Over on Instagram I pushed Suze, the bitter, golden hued liqueur into the spotlight to see what everyone is using it in (chime in over there or comment below too!). For me, I have two go-to’s: Suze and soda, and a White Negroni.
Years back a made a frozen watermelon-infused White Negroni and always meant to follow that up with a stirred drink. Cut to now, whoops. So I’m writing up my usual formula (which diverges from the standard Negroni recipe you’ll notice). Suze is, well, aggressive in its bitterness and herbal notes. Here it needs to be cut back a bit so that it doesn’t overpower the botanicals in the gin, and the softness of the vermouth. There is no exact recipe or ingredients for a White Negroni, and you can find all kinds of variations and formulas online. But here, this is what I drink.
White Negroni
1-1/2 ounces London dry style gin (Beefeater)
1 ounce dry, white vermouth (I used Carpano Dry Vermouth here)
3/4 ounce Suze
In a mixing glass 2/3 filled with ice, pour in gin, vermouth, and Suze. Stir about 20 seconds and strain into a rocks glass with a fresh ice cube. Enjoy!
Today I bring you a weekend cocktail. A festive, fir tree scented drink you can sip on as you bake cookies, or wrap gifts, or use as a palate cleanser between licking all those damn holiday cards you still haven’t got out in the mail yet.
Yes! You might be familiar with eau de vie spirits made from fruit, but there is one that is made from pine buds. I have three favorite scents in this world: lilac, wood smoke, and fir trees. So the first time I saw this brandy I went absolutely nuts over it and immediately started making drinks (see 
For this drink, stick with a dry or extra dry vermouth, you want a little less residual sugar in there so that the fir tree aroma and flavor stands out. This is on the slightly less bitter side than a classic Negroni, as Bitter Bianco is used, which adds some citrus and delicate floral notes that really work with the pine forest effect of the eau de vie.
Totally optional, but I had a lot of fun garnishing the drink with what looked like snowy tree branches. If you’re trying to impress guests and want a festive garnish, go ahead and add these to the drink. It’s just powdered sugar and rosemary. I’ve made a note on making these following the recipe. Keep in mind though that rosemary imparts its own strong aroma, which can work here, but I would present the drink with the garnish and then remove before imbibing.
Fir-Groni Cocktail
To make the “snowy branches”, take a cleaned rosemary sprig and coat lightly with egg whites using a silicone pastry brush. Shake off any excess liquid and immediately dip into a shallow bowl filled with about a 1/4″ of powdered sugar. Swirl the rosemary sprig around to coat and let dry. Once dry, use a garnish on your cocktail. Also looks cute on a some baked cake!
Well kids, it’s been awhile since we’ve seen a Low Rent Cocktail around these parts and Halloween seems like the right time to throw one at you.
Awwww. How sweet. Now on to the ridiculous cocktails.
Halloween means excessive sweets and bad taste, and that’s just what these two Low Rent Cocktails have to offer you. First up we have the Fanta of the Opera staring, you guessed it: Fanta Soda and because we’re trying oh so hard to be fancy with our cheap plastic masks and not flame retardant costumes, we’re bringing out the Italian Vermouth. It’s fancy because it comes from Italy.
Fanta of the Opera
Fanta of the Paradise
Do you all remember the first time you heard about blogs? I forget in what order these things go, but I know I paid attention to food blogs the most first. But then I forget that when I was younger, much younger, I created a site where I reviewed live music shows local to Los Angeles. This actually led to a brief period of my life where I got paid to write for music publications and got sent free music to review. At the time, this was akin to winning the lottery.
Food blogs were an interesting mix of recipes and people spilling their guts out to the public (not much change there). Their casualness led to a renewed interest for me of cooking in the kitchen. These people clearly were not chefs and just look at what they were making! And then in 2010 I was preparing to get married and stumbled into the even larger and insane world of lifestyle/wedding/etc blogs that kept me up crying and hyperventilating into a paper bag. I still occasionally look at these for no reason at all, but I’m thankful that I only had to spend a brief period of my life picking out color schemes for napkins and talking about chair cushion choices.
Do I have vodka in my bar? Yes. Lots really. Brands send it to me and I try it, curious to see what this new one will taste like, if anything. Do I drink vodka martinis? Not really; I am used to the taste of a gin martini and I prefer all the flavor it has. However, I am not dismissing it. I am however going to make it fancy.
. And immediately I knew this was not really great. It tasted… weird? So I tried to think up what it was missing and came up with the recipe below.
, whose acerbic wit I strive for in my daily life. While this drink has some bite, it doesn’t deliver quite the zing it needs. Suggestions, as always, are welcome.
