Tipsy Texan will be hosting a cocktail contest as part of Edible Austin magazine's Eat Local Week. The contest is called Drink Local, and focuses on local spirits and fresh, seasonal ingredients. The event will take place on Tuesday, Dec 9 at the Monarch downtown. Interested parties should email me at Tex AT this url for more info.

Did you know that the popularization of the Dirty Martini is credited to Franklin Roosevelt? While I am glad that FDR was a lush, I was hoping that this travesty of a drink would belong to someone less admirable, and more dirty and briny, someone along the lines of, I don't know, perhaps a Sarah Palin. As Dale points out, anyone who has worked in a bar or restaurant would likely shy away from a drink that involves a splash of olive juice, from the jar that countless hands violate per shift.

Given that I on numerous occasions have expounded the virtues of the classic clean martini, why would I go and make a dirty one? It has to do with the bottle of Dirty Sue olive juice that came to my attention (and with the fact that the drink is in the book, and has to be made at some point). Dirty Sue is all brine, all the time, with no pesky olives to get in the way. Being no expert on the Dirty Martini, I cannot verify whether or not a martini made with this product tastes better than a martini made the traditional funky-jar-juice way. But from a sanitation perspective it is outstanding.

I personally don't prefer the Dirty Martini, but Dirty Sue may be a godsend for those of you who do. I have a bizarre vision of women toting little dropper bottles of Dirty Sue to bars so they can clandestinely doctor up their martinis, the way you see people busting out the Stevia at the coffee bar.

Remember When is a local dairy that sells its milk at our farmer's market. It is low-temperature pasteurized, and non-homogenized, so the cream rises to the top. I woke up this morning fantasizing about it. More precisely, I was fantasizing about it in a cocktail. I was thinking of cocktails that would function as an adequate eye-opener, and contain milk, and satisfy a Dale/David Project requirement. I decided that I would make a White Russian, but it wasn't in the book. The Black Russian is, however, and Dale describes it as "a classic." He uses a 1:1 ratio of vodka to Kahlúa. Gary Regan in his Joy of Mixology recommends a 2:1 ratio. Regan also suggests that this drink offers a great opportunity for creativity, substituting rum or tequila for the vodka.

What I really wanted this morning was a White Russian...

The Tipsy Texan Drink Local Cocktail Contest will take place on Tuesday, December 9 at 6pm at the Monarch downtown. Entries must be submitted by November 24, and finalists will be announced on December 1. Here are the complete rules:

Dale describes the Stinger as "the classic New York nightcap" but doesn't explain why. According to Gary Regan, the combination of brandy and creme de menthe dates back at least as far as the Judge cocktail mentioned in William Schmidt's The Flowing Bowl (1892).

I made two versions of this drink, both of which I drank happily. The Dale version consists of two ounces of brandy/cognac and one ounce of creme de menthe, shaken and strained over crushed ice. Gary Regan's recipe calls for three ounces of Cognac to 1/4 oz-1/2oz creme de menthe. Obviously the Dale version is more menthey. The Regan version, with 3+ oz of booze, is a hell of a "nightcap," but I have to say I like it.

Stevi Deter, over at Two at the Most is our host for Mixology Monday this evening and has chosen the theme of the Guilty Pleasure. As always I am posting at the last minute, with my fingers crossed that I finish before the midnight deadline.

This theme is actually a real treat, because everyone needs to get something off of their chest. We all have a cocktailian skeleton in our closets, and I have a whole graveyard of them, each associated with a certain (usually unfortunate) period of my life, where they play symbolically like the equally shameful soundtrack of the period. There is the Red Bull/Vodka, first of all. A nasty secret shame of a drink that I haven't ordered in years but would drink if someone put one in front of me. There is of course the Piña Colada, which I actually think is a good drink that has been maligned by cocktail history because it has been made poorly so many times. Looking back further in my personal cocktail history, there is the Purple Fuzzy F*cker, a combination of Absolut Citron and Welch's grape juice, that we drank in those early years of exploring our tipsy selves(think high school); it has been a dozen years probably since I had this but I bet it would bring back so many sense memories if I tasted it right now. Then there is the entire Grasshopper family, which I am apparently obsessed with.

What I really want to come out about is my attraction to the Long Island Iced Tea. It was one of the first drinks that I became fond of when I first began to drink legally in Texas. Frank Giovinazzi was a brash New Yorker and the bartender at the restaurant where I worked, and he made them for me often. Over the years we drank them whenever we went out on Sixth St. and someone was barking them from the door of some shady establishment. "Two dollar Long Islands!" they would shout, and we would enter, against our best interests. The two dollars would buy a plastic cup of well booze with a splash of soda gun sweet & sour and Coke. It did the trick, but a culinary experience it was not.

Then came Dale DeGroff. When we bought his book that fateful night at the Half Price Books at our house, little did we know that we were about to discover not just an unknown world of classical craft mixology, but also a professional revision of some of our old favorites, namely the Long Island Iced Tea. As Dale says, "when made properly, the drink tastes great and doesn't have to be an evening ender. The key is to have all the spirits present but in small amounts." In his recipe, the total booze count is 2 1/2 oz., which is a reasonable amount and a far cry from the frat party favorite that you find in downtown Austin on any given night. I have been making these Top Shelf Long Islands for people for a couple of years now, and they are always surprised by how nice the drink can taste when it is not serving the function of Panty Dropper. As a twist, we use Boylan Cane Cola instead of Coke. It is made with pure cane sugar instead of HFCS, and has a subtle clovey flavor that I like. And since it is from New Jersey, it seems appropriate in this drink.

**I apologize for the crappy cell phone photo, I left my camera at a Flor de Caña cocktail contest tonight that we competed in.

On Monday night Tipsy and I participated in the Flor de Caña rum cocktail contest. Tipsy came up with a fabulous cocktail that for reasons unknown to us did not make it to the final round. My cocktail did, along with four others.

The contest rules stipulated that contestants must make a cocktail using Flor de Caña 18yr. Because it is such a complex spirit I decided to stick with something simple. My first cocktail was a rum Sazerac, but I decided not to submit that one because I knew that the judging format of the contest allowed everybody present to vote, and I knew that a drink with Herbsaint in it would not be a crowd-pleaser. Instead, I turned to the Margarita. Substituting 18yr rum for the tequila, the result was delicious, the golden honey color stunning.

Matagalpa Cocktail
1 ½ oz Flor de Caña 18yr
¾ oz Cointreau
½ oz fresh lime juice
½ simple syrup
Combine ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker and shake vigorously; strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

I have to say that I was impressed with the quality of the cocktails at the event. I have attended a handful of contests where I was not so pleased. I had never competed in a contest until Monday so it was very exciting to win. The grand prize is a trip to Nicaragua to visit the Flor de Caña distillery. We take off some time next spring.

Tonight I was thumbing through the Dale when I discovered the Blue Monday cocktail, which was quite a stroke of luck since I was listening to the Blue Monday radio program at the time. Blue Monday the show, as it happens, has been on the air since 1981 with the same host. I know this because they were doing a lot of talking since it is fund drive time again at my local NPR affiliate.

Blue Monday the show may be old, but the cocktail is even older. According to Dale, the cocktail appears in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book (1934). The drink then consisted of vodka, Cointreau, and blue vegetable extract. In Dale's formulation, it is made with blue curacao in place of the vegetable extract, which is fine by me since I am fresh out of blue vegetable extract. Can you imagine a time when blue vegetable extract had a home behind the bar and blue curacao didn't? Such times...

Blue Monday is one of those weird blue drinks that are striking in color but so unnatural as to make them totally unappetizing. I used a flamed lemon peel where DDG called for an orange.

Dale says that the most interesting thing about this cocktail is that it is one of the earliest Vodka drinks to appear in a cocktail book. I agree--borrrring.

As I have said before, it is always with great pleasure that I discover another member of the Grasshopper family. Tonight we make the Golden Cadillac, a Grasshopper made with Galliano in place of the Creme de Menthe. According to Dale, the Golden Cadillac "was created at Poor Red's Saloon in Eldorado, California, where everything is golden." He doesn't indicate its date of creation.

The Golden Caddy is nice, and as a member of the Grasshopper family it is predisposed to be pleasing to me.

As much as I like the Golden Caddy, I decided that I thought it could be made even more golden by the substitution of Egg Nog for the cream. The results are pleasing.

I proudly present The Golden Sleigh, my first cocktail created for a holiday I don't celebrate. But in the spirit of all holidays, I invite all of my gentile brethren to come partake of this delicious cocktail that I have created in their honor.

Why is the Egg Nog already at my local grocer? It's not even Halloween yet. And why can't the Egg Nog be a little more interfaith in its packaging? As it is it looks way too Christmasy, but I like it nonetheless. My mother has some not-fully-thought-out theory about how it is actually the Jews who are really in charge of Christmas. I don't know what made me think of this. But if any of you are either a) trying to say that you came up with this drink first or b) you don't want some Yid telling you about Christmas, get over it.