PomBourtini

Life has been…busy, but in the most excellent sort of way.  Making new friends, discovering new places and traditions.  I’m adjusting to my new home, the new ‘hood, and a new job.  Squeezing my feet into pumps and teetering around like a stilt walker is like riding a bike for me…it never quite leaves you, but you will probably hit the pavement once or twice and need a bandaid. 

Something I’m not in love with:  the wine here. 

1.        I spent a bit of euro on a lovely hand-crafted Laguiole corkscrew before I left Paris, as I am slightly obsessed with their knives.  A practical momento of sorts, as I’m still sentimental about my time there. 

2.       I have yet to use it.  Every bottle of wine I can find that is under £20 is a screw-top.  Tragic.  It seems that wine made for export to the UK Market gets a screw-top slapped on.  

3.       This aforemention wine gives me a headache instantly, without fail.  If I have more than one glass, I get insanely pissed off, dehydrated and achy.  It’s literally drinking poison.  And the impossible has happened:  I’m not ever drunk, but I identify as an angry drunk.  It's true what they say:  the French keep all the best stuff for themselves, they export the swill.  

4.       I need to find a source for non-lethal wine. 

Until I do, there is cocktails. 

One of the things I’m loving about the 9-5 is the excuse to have a cocktail as the sun is dipping below the horizon.  It just feels right in a way that I’m not quite comfortable with exploring the psychie of too deeply.   I found myself flush with bourbon recently, and after making this chicken (which was fairly delicious, you should try it), I had a big-ass bottle of pomegranate juice that needed some help to swig.  By itself, it’s bitter and puckery, but smooth it out and it’s de-lovely. 

Oh, and look what I got!  An adorable little set of bitters in a vintage travel tin.  I travel light, but I’m starting to think I need to start traveling much more stylishly. 

While I made the mistake of ordering a cocktail shaker off Amazon (along with a bottle of Scotch and some hard-to-find Cynar) and it never quite got here.  Improvising is my middle name, and making due with a measuring cup, while not as satisfying as the shake-shake-shake-shake of a glowing orb of cocktail mixing goodness, got me the approximate proportions.    

And it’s delicious, in a slightly exotic sweet-tart sort of way.  Just what you need to melt away your day into a lovely puddle of uncaring. 

The PomBourtini
(adapted from Serious Eats)

·   1/4 ounce pomegranate molasses (which is crazy cheap at the Mideast grocery store, mega expensive everywhere else)

·   1 ounce pomegranate juice

·   1 ounce freshly squeezed orange juice

·   3 ounces bourbon (or a bit more if your day is shite, but I think 3 makes for good sips)

·   Dash of Angostura bitters

·   Orange twist.  Or, if you are uncivilized, by all means, go without the garnish.

Throw the whole mess into a shaker, give it a good jostle with some ice.  Pour into a highball and garnish.  Enjoy.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Oh!  A stroke of genius I had.  As I was browsing the seed packet aisles at the local garden centre, an idea formed in my brain, which resulted in a bit of mud underneath my fingernails and an urgency to get to early summer faster than the tilt of the earth possibly allows.  I planted my first-ever cocktail garden!  A garden to garnish and muddle and imbibe in.

Flowers are pretty and nice and good for the bees (I planted some of those as well) but I have always preferred growing things to eat.  It’s always fresher and better when it’s from the garden, and once you’ve had your own heirloom tomatoes, you will forego all others.  

Herbs are the most practical things to grow, as how many times have I bought a whole bunch of parsley or dill, only to use a chopped teaspoon as a garnish, and then finding the rest of the bunch in a sad state in the back of the fridge on the next clean-out.  It’s nice to have an herb garden to just get a handful here and there, it makes things smell nice, and it inspires you to whip something up summery and happy, something that the memory of will get you through another dark winter.

So, what exactly have I planted so far?   

Here’s the list.  It's ambitious.   Mint, rosemary, basil, thyme, tarragon, cilantro, parsley and lavender.  I’ve got a batch of cukes in as well, as you can’t have a pimms without them, and they are also lovely muddled in some gin and tonic, and I’ve had good luck making quick pickles with them that go perfectly on a bowl of summery soba noodles.  I’ve also got some kale and tomatoes that happily taking root in some peat pots that I got at the £ store.  The kale pops its green heads up amazingly fast; it took about 5 days for them to appear en masse, while the tomatoes had me worried and took more like 10 days for one or two to tentatively peek out from the compost.  

I have everything on trays with a greenhouse cover- it goes out in the morning if it’s going to be a warm day out; otherwise the seedlings spend the day in the sunniest windowsill I have.  I bring them in at night, as you still need a winter coat at night and the temperature hovered right above freezing a couple of days last week.  I accidentally left a flat of lettuce out overnight and it expressed its displeasure by flopping over limply in protest until I put it back on the sill.  I still am not quite sure if I have enough sunlight for the tomato plants to thrive, but I’m hoping that as the sun climbs higher in the sky, I will have less shadows and more direct sun on the balcony.  I also have a barrel of compost for my kitchen scraps and coffee grinds started, and that should get going nicely once it warms up more. 

I am staggering everything on a week to week basis, ensuring that things will stay in control and I won't have a million pounds of eggplant to deal with all at once.  



More than anything, I really love the tactile experience.  Getting my hands dirty, poking seeds into the dank earth, watching obsessively the growth and water intake.  I've been scavenging for planters and pots on the cheap or free, so I'll have plenty to do once it's time to transplant them.  Most of the things recommend starting things outside in April, and although we haven't had a frost in weeks, I want to make sure I don't fail at patio gardening.

I have my booze at the ready and the cocktail shaker will get here eventually.  I’m just waiting for the sun to shine.

Union Square

Walking around Union Square.

It seems like most of my life in New York was centered around this area. Traditionally, this is where downtown ends and uptown begins. I almost always lived below Union Square, but worked above it, and it seemed to be the hub of my social life for a good long time. As soon as I walked into the Greenmarket and saw all the thoughtful, brooding artesian pickle makers and the snarky rooftop honey producers, I felt like I was back with my people.

Winesaps!

We get so many varieties of apples in France, and winesaps are not one of them as far as I can tell. I happily munched my way through a whole bag of them while I was stateside.

Every November, a holiday vendor village gets set up in the square where the skateboarders usually are showing their boxers shorts to the world.

I sniffed out some good food pretty quickly. I seem to have a knack for that.

The waffels at Waffles and Dingles put anything I've ever had in Belgium to shame.

And....

Pork buns! In Paris, they call them "brioche" and I haven't had one that didn't taste like porky hockey pucks yet. Here, even at a street vendor, they are pillowy and soft, with sweet BBQ pork oozing warm in the center. It's enough to make me cry.

As soon as the sun starts to set (which is thankfully not too much of wait in winter) I headed over to my favorite local place, Old Town Bar.

They make a generous cocktail, and they make the gimlets with gin, as they should be.

As good excuse as any to meet up with the multi-talented Silent James.

Booze InfuseDay

My junior high school teachers would be proud.



Growing up, all students in the 7th and 8th grades had to take both shop ("Industrial Arts") and home economics classes. The year would be divided in semesters. Half the year, you were in the shop with the power saws and drafting desks, the other half you would be in with the sewing machines and sharp knives.

Try as I might, I could barely muster up a passing grade in shop. I was determined to succeed, but a combination of being really terrible at math and being deathly afraid of all the sharp whirring blades rendered me kind of helpless. I wanted to show them though, and I kept on trying. I built a balsa wood bridge, which crumbled under the slightest pressure. I built a CO2 engine race car that was nicknamed "The Brick" by classmates- I was too afraid to do more than a few rudimentary cuts with the jigsaw and tried to compensate by sanding it down for 6 hours to get a really streamlined block. Woodworking was not my thing. In the end, as a grown-ass woman, I didn't fight it. I can put together Ikea furniture and that's all the skills I am in need of.

As soon as the semesters changed and I got to wear an apron, I transformed into something else. I breezed around the kitchen, making rice crispy treats and blueberry muffins and whatever other little nibbles that was assigned with ease and grace. I sewed my ass off, and when I ran out of the fabric they provided, I brought my knitting from home and made scarves (which were the only thing I could make at the time). I didn't even have to try- my mom had a sewing machine at home that fascinated me to no end, and I had been making cookies and throwing together simple dinners since I could reach the controls on the stove. This was cake. I breezed through without putting any real effort in at all.

Imagine my horror when, on the very last day of 8th grade, my name was called in a school-wide assembly to come on down to the stage and accept an award for Home Economics Excellence. My life was ruined. I wanted an award in Science or History or, yes, Industrial Arts or Gym- some subject that I worked really hard at and put in effort but maybe didn't always understand completely.

Red faced, I dragged my feet down to the front of the room to reluctantly accept my award. I'm pretty sure I threw it away the moment I got home. My angry junior feminist self knew that the system was trying to doom me to a stereotypical life of homemaking. How dare they. I'll show them.

Well, I did show them. The whole homemaking thing never really worked out for me. Take that! I work a job all day and I usually only get around to vacuuming in the moments before company is due to arrive. I guess I showed them.

I do really enjoy cooking. Except for my dread of homemade marshmallows and the sticky clean up that it creates, I love almost all my time I spend in the kitchen.

Plus, I love to grocery shop. Having a lot of fancy markets and food boutiques in the city means I have to exercise a lot self-control on a daily basis. I apparently failed at this element last week as I came home from the market with bags of exotic fruit. I couldn't resist, even though I had no idea how to prepare or eat half of what I bought.



This is a Buddha's Hand Citron. Buddha seems to have gotten a limb donated from a deep sea creature. What in holy hell do I make with such an odd fruit, which has no juice to extract and is mostly made up of peel?



Oh, look- a quick trip to the liquor store for a cheap bottle of Vodka saves the day! It doesn't really matter what brand you use- I stay away from the very bottom shelf of plastic jugs with fake Russian writing on them and that's about my only standard.



Most of the white pith needs to be removed- it's a little bitter but it would probably just absorb more than it's share of booze instead of infusing it with flavor. The smell is heavenly- very citrusy and sunshiny. Chop the fingers into thin strips, jam them into some clean jars and fill to the brim with vodka. One bottle I grated some fresh ginger and threw that in as well.



Up next is the aptly named Prickly Pear.



These are the fruits of a cactus.



Even though the spines are removed before they hit the market, I still managed to get a few whisper-thin ones embedded in my hands. You might want to put on a pair of kitchen gloves with these.



The flesh is a brilliant ruby-red. It's almost like a firmer watermelon in texture, and the flavor, while bland, is quite refreshing. I scored the skin and peeled it off, chopped the fruit into cubes and threw them in some clean jars. Soon, the comforting glug-glug-glug sounds filled the kitchen.



It turns the vodka a brilliant red. This probably won't add a whole lot of flavor, but it will make a pretty mixed drink.

Finally- the Mae West of fruits, the pomelo.



These enormous citrus fruits are actually tasty eating, but a pain in the ass to deal with. The fruit within is buried under about 3 inches of soft, rubbery pith.



It ends up looking like a large-segmented grapefruit, but much sweeter. It's a disaster to eat- aside from peeling the whole thing, the membranes that segment it are tough and chewy. It's a lot of work.

No worries, booze doesn't care. It happily does all the work for you.



I threw a couple of segments and some zest in with a handful of mint. Glug-glug-glug.

All the jars go in the pantry for a few weeks to get the most out of the fruit flavors. You can filter them or just pour carefully to avoid getting too much chunk in your drinks. If you can find some pretty bottles or jars, they make lovely gifts- try inventing a cocktail recipe and including it on the gift tag.

I think that if my school teachers would have told me that booze infusions were a viable option for culinary skills, I would have been much happier about being awarded for my kitchen genius. Cheers to them.