The Pegu Blog

As the Internet’s Fifth Leading Authority on Broads™, I feel compelled by recent events to step out of the cocktail arena for a post, delving once again into what makes a Great Broad. Not to bury the lede, I’m talking about Senator McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. I am amazed to see a woman who is a serious exemplar of a Great Broad on a major ticket. It changes more than this presidential race, it will likely change American politics, for the better, forever. And if she is successful, it will (politics aside) sure be fun.
First, let me make the following disclosure: I was seriously dissatisfied with our choices in this election before Friday. I simply don’t much like either Senator McCain or Senator Obama. And as a writer, I believe there is a special layer in Hell for plagiarists, Senator Biden!
I have written here often about my affection for Broads. My wife is a great Broad, as if my mother. So, what is a Broad, and why is Governor Palin such a great Broad? The following picture could almost be my entire post:

That’s her office, folks.

Nice picture!
So how much time have you spent Google image searching her?

Ha… ha. Not as much as the Morons on the Right. And not remotely as much as the feverish chumps to the left of the Left (sorry, no link for you, you miserable bastards!) Besides, while she is certainly… photogenic, that has nothing to do with her Broad-ness. Broads don’t have to be knock-outs. If she is attractive (as the Governor is, in spades), she recognizes it, enjoys it, and uses it. And uses it without shame, and not in a shameful way. She needed money for college, so she laughed her way through some beauty pageants to get it.

Hey, speaking of attractive, have you seen the First Dude?

Geez, Dear!
Do you have to treat him like a piece of meat?!? Honestly.

…!

Are you two done?

HE sure is….

Anyway, Broads play and work in a man’s world without being mannish. The Governor has that down.
How does she roll in male bastions? Let’s see: Bush pilot? Check. Commercial fisherman? Check. Kirk Gibson sports moment? Check. Lots of guns? Check. Landscape of Alaska littered with political corpses of people who didn’t live up to her standards of ethics or performance? Check.
And how about still thoroughly female? Sharp dresser? Check. Mother of five? Check? Married High School sweetheart? And stayed married? Check. PTA? Check.
Incidentally, Hillary learned this lesson late in the primary (too late). She began to appreciate her inner Broad, and she’s probably as popular right now as she has ever been in her political life.
Today’s latest scandal reinforces her Broad-ness. As I have said over and over, the thing about a Broad is that she is who she is. She is genuine. Like it or loathe it, she is it.
Being a great Broad has more to do with being Vice President than you might think. It says a tremendous amount about the person involved, regardless of experience or political positions. Senator Obama’s candidacy has proven the importance of personality. There are lots of other things I like about her, and lots questions about her as well, but that’s beyond the scope of this little cocktail party. I’m just saying both parties need more Broads.

UPDATE: (Because I can’t resist this one….)

What is the difference between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin?
One of them is little more than an elegant, attractive, dare I say sexy piece of eye candy.

The other one kills her own food.

Thanks to Mother, May I Sleep With Treacher?

From the San Jose Mercury News:

Two lanes of Highway 101 open after vodka spill (ed-What? We don’t capitailze headlines anymore?)
Bay City News Service

Two lanes of southbound U.S. Highway 101 in Sunnyvale reopened at about 9:15 a.m., following a crash in which a big rig transporting vodka overturned and spilled the product onto the roadway, city spokesman John Pilger said.

The big rig overturned shortly before 8 a.m. at North Mathilda Avenue, spilling vodka and fuel and temporarily closing all southbound lanes.

Emergency personnel have extricated the driver of the big rig, but Pilger did not know the driver’s condition.

(Hat tip to the commenters over at Ace of Spades HQ, because they like to keep track of these things over there.)

If it’s Val-U-Rite, well then no big deal. If it’s a truck full of Belvedere or Ultimat, we have a national tragedy here….

This Summer, I planted some blackberries out in my back yard, near the kid’s playground. While they aren’t mature enough for a useable harvest, there are a few, lone, bird-pecked harbingers of yumminess to come on the branches right now. I therefore had to trundle over to the store and buy some to eat. Well, to eat and to experiment with.
The last Mixology Monday had a lot of berry-based cocktails, as I noted previously, and I’ve been browsing the cocktailosphere for recipes (beyond those from MxMo XXX) that I want to try. Jay, at Oh Gosh!, has several, and one that is a real winner: The Country Bumpkin. While it wasn’t his Local Flavor cocktail, it could easily have been.
I’ve been on a Caipirinha kick lately, and the Bumpkin is a riff on that cocktail, both in construction and in name. (Read Jay’s post to see what I mean) Once I hit this beauty, I got no further in my berry experimentations. I’ve used up all my stash making these over and over.
A Caipirinha (I simply cannot pronounce this name!) is essentially a smashed up lime and Cachaça. Jay’s Bumpkin adds blackberries and changes to Gin. Looking for which gin to use, I settled on some DH Krahn….

Krahn!

Yes, dear boy. Calm down. I used the Krahn because it is so delicate and smooth. Next batch of promising berries I pick up, I’ll try some Broker’s to see how a burly spirit does. But I’m suspecting that lighter is better. Curiously, Jay made no recommendation in his post for a brand.
The other ingredient Jay adds is Peach Bitters. You really need to use this for the drink to work. And while the recipe calls for 2 dashes, make sure they are big dashes. My bottle gives little more than a drop each time, so I had to learn the hard way to put in enough.

THE COUNTRY BUMPKIN
2 ounces DH Krahn Gin
1/2 lime, cut into sixths
4 fresh blackberries
1/4 ounce simple syrup
2 large dashes Fee Brother’s Peach Bitters
In a Double Old-Fashioned glass, muddle the blackberries and lime wedges in with the simple syrup. Pour in the Gin and bitters. Stir slowly as you add ice until the glass is full. Garnish with more fresh blackberries.

Kaiser Penguin has a fun exercise up right now, in which he asks you to name ten bottles.
Let’s say you live in a place with even more restrictive availability than Ohio. There are only ten bottles of liquor available… ever.
But joy of joys, the liquor commissioner is your brother-in-law’s little brother, and he’s looked up to you since he was 16 and you bought him a hipflask of Popov’s to take to Prom. So he’s letting you set the list!
Ten bottles is all you are ever going to have in your liquor cabinet. The same ten. Forever.
I put up my serious list in the comments, alongside many others’. Go take a look at what they are saying. It reminds me that my tastes are fairly pedestrian!
But since I’m also writing about it here, I thought I’d do a second list—The Pegu Blog List.

The Pegu Blog’s Only Ten Bottles For Life List

• Cointreau—”Without Cointreau life itself (and virtually every drink I mix) would be impossible!”
• Bombay Sapphire Gin
• Hendrick’s Gin
• Tanqueray Rangpur Gin
• Krahn Gin
• Martin Miller’s London Dry Gin
• Van Gogh Gin
• Angustora Bitters
• Belvedere Vodka
• Johnny Walker Black Label—For days when my mood dictates a trip to Brown Liquorville.

If you don’t like my selection of Gins, tell me here. If you want to put up your own list, be sure to do it over on the ice shelf.

Last week, Maggi and I went to a cooking class at Rosendales in the Short North area in Columbus. Rosendales is an exceedingly good restaurant that Maggi and I only recently discovered. We’d go a lot more often, but the Short North isn’t close. When I have to send almost as much money to Iran just getting to dinner as I do on dinner itself, I stay home more often. That said, I’ll probably make the drive more often this Fall, when the owner and chef at Rosendales, Richard Rosendale, opens his second restaurant, Details, next door. I’ve talked to the sommelier and head bartender, and the bar at Details sounds like just the kind of superior, innovative watering hole that makes me wish I lived in Portland or Seattle, but haven’t found in Columbus.
Chef Rosendale’s class was on Molecular Gastronomy, and this was the second attempt to hold it. The first try was postponed when he was named a semi-finalist for the US slot in the Bocuse d’Or cullinary competition. He is now a finalist, which may explain why there are no more classes scheduled in the short term.

Wait! So what are you now, a food blogger?

Bear with me. This is still a cocktail blog.
Chef Rosendale did a wonderful demonstration of the use of hydrocolloids in cooking. These are the gelling agents that can transform water-based solutions in all sorts of cool and useful ways. He showed us ways to use Gelatin, Agar Agar, Sodium Alginate, Carrageenan, as well as Lecithin and Calcium Chloride.

Hey, um, not rain on your parade, but those last two aren’t hydrocolloids!

True, but Lecithin is an emulsifier that can produce similar results with the right ingredients, and the Calcium Chloride works with the Alginate to do something insanely cool that I’ll talk about in a second. He also threw in some fun with vacuum sealers that I have already failed to duplicate, and did the making ice cream with liquid nitrogen trick, which I had never seen close up.

Chef Rosendale’s style of presentation was clear, fun, and energetic. The group was curious and asked a lot of questions. Maggi the chemist asked a few questions I’d have never thought of, but the man was equal to the task. And of course I asked a whole bunch of questions, most of which were variations of Now, how would I have to adjust the mix if I introduced a whole bunch of alcohol?
I’ll be having fun with foam garnishes, alcoholic noodles, and Pegu Caviar for weeks.

Ok, I’ll bite.
Pegu Caviar?

Yep. That’s the cool trick with the Alginate. Basically, the recipe he showed us mixed cantaloupe juice and a trace of Sodium Alginate. You drop a dollop into a bath of cold water and Calcium Chloride. The instant the drop hits the solution, it begins to harden from the outside in. After a short time, depending on the size and desired consistency of the resulting ball, you remove and rinse in fresh cold water. You end up with a spheroid that is firm on the outside but still liquid on the inside. Even if you just made marble-sized drops with a spoon, this would be cool to do with cocktails. But with a little apparatus that he showed us from a website called ChefRubber.com you can drop scores of tiny drops in at once, resulting in a pile of little tiny balls the size and consistency of salmon roe. I’ve ordered one of these devices and will try to work up the ratios for as many different cocktails as I can, starting of course with Pegus. How ’bout a Manhattan and cheddar on a Bremner Wafer? Watch this space for pictures and recipes when I can get it to work!

For those who don’t know what the cute little Google Map in the left sidebar is, it is The Pegu Blog BlogBarCrawl. It’s my little travel aid for me and you, so that when we are on the road, we can check if there are any bloggers among the bartenders where we are going. It has been a while since I discovered any new bartenders to add to it, but Gabriel has come to the rescue with his new Comprehensive Almanac of the Cocktailosphere. I’m about halfway through it, searching for blogs written by working bartenders, and thought I’d post the latest one’s I’ve found so far. I’ll get the rest of the way through soon, I promise.
If you have, or know of, a blog I’ve missed, please drop me a line!
Oh, and I’ve fixed things so that the maps actually work in Firefox! Yay!
Here’s who I’ve added in the last few days:

• Kevin Ludwig, writes The Beaker and Flask Blog about building his future bar, Beaker and Flask. Kevin currently works at Clyde Common.
• Blair Reynolds, a.k.a. Trader Tiki, works at Acadia.
• Chris Doig writes and performs in the Brilliant Cocktailsblog and video podcast, and works at Restaurant Umami in Copenhagen Denmark.

I haven’t scraped someone else’s list for a post in a while, but DrinkPlanner’s 10 Commandments of Drinking Like a Man is both clever and (inadvertently I’m sure) insightful. Like most such lists, I love a few, would twist a few more, and blow my nose at others.

Thou Shalt Learn to Enjoy Whisk(e)y - Bourbon, Scotch, Irish, Tennessee whiskey and every other form of the drink shall heretofore be your best buddy….

heretofore??? doesn’t he mean henceforth? Let me get this straight. You are quoting a list with a major gramatical error? Have you no standards?

No. No I don’t.
Sorry DrinkPlanner, she’s a grammar nazi. But she’s a great broad (defined at least in part as a woman who drinks like a man whenever she damn well feels like it), so she probably drinks as much whisk(e)y as I do. Which isn’t that much. The brown liquors are for me a drink that reflects my mood. I have to be feeling particularly languid or depressed to go there.

Thou Shalt Not Consume Drinks With Idiotic Gimmicky Names Meant to Cover Up How Girly They Are - So help me God, if I see any of you jackasses out there with a Sex on the Beach or a Screw Me Blue in your hands, I’ll slap it to the ground and eat your worthless soul….

A) These names don’t cover anything up. At least they are honest in advertising the exact intentions of the man who is ordering or even drinking them.
B) You forgot the Pink Panty Pulldown in your list of offenders.

The Way You Treat Bartenders and Waitstaff Says More About You Than You Know

Truer words hath not been spoken. Nuff said.

He of course has others on his list, or it wouldn’t be ten commandments, now would it? Go read them there.
Or stick with me, and I’ll add a few of my own.

1. Shots Are For Special Occasions If you are the only one doing shots (and especially if you are the only one there), you are not drinking like a man, you are drinking like a drunk. So shoot in groups, and not often, as they get out of hand. Remember, payday is not a special occasion.
2. Wine Is Always And Only Made From Grapes
   

   Q. What was the precious trade secret bequeathed by the dying wine maker to his assembled family?
   A. Wine can also be made from grapes.
   —Everyday Drinking, the Distilled Kingsley Amis

The King was talking about really crappy ordinary wine, but I am talking about all wine. Men do not drink wine made from fruits other than grapes. They. Just. Don’t.

OK, so evidently I’m a Vodka blogger now. Sue me.
A blogger named Brent Terrazas, who writes about advertising, linked to my post on the Moscow Mule as a recipe source in his piece on Smirnoff’s new ad that features the Moscow Mule. It’s really kind of pretty.

But that is not a Moscow Mule, folks! Vodka, Ginger Ale, and an unsqueezed wedge of lime? That sweet monstrosity should make Smirnoff’s blush in shame. They practically owe the success of their brand, heck their spirit, to the Moscow Mule. It is nice to see them tip the hat to that great drink, but sad to see them bowdlerize it so.
That said, his post pointed me to another ad by Smirnoff that is just too damn cool to be believed. I post it here for your enjoyment.

It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.
—David St. Hubbins

The New York Times reported this weekend on a terrible threat growing beyond American shores. Imagine being blindfolded, your hearing blocked by consciousness-altering sounds. Then chemicals are sprayed in your face while you are fed drugs through a tube. And this sort of treatment is going on openly in the largest city of our staunch ally, Australia! Nancy Pelosi, save us all!
OK, maybe it isn’t that bad.
This situation was brought to my attention by the venerable New York Times. The Zeta Bar is an establishment in Sydney that in most ways looks like the kind of awesome cocktail bar that folks in my fly-over neck of the American woods can only dream jealously about. They do all sorts of fabulous molecular mixology, as well as classic cocktails spectacularly presented, all in what looks to be a pretty kicking environment. Had I not discovered them via the Times article, the only thing that would have given me pause is the fact that they brag that their staff is “dressed by internationally acclaimed Australian fashion designer, Tina Kalivas.” I’m not sure I want to go drink someplace where the staff is probably better dressed than I am. Just saying.
What does an awesome cocktail lounge have to do with the experience I outlined at the beginning? Behold the latest brainchild of Zeta, the Virtual Cocktail. Lest you think my description of the experience is over the top, here’s a picture.

The cocktail experience pictured here is the Tiki. The rum-based recipe is given in the Times article, but what matters is the rest. You are literally blindfolded and secluded. You are given an iPod with (I surmise) beach music playing, and drink your tiki drink from a whole pineapple while they spray what (smells) like Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil over your face.
In theory, it is a brilliant idea. Sounds and smells are powerfully evocative senses. Combine them with taste, and cut off that inconvenient sight, and you should be able to transport yourself as requested. I’ll bet it works, too.
As my man St. Hubbins says, there’s such a fine line between….
Bars are social environments, folks. You go there to see, be seen, talk, and (if the music isn’t too frickin’ loud) listen. If you want to drink alone, do it at home. It’ll cost less, and the inevitable slide into alcoholism won’t bother others. Why would you want to go out to a bar with friends, a spouse, or to the finest point, a date, and then go sit in a booth and listen to eighteen minutes of cuban music by yourself with your Daiquiri? And with the blindfold, you can’t even see the staff in their Tina Kalivas originals!
Besides, if this catches on, you know where it’s going to end up….

Now don’t get me wrong, the idea of adding other sensory components to cocktails is a good one. I’d make the case that its been going on for over a century, in the form of garnish. On a larger scale, you could use the idea to enhance your tiki bar. Try some sand on the floor, subtle ocean noises under the music, and a tang of salt in the air. Larger establishments could modify different areas of the bar to enhance certain drink styles. Serve Cuban drinks in the cigar room. Try celtic music, dark fragrant leather, and dart boards in the whisk(e)y room. Most bars couldn’t do it, but who cares?
A cocktail is just a cocktail, folks. It can be a thirst quencher. It can be a social lubricant. It can even be a tiny, ephemeral work of art. But it should never expand or be expanded to blot out the world around you. The consequences are just a bit creepy.

Well, since the Time Train ran me right over before I had a chance to think of anything worthwhile for Mixology Monday XXX, Local Flavor, I decided to take time after reading through a lot of the posts and highlight what I learned and/or was reminded of this month, and post another in my award winning series of Things I Learned From MxMo.
1} Unlike mine (yet) some kids can invent a good-tasting drink. And sometimes that drink is little more than leaving the booze out of a regular cocktail. And no, I’m not referring to my, um, Virgin Martini on the Rocks.
2} Rumdood reminds me that I still need to blog about drinking at Disneyworld. He comes up with something called the Tragic Kingdom that sounds yummy as all get out. It also looks and sounds just like some Cocktail of a Million Dreams, except this one’s still cool when you actually wake up drink it.
3} Darcy gives a good explanation of what does and doesn’t work about Blueberries in cocktails. I simply can’t get enough of how they look in a cocktail, and Darcy gives me some hints about how to make the sipping as good as the looking. Oh, and he gives me another use for all the Applejack I’ve got.
4} While reading about Paul’s Blackberry Shrub, I discovered that Jamie Boudreau has left Vessel. This reminds me that I need to get back to updating the BlogBarCrawl. Anyone out there know of more blogging bartenders who I’ve missed? It also makes me wish I could come up with a way to combine Jamie’s departure, the name Vessel, and shipwrecks to make a joke that is readable, unlike the fifteen sentences I’ve written and deleted here.
5} Oh, and by the time I got to Paul’s post, I also learned that lots of us are using fresh berries in cocktails lately.
Last} The most important thing I learned through this Mixology Monday is that I need to start working on a 19th Century Cocktail right now.