This valiant fruit is one of four Meyer lemons from our maiden crop.

Tonight we had the opportunity to mix the first beverage from our Drinkable Estate. We had a bounteous fall citrus crop of exactly four Meyer lemons, and from that decided to make a Tom Collins (or two). Consisting of lemon juice, simple syrup, gin and club soda, this is a perfect drink to show off fresh lemon from the garden.

I also decided to make a version with Rosé sparkling wine in place of the club soda. I think I prefer the club soda version better, though the Rosé version makes for a sexy looking presentation.

The Pink Lady is one of those sweet creamy drinks that I have outed myself as being shamefully fond of. However, it is no Pink Squirrel, one of my clandestine cocktail lovers. The Pink Lady consists of gin, grenadine, simple syrup and heavy cream. It is therefore boozier than the members of the Grasshopper family that it bears a casual resemblance to.

Instead of using Rose's Grenadine, I used a product from Mexico called Valleti Jarabe Sabor Grendadina, basically Mexican grenadine with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

Tonight the Dale/David Project tackles the Tom & Jerry, a labor-intensive but seasonally appropriate cocktail that dates back to the early part of the 19th century. This weekend is the second installment of the Oyster Club, and the location is the renowned Charles Moore House. I am doing two cocktails for the event: a Moore House Punch, which is yet to be developed; and a Zhi Tea Tom & Jerry, a variation on the classic cold-weather warmer, made with Zhi tea instead of hot water, and combined with rum & brandy and a 'batter' of eggs, sugar and spices. Zhi is a local tea company and one of the sponsors of Saturday's festivities.

The first step in the Tom & Jerry process is to beat the egg yolks until they are "watery", meanwhile stirring in a substantial amount of sugar

The Tom & Jerry is widely (and falsely) attributed to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, author of one of the very first cocktail manuals. Although Thomas did not create the drink, "he certainly did more than any other man to promote it," according to David Wondrich in Imbibe!, his award-winning biography of Thomas. Wondrich explains that Thomas told and re-told the story of his "creation" of the drink ca 1847 so many times that he likely believed it by the end of his life. In reality, there are written records of a drink called "Tom and Jerry", consisting of baking soda, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and rum, dating as far back as the 1820's & 30's.

My arm was tired enough from the yolks that when it came time to beat the whites, I exercised my right to use the mixer.

The cocktail was prominent enough by the 1880's that every bar "worth wrecking with a hatchet would get down the china Tom & Jerry bowl and the little 'shaving mugs' that went with it." (A quick Ebay search will come up with dozens of hits for these sets) Unfortunately the drink waned in popularity by the turn of the century and is rarely seen these days. Indeed everyone whom I mentioned this to thought I was somehow referring to the cartoon.

When the whites are stiff, fold them into the yolks/spices/rum mixture until they achieve the consistency of a smooth batter

For the oyster club we decided to do a Tom & Jerry but instead of heating it with water, we would use Zhi Tea. They have a catalog of what must be a hundred or more teas, so I asked owner Jeffery "Doctor Oolong" Lorien to make some suggestions. After tasting the drink with several of his suggestions, my tasting panel arrived at Sweet Desert Delight, a rooibos-based tea flavored with cinnamon, anise pods, cacao nibs, coconut, stevia leaf, and safflowers.

(l-r) Tipsy, Mary Louise Butters, Jenna . The tasting panel decided on the Sweet Desert Delight.

To make each cup, you portion a couple of tablespoons of batter into the cup, add rum and brandy, and top with hot water (or in this case, hot tea)

Now we just hope that the weather cools off in time for the event on Saturday, though in reality we know it will be in the 80's and nobody will want our laboriously prepared hot drink.

Tonight we hosted a random chili feast. First off, my spank-ass pot of I-Want-To-Be-Jesse-Griffiths-When_I-Grow-Up Chili that I made on Sunday (from 3lbs of Thunder Heart bison stew meat, 1 lb bison shanks, 1 lb ground bison, and a pound of lamb necks from my friend Loncito; half a pound of smoked bacon, and a shload of garlic, jalapeños, onions and tomatoes. After about 5 hours the meat was all disintegrated and the marrow was about to fall out of the shank and neck bones. Yum).

I invited a few friends over for a bowl of red and a glass of white--namely all of the cheap/free white wine that I end up with each year after all of the Fall food & beverage events have passed. Addie Broyles from the Statesman and Jenna Lane from Edible Austin were here--it was like a media event, except there was no event. Little did I know that my friend Joe was going to show up with a dish of enchiladas and his f*ing super bad-ass rice. It went from a bowl of chili and a glass of free wine to full on super Tex Mex feasticle.

As much as I was trying to avoid making cocktails, I could not get out of it. This is, after all, Tipsy Manor. And people don't come to Tipsy Manor for wine (free or otherwise). So we turned to the Dale. And since I found a Thrift Store Treasure today in the form of a brand new Bodum punch bowl with the stickers still on it (for $5!), we decided on a punch.

Dale offers the Pilgrim Cocktail without much explanation of the drink's origins. Instead, he offers an endearing story about a bitter winter day in NYC when he left his bar with a tray of warm Pilgrim Cocktails to schlep them across Rockefeller Plaza to a crew of over-worked A.P. workers in the building across the street. We served the drink cold, since we are short on bitter chill here in Texas.

Dale/David Project #81--Pilgrim Cocktail
The Pilgrim punch, according to Dale, consists of dark & light rums, orange juice and lime juice, orange curacao, and bitters. AND pimento dram, which we just happen to have a bottle of on hand...

The Dale/David Project continues tonight with a couple of Galliano cocktails. I apparently have something of a crush on Galliano. It's one of those ingredients that I once thought of as being in that same category as Creme de Noyaux. Those bottles that sit at the back of your parents' liquor cabinet for years collecting dust; or the bottles that you inventory for years at the bar without ever actually noticing a change (except, perhaps, due to evaporation). For those of you who are unfamiliar with this mixological treasure, it is a brandy-based (I think) liqueur flavored with spices and a vanilla nose. Infrequently used in today's bars, it was a staple of bars a few decades ago, and many of those bottles are still sitting in home bars and liquor cabinets out there. (I would love to go on a home bar raid across America's suburbs and see what kind of treasures I could unearth...)

We bought a bottle for something a while back and then I started to wonder: is there something more, some greater destiny for the Galliano beyond the Harvey Wallbanger? By all accounts the Wallbanger (and its Mexican cousin the Freddy Fudpucker) put Galliano on the American map in the 1960's, and then took it off the map when those drinks fell out of popularity.

This Wallbanger was made with local vodka and fresh oranges from south Texas. Served in a banger-era glass that separates from the bottom piece, a cork-lined metal koozie of sorts.

First we made the Harvey Wallbanger. I do not know the origin of this beverage. It is a screwdriver with a floater of Galliano; being a vodka drink I am suspecting that it comes from the 1960's or 70's, when vodka drinks started infecting American cocktail menus. It appears in the 1977 Jones' Complete Bar Guide, but not in the Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide (1972) or the Playboy's Host & Bar Book (1971). The Screwdriver does appear in these volumes; however, neither the Screwdriver nor the Harvey Wallbanger appear in Ted Saucier's 1951 tome Bottom's Up, which mercifully has only 16 vodka cocktails. Such times were those! Only 16 vodka cocktails!!

Next up we made the Freddy Fudpucker. It is a Tequila version of the Harvey Wallbanger.

Finally, we made a Yellow Bird. I don't know where this comes from and Dale doesn't offer any hints. It consists of Rum, Galliano, Triple Sec and lime juice.

Now for a riddle:
I have two bottles of Galliano: one, the most recent purchase, says "Product of Holland."
The previous bottle, now empty and therefore not available for taste comparison, says, "Product of France." Both boast the claim "recipe created in Italy." But where is it made? Why is this "Italian" spirit being made in France/Holland?

The deadline for recipe submissions is tomorrow night, Monday 11/24 at Midnight.
Contest rules are posted here

Contest finalists will be announced by Dec 1. The winning bartender will be featured in Edible Austin magazine in the spring issue; his or her drink will be featured on the bar at the Driskill Hotel.

The event is open to the public--anyone interested in great cocktails should come check out this event, where some of the best bartending talent in Texas will be on display.

Will someone please stop the mishegas? I think I have been through more Galliano this month than most establishments go through in a decade. Or two. Last night at Z'Bar I made a drink with Galliano, and the bar manager told me that the bottle* had been there since the opening (which was in 1989). I cannot certify the veracity of this claim as I was in elementary school at the time. However, judging by the condition of the label on the bottle, I would guess that I had not yet graduated from high school when it was opened. Regardless, I have been on a Galliano kick lately and have been looking for a way to rescue it from Harvey Wallbanger oblivion. In Texas the fabulous local citrus products are starting to show up at the farmer's market, and I couldn't be more thrilled. We have Rio Red grapefruits the size of a baby's head, tangerines, satsumas, sour oranges, Mexican limes, Meyer lemons. All sorts of goodies for putting the loca in locavore. If the globe keeps warming, I'll be growing all of this sh*t in Austin in the next few years!

The color of the Dandelion Cocktail is really a lovely pale yellow, though you couldn't tell it from my crappy photo. If anyone wants to swap cocktails for G9 training, I'll trade.

Dandelion Cocktail
1 1/2 oz Plymouth Gin
1/2 oz. Galliano
3/4 oz. fresh squeezed tangerine juice
1/2 oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/4 oz. simple syrup
Shake and fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a flamed tangerine peel. (if you do not know the flamed citrus peel, please buy Dale DeGroff's book and school yo' self.) Because of the tangerine's thin skin, it is hard to take off just the zest. It seems like it is easier to do this on the bottom of the fruit. I would flame the tangerine peel but not drop it into the glass (ignore the example in the picture above) because of the bitterness of the pith.

Cynics (and assholes) among you will note that this is just a modified Harvey Wallbanger. I will note that you are just being mean and hateful, and can suck it.