scottish Renaissance? When did it ever die so that it required rebirth?

The cocktail lovers among you can continue with the occasional Banana Daiquiri that will see you through the winter and spring months, but if it’s local ingredients that you’re after in that green way of the ecological cocktail champion, then get this one over your neck sharpish.

Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri

Makes 4 (see pic above)

Ingredients:

14 decent sized ripe strawberries. Plump!

2 fl oz white rum

1 fl oz crème de framboises (or some sort of Strawberry liqueur)

1 tbsp caster sugar

Juice of two limes

Juice of 1 orange

Dash orange bitters

Splash of rosewater

4 ice cubes

Method:

Retain 4 of the strawbs then plonk the rest of the ingredients in a jug blender and whizz the mixture like it's the Large Hadron Collider

Rub a slice of lime over the rim of each glass then dip it in sugar up to a couple of millimetres.

Pour into four cocktail glasses

Do something fancy with a strawberry and skewer it along with a quarter slice of orange and lay it in the glass.

Don’t forget to say “Cheers!” or some other convivial toast.

Sip, don’t gulp.

Ahhh.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3jrWVp2L7U

Coming up in a future blog …

Why I’d rather sip a horse’s neck than tip a horse’s ass.

Hee haw! (Sorry, that was a donkey).