My Fuzzy Valentine Cocktail

I'm not sure whether it was excess imbibery pent up by an ice jam of "recession" hysteria, or maybe just a fluke of ol' Pope Gregory's calendar, hell, maybe Cupid got laid off and Bacchus took his shifts, who knows? Whatever the reason, Valentines night was re-god-damn-diculous this year. 

People came out in droves and, for once, they all seemed to want cocktails. Pisco sours in particular were flowing freely across the wood, with my usual encouragement, but I was pleased as punch (I know I know, obvious boozy cliche, but hey, it's appropriate in this case) to see all of the new cocktail list represented on the stack of chits that came in.

 Eventually one pisco-fuelled gent requested a change of pace, his only guidance being his next drink be "sour and fuzzy". Sour I can do, but "fuzzy" required a minute of brow wrinkling,  until my trusty (and dusty) little bottle of orange flower water caught my eye and inspiration struck. If ever there was a "fuzzy" drink, it would have to be Ramos' Gin Fizz.

Now I was psyched! First of all I could delay my first botox session a little longer as my forehead uncreased, and, as you will soon see, I was about to get a SWEET bicep workout in.

Also known as the New Orleans fizz, this most famous progeny of the Silver Fizz was fathered by Henry Charles Ramos, sometime around 1887 in his saloon at the corner of Gravier and Carondelet Streets in New Orleans. It was so popular in the Crescent City that at it's peak Ramos assigned each of his bartenders a "shaker boy" to shake the living daylights out of his fizzes, so as not to wear out the talent mid shift.

It was in that grand old city at last years Tales of the Cocktail that I learned how to shortcut around some of the brute force required for the RGF by 'dry shaking' cocktails that require a frothy consistency. Basically you shake the mixers without ice to hasten the frothing of the emulsifiable ingredients. Still, it was quite a production, and not the most elegant one, to see me wincing as the lactic acid, which could arguably be included in the recipe built up in my inglorious biceps. Thankfully the GF sends me off to the barber more regularly now so at least there was no lame Whitesnake head banger effect going on, but still, it became a bit undignified. The things we do for good hooch.

Anyway, the result is a glass of frothy, silky nostalgia, that reminds me -- in no specific way -- of childhood. No, I did not drink a lot of gin cocktails as a toddler, just try one, you'll see.

Ramos' Gin Fizz

1.5 oz Gin (Plymouth)

1/2 lemon

1/2 lime

1oz simple syrup

1oz half and half cream

1 egg white

3-4 drops orange flower water (seriously, a little goes a long way) Shot of soda Fresh grated netmeg

Dry Shake lemon, lime, cream, egg and sugar HARD for as long as you or your guests thirst can tolerate, add gin and ice, shake again, assertively, for a long, long, long...long...time. Strain into acollins aor better yet milkshakey type glass, charge with soda and grate fresh nutmeg on top. Now take your big-boy milkshake out to the hot tub and take a soak, you've earned it. 

Drink delivered, I headed to the back room for some A535 on the ol' pythons and a shot of my inhaler -wheeze- and strutted over to the table to see how my efforts were going over, "Pretty good" the 19 year old (hopefully) who looked like he was psyched to be downtown without the parental units said, pretty good indeed, young man, pretty good indeed.

The Pisco Sour

Soon after my cocktailian 'rebirth', I figured that my first priority was to do my drinking homework. I'd drag my girlfriend around to the better cocktail bars in Vancouver and look deep into the list to see what 'vanity' listing the bartender had snuck on there. The kind of cocktails that the Sour Apple crowd wouldn't go near, but that cocktail nerds would eagerly lap up. One of our first safaris took us to the wilds of Main Street in Vancouver to the Cascade Room. There, stuck somewhere between Mojito and Margarita was the exotic-sounding Pisco Sour.

Honestly the notion of cheap Peruvian or Chilean brandy sounded fairly scary, cheap French brandy is bad enough, so it seemed unlikely that the addition of a little lemon and sugar could make this stuff palatable, plus the notion of raw egg in a drink was still a new one to me (oh how innocent I was).

However skeptical you are, a well made Pisco Sour looks amazing, a frothy head that cascades into a pale yellow, with the trademark three spots of bitters running slowly through the froth and settling on top of the body of the cocktail.

If you just slam one back, the flavours of the drink are fairly straight forward, like a really well made lemonade...with booze. Upon further analysis, the round, fruity, aromatic character of the pisco kind of wells up through the drink. I find that I perceive the aroma not while nosing the drink, but while actually drinking it. Anyway, the first one was nice, but nothing to write home about, but after trying a few other things on the Cascade's list, I found myself fully craving another Pisco.

Fast forward a few months when the Pisco Sour had been on my own cocktail list at the Hammy for a few weeks and suddenly these wayward souls would wander up to the bar sort of staring into empty, egg-encrusted glasses, dreamily saying; "I don't know what it is, but I had this here a few weeks ago and it's my new favorite drink".

One woman described her Pisco Sour as the "one perfect moment" of her vacation in Vancouver.

Here is the recipe I use for my

Pisco Sour

1.5oz Pisco Capel (it's the only one we can get in BC)

1oz simple syrup

juice of 1/2 a lemon (about 3/4-oz)

one egg white (about 1/2 an ounce will do if you use the pasteurized stuff)

3 drops Angostura bitters

Mix all ingredients except the bitters in a cocktail shaker and shake the bejeezus out of it with ice until the egg white is nice and frothy, then strain (I say double strain, all that shaking creates a lot of ice chips) into a small rocks, or parfait glass. Add the drops of bitters to the top of the foam and serve.

(a great trick for getting a really thick stiff foam is to "dry shake" the the lemon, sugar and egg white, which means to shake them without ice, the foam actually stiffens better in a warm environment, then add the pisco and ice and shake a little more).

Or if you like to play with fire, you must try THIS: How to Make an Angostura Scorched Pisco Sour