Batched Crime, Artichoked Cocktails, Bar Poem

Crime Fiction and Thrillers

If you are beginning to think about Christmas gifts for the readers of mysteries, crime fiction, and thrillers in your life, you might consult The Poisoned Pen Booknews, Crime Reads, and Tom Nolan at the Wall Street Journal. I will also note The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024, edited by S.A Cosby and featuring a short story, “The Funeral Suit,” by my Anthony Award-nominated friend Bobby Mathews.

Here also, from Sarah Weinman at the New York Times, 4 Smart, Riveting New Crime Novels and, from the Telegraph, The Best Crime Thrillers of 2024.

For Your Freezer Bar

I love to prebatch traditional cocktails (and riffs on traditional cocktails). A Sazerac poses some challenges, but consider this article from Punch: The Freezer Sazerac Might Be the Best Holiday Cocktail Recipe:

“To build a perfect Sazerac demands precision. With so few ingredients, and all potent ones at that, a dash too much or too little of any one of them can throw the whole drink out of balance. For some bartenders, the razor-thin margin for error is reason enough to exempt it from the popular batch-and-freeze technique; when scaled up, the risk of the bitters or absinthe becoming overpowering is high. For others, however, the Sazerac’s exacting nature is precisely what makes the drink a perfect candidate for the freezer treatment. Once the spec is dialed in, there’s no need to worry about consistency from drink to drink—one less thing to fret over at the holiday table.

“Johnny’s is all about efficiency and speed of service,” says Eric Alperin of his Los Angeles bar, where a freezer Sazerac is one of five spirit-forward classics batched ahead of service and stored in the freezer, ready to pour as soon as it’s ordered. His version splits the base between Cognac and rye (the so-called New York–style Sazerac) and includes Peychaud’s bitters in the batch, though he leaves the absinthe out, preferring instead to spritz it into the glass before the drink is served. In New Orleans, the home of the Sazerac, Chris Hannah likewise serves a freezer Sazerac at Jewel of the South. His take includes Herbsaint and bitters in the bottle, along with the unorthodox additions of rainwater Madeira and rancio sec.

Punch, “Stick Your Sazerac In the Freezer”

The absinthe should be rinsed or sprayed into the glass. It will burden the batch if mixed in.

Thanksgiving Cocktails

If, like me, you do not care for Bloody Marys, a French 75 — essentially, a cocktail made with gin (or sometimes cognac), simple syrup, fresh lemon juice and champagne — is a sharp eye-opener before the Thanksgiving meal. The Letters and Liquor blog has a detailed, historical article on the French 75:

The novelist Alec Waugh dubbed it “the most powerful cocktail in the world” and he was only half referring to its potent combination of liquor and champagne. With a refined visage that belies the origins of its name, the French 75 speaks to our post-war mentality.

Read the entire post here.

“If you want to behave better and feel better, the only absolutely certain method is drinking less. But to find out how to do that, you will have to find a more expert expert than I shall ever be.”

Kingsley Amis, in Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingley Amis

Drinks I Have Been Drinking

“Navy-strength” gins have an elevated alcohol content, usually around 57-58% alcohol-by-volume, compared to the usual 40-47% found in standard gins. This term supposedly originated in the 18th century when the British Royal Navy required spirits strong enough to ignite gunpowder, so as to avoid any spilled liquid making the gunpowder useless. Even today, such gins should be handled prudently, but a martini with Chemist Navy Strength Gin at The Hummingbird Bar at The Old Edwards Inn in Highlands, North Carolina was a delight.

Cynar is an Italian amaro that scares some people because it is largely flavored with artichokes (plus thirteen botanicals) but I think it is delicious. Try a “Cynartown,” from Death & Co. As the lady in the ad says, it is indeed “against the strain of modern life.”

Poetry

For some reason, this poem by Dana Gioia strikes me as a tonic prelude to Thanksgiving. As noted in his Poetry Foundation entry, Gioia is “a graduate of Stanford Business School [who] claims to be ‘the only person, in history, who went to business school to be a poet.’ He later rose to become a vice president at General Foods, where he marketed products such as Kool-Aid. These experiences in the corporate world, Gioia states, ‘taught me a lot of things that have helped me as a poet.'”