Some More Summer Cocktails

Hello everyone – It's been a while since I posted anything here. The combination of a temporary job doing some physically demanding work, time spent writing fiction, and the summer heat wave has kept me away from the blog. Also, the heat here in NY has us drinking more gin & tonics or cold beers than anything particularly interesting.

I'm quite sure that a lot can be written about mixing a gin and tonic, and I may just pursue that subject some day. Today, though, I'm just going to throw a few more refreshing summer cocktail recipes your way.

Tara's favorite lately is the Pink Lady, an old drink very similar to the Clover Club cocktail. The Pink Lady adds some applejack to the recipe, resulting in a slightly boozier, tastier drink.

Pink Lady
¾ oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
½ oz. real pomegranate grenadine
1 ½ oz. gin
½ oz. applejack
½ egg white

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. It doesn't need a garnish, but a cherry wouldn't be out of place.

I make my own grenadine by shaking equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar together until the sugar dissolves, then adding two or three ounces of pomegranate molasses to each cup of pomegranate syrup. It's far, far better than any commercial grenadine I've tried, but if you prefer to buy your grenadine, Small Hands Foods, Sonoma Syrup Company and Stirrings all make real pomegranate grenadine. Please avoid the nasty, chemical-laden red sugar water on the shelf at your local supermarket, as it will spoil any cocktail you put it in.

My sipper of choice lately has been something I call the McGee, after Travis McGee, the beach-bum/knight errant hero of John D. MacDonald's series of novels. These books are some of the greatest detective stories ever written, and McGee emerges as one of the truly great characters in all literature. If you haven't read them, do so. If you have, read them again.

McGee is a gin man, and the original version of the McGee cocktail was simply Boodles gin on the rocks, served in an old fashioned glass. Now, this isn't a cocktail, or even a mixed drink, but it is pretty much a modern Martini served on the rocks rather than up. Since I personally want the Martini to regain it's place as a specific drink, I've taken to calling my version a McGee instead.

In keeping with the lore in the books, you can rinse the ice in the glass with sherry or vermouth, dumping the excess before filling with gin. Stick with Boodles, which McGee drank for much of the series, or Plymouth, although McGee seemed to only drink from his stash of old-style Plymouth and had some unkind things to say about the current formulation. Well, current circa-1980-something, anyway.

My preferred McGee goes like this: Fill a rocks glass with large ice cubes, add a splash of Noilly Prat dry vermouth and a dash of Regan's orange bitters, swirl to coat the ice and glass and dump the excess. Add a good amount of Boodles gin, stir to chill and sip. Ahh...

Obviously, you need to love whatever gin you're going to use in a McGee. Happily, Boodles is both my favorite London dry gin and accurate to the books, but feel free to use your own favorite if Boodles doesn't do it for you. Maybe, if everyone starts calling a gin-with-little-to-no-vermouth a McGee instead of a Martini, it will help nudge the Martini back towards being a specific drink, rather than a catch-all term for a mixed drink served up in a stemmed glass...

I'll stop here, since I'm also working on a future post detailing the history of the Martini. My apologies for the lack of photos this time around, I'll try to get back in the swing of taking pictures for next time.