Tonight we started out with a photo shoot for the spring issue of Edible Austin magazine. Not surprisingly the night (d)evolved into a Dale/David Project (D/DP) cocktail mixing session. We made quite a few cocktails. As it became apparent how things were going to shape up this evening, we called Tipsy, who was on his way home from work. He was instructed to pick up a fried chicken feast.

(Photos by Jenna Noel)

Since I can't stand to see to-go boxes on the table, and since we unanimously agreed that the mood called for fried chicken, and since we were too far down the cocktail mixing path to actually fry chicken ourselves this evening, Tipsy picked up some chicken and we transfered it to a vintage Corning "Cornflower Blue" dish. I have a lot of these, the full complement of small-d democratic homewares of 1960's-70's

Back to the cocktails: first up was the Fernet Branca Cocktail (D/DP #103), which is comprised, as its name may suggest, of Fernet Branca, sweet vermouth, and gin. That's it. Stirred with ice and garnished with a flamed lemon peel, the drink is menthey and refreshing, though not a particularly appropriate component of the fried chicken feast that we were putting together. It was saved for the end of the meal.

This cocktail was herbal and menthey and reminds me that I need to pay more attention to that bottle of Fernet Branca that has been sitting in my liquor cabinet

The Dubonnet Cocktail(D/DP #104) is made of Red Dubonnet and Gin, garnished with a lemon twist. It is served either on the rocks or up in a cocktail glass. I opted for the former, and found it not a bad accompaniment for fried chicken and biscuits.

For dessert, I decided we would enjoy a trilogy of Grand Marnier drinks, since there were three of us and since I hadn't mixed a Grandma drink in a while. But then as I began assembling them, I got hung up on the layered beauty of the B52 (shooters are in short supply at Tipsy Manor) and made three of those, on top of the two other Grandma cocktails.

The B52 (D/DP #105) is made with Kahlua, Bailey's, and Grand Marnier, layered in a cordial glass. Though the book does not specify, I believe the drink is taken as a shooter.

The drink in the cocktail glass is the Boulevard (D/DP #106), which according to Dale, comes "from G. Selmer Fougner of the New York Sun, 1935." I don't know who that is but the drink is a keeper. The other cocktail is called "Dale's Absolutely Guaranteed Aphrodisiac" (D/DP #107), a name much more complicated than the cocktail itself. The Aphrodisiac was created for a "Cocktail Challenge" article in New York magazine, date not given in Dale's book. However the challenged issued was to create an "absolutely guaranteed aphrodisiac" with "no fruit". An admirable challenge indeed. Dale's combination of cachaca and Grand Marnier: Good? yes. Guaranteed, well, not so sure, but I like where he's going. As Valentine's Day approaches and the flood of bullsh!t press releases pours in featuring chocolate- and raspberry- laden cocktails, it is good to know that at least one bartender out there thinks that a cocktail of busted South American rum and French orange liqueur makes for the sexiest drink imaginable.

I'm not sure where the Mudslide comes from. It seems like it could be the intellectual property of the Kahlúa marketing machine. Made of vodka, Kahlúa, Bailey's and cream, it is basically a White Russian with the addition of Irish Cream. If you don't have the energy to make this drink by hand, you can buy it in convenient ready-to-drink bottles at your friendly neighborhood liquor store.

A sweet dessert drink that maybe deserves consideration every other year or so.

According to the book, "This recipe has been on the back of the Marie Brizard Apry bottle for years, I just touched it up a bit." The cocktail is made with Gin, Marie Brizard Apry, and orange juice. The Dale DeGroff version has the addition of orange bitters and is garnished with the flamed orange peel.

This cocktail came off as being kind of one-dimensional to me. It has the apricot/citrus thing going on, but not much after that.

We pick up the Dale/David Project this evening with the Bramble. According to Dale, the Bramble was "created by the leading bartender in the UK, Dick Bradsell." It consists of gin, fresh lime juice, and creme de mure, with a little garnish of raspberries and lime wheel. The drink is supposed to be served over crushed ice, but our guest mixologist Jenna Lane did not read that far in the instructions. I was busy cooking patty melts so I didn't catch the transgression.

I am glad to see that the Bramble is starting to make its way onto a few cocktail menus here and there
Photo and improper presentation by Jenna--All agreed that this is not her best work ;-)

I remember the first time we made Satan's Whiskers. It was at Tipsy's apartment downtown, before we merged our resources to create Tipsy Manor. We didn't like. And i wanted to make it tonight to see if we still felt the same way about it. We did not. Tonight I really like the cocktail, and I think it has to do with a dramatic reorientation of the palate after a couple years of drinking serious cocktails.

Consisting of gin, sweet & dry vermouths, Grand Marnier, fresh orange juice and Angostura bitters, Satan's Whiskers is a variation of the Bronx Cocktail. It was developed at the Embassy Club in Hollywood in the 1930's. It is a fabulous cocktail, but maybe not one for beginners.

The Dale/David Project carries on tonight with the Absinthe No. 2. Dale adopted this drink from The Artistry of Mixing Drinks by Frank Meier, 1936. Usually with the old drinks that call for absinthe substitute I use actual absinthe. But this recipe was from a book that was written after the ban, so I figure it called for absinthe substitute in the original, and thus used Absente per DDG's instructions.

Consisting of gin, absinthe substitute and orange bitters, this is a nice little cocktail for a cool winter evening

This is the first cocktail in Dale's book and I don't know why we're just now getting to it. Perhaps because it's not all that exciting? Gin, Lillet, Orange Juice, and Angostura. It tasted really orange juicey to me and that is not my favorite flavor. (Dale actually recommends muddling a couple pieces of orange in the shaker before shaking the drink) The drink is then garnished with a flamed orange peel. I'm not sure where this cocktail comes from, but I will investigate that.

If Jerry Thomas were alive today, he may call this the 'Fancy Gin & Juice'

Dale/David Project? What Dale/David Project?! It has been so long since I updated this thread that I had to dig through the archives to figure out what number we're on.

The Debonaire Cocktail has such a vintage ring to it that you'd think it had been around since before the "noble experiment." Come to find out, the cocktail was invented in comparatively recent years by Gary and Mardee Regan, the authorly couple who pen the Ardent Spirits Web site and newsletter. I compared two recipes for this evening's tasting.

The recipe in Dale's book:
2 1/2 oz Highland Malt Scotch
3/4 oz Canton Ginger liqueur

The ingredients as the recipe occurs in Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology:
2 1/2 oz Oban or Springbank
1 oz Original Canton Delicate Ginger Liqueur

Since the recipe calls for Canton Ginger Liqueur, and since both of these books came out before the re-introduction of Domaine de Canton, I am curious how this cocktail tastes with the original incarnation of that cordial. I have scoured liquor stores in locales far and wide searching for a bottle of the original stuff. In Breckenridge, CO, I found a proprietress who had just recently thrown out some bottles because they were so old! If anybody would like to share a taste from their personal archives, I would greatly appreciate it.

I didn't have a bottle of Oban or Springbank, and get easily confused by Scotch, so I reached for a bottle of Highland Park that we had; little did I know the whiskey was bottled at cask strength and so my cocktail came out super boozy. Not that that's a bad thing...

This was the eponymous cocktail of the Embassy Club in Hollywood and according to Dale dates from 1930. (Editor's note: this date falls into that inconvenient time period known as "Prohibition", so either this date is an approximation, or the Embassy Club was a speakeasy!)

Consisting of brandy, Cointreau, Appleton Jamaican rum, and lime juice with a little bitters, this cocktail has a punch-like structure that is both classic and a little trendy right now. I really like the flavor and even more I like that it has one of those Negroniesque recipe of equal parts of each spirit, which makes it easy for partially brain-dead barkeeps like myself to remember ( I catch myself selling a lot of Last Words and Blood & Sands for this reason.) This is a cocktail that I think would be fun to experiment with as you substitute various rums, or even combinations of rums. Enjoy!

The Dale David Project was temporarily hijacked last night by dinner guest/junior-ninja-bartender-in-training Jenna Noel, of Edible Austin magazine. Apparently I was too distracted by my dinner preparations to adequately keep cocktail glasses full, so Jenna took matters into her own hands.

She picked up the Dale and began mixing drinks at record speed for a junior ninja. I was amazed to find out that we had not covered some very basic drinks that one would assume we'd covered ages ago.

*I apologize for the crappy iPhone photos, we couldn't find the charger for the real camera

The Adonis is a cocktail that, like the Blood & Sand, I thought sounded gross when I first read about it. Sherry, vermouth, orange juice and bitters. It's actually quite refreshing. Like a lower proof Blood & Sand.

The Manhattan! I can't believe we'd not done the Manhattan for this project yet. I chose Michter's for this picture, but usually use Rittenhouse 100 proof. The main thing is that it has to be Rye whiskey (bourbon is a latter-day development and more southern in character); the vermouth needs to be fresh and plentiful; and the bitters are a must. We garnished with an authentic Maraska cherry, but a lemon twist is also acceptable (what is not acceptable is a chemical bomb "maraschino" cherry from the grocery store). For a great instructional video on Manhattan construction, please see my colleague Bobby Heugel's video at DrinkDogma.com

The Dark & Stormy, the classic Goslings cocktail which we made with Maine Root Ginger Beer.

The Gin Gin Mule is an evolution of the Moscow Mule, developed by legendary New York bartender Audrey Saunders. Her version substitutes gin for the vodka, and adds mint. It also calls for house made ginger beer, which we do not have, so we polished off the Maine Root ginger beer for this cocktail.

You've heard of Meaty Monday, and Mixology Monday. Last night we created a hybrid with Meaty Mixology Monday. Boudin, Full Quiver Farms pork chops & pork bratwursts, roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed green beans.

The Marlene Dietrich, according to Dale, was created at the Hi Ho Club in Hollywood, circa 1930 (of course it would have been a couple few years later than that due to the pesky little matter of Prohibition). It consists of Canadian whiskey, orange curacao, Angostura bitters and fresh fruit, which is either muddled at the beginning or squeezed at the end. We muddled. Speaking of muddlers, I just read that former VP Hopeful Baby' Daddy Levi Johnston has decided not to show his muddler after all in his upcoming Playgirl photo shoot. What is the point of holding back the muddler in a nudie mag shoot? Is he saving it for something bigger than Playgirl? Does he have video? Attn Levi: There's no time like the present, and there most likely will be no second round for you.

A citrusy whiskey cocktail in which I used a nice fresh Texas orange from the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market

I digress. My point about this cocktail is that it is a light refreshing whiskey drink, and gave us a good excuse to use up some Crown Royal that had been collecting dust every since we realized we shouldn't drink Crown Royal. I imagine the reason why Dale calls for Canadian whiskey in this recipe is that during and at the end of Prohibition, my understanding is that there was a lot of Canadian whiskey on the market because that's what you could get, since it takes 4 yrs minimum to age American whiskey. Something I need to investigate is what happened to old stocks of American whiskey that were already in barrels when Prohibition started. Did it continue to rest through the "noble experiment?" Or did it get sold for medical purposes? If anybody knows please send me an email. And while you're at it, submit a recipe for the Drink Local Cocktail Contest--Deadline Sunday!

The version of this drink that we did tonight is not technically from the Dale, though it is from a Dale...his newer book, the Essential Cocktail. Since the newer book came out, I have taken to the practice of consulting it to see how Dale's thoughts have developed since the first book.

In Dale's first book, he lists a recipe for Navy Grog that consists of navy rum, orange curacao, lime juice, orange juice, water, and bitters. There is also a recipe for Traditional Grog, which is either served hot or as a long iced drink. In The Essential Cocktail, Dale offers my favorite of the Grog family, the elaborate Trader Vic's Navy Grog: Dark rum, añejo rum, Demerara rum, falernum, simple syrup, pimento dram, cinnamon syrup, grapefruit juice, and lime juice. It's a bit of a production to mix, and takes some commitment to drink, as it weighs in with a hefty 4 oz of booze. If you're in the Austin area you'll be delighted to know that we'll be serving Trader Vic's Navy Grog at the Winter Luau Tiki Hour at East Side Show Room, every Monday night 5-9pm starting Monday 1/18.