The Death of Imagination

I was pretty pleased with the turnout for pre-Touché cocktails on Saturday. Even monshu seemed to enjoy himself, which was a relief because he was supremely unenthusiastic after a late nap earlier in the evening. Then the first guests arrived and it was a couple he doesn't get along with, so I scented disaster, but soon after Calphalon Bear arrived and they began chatting about art. As per instructed, he and his husband had brought a cute friend, a salt-and-peppery transplant who lives in the neighbourhood and got into it with me over the demise of Charlie's Ale House (where I never ever went) and its replacement by Acre (which I love). About the same time, the Scoutmaster arrived with his useless boyfriend and we got the mint juleps underway. Devon Market had beautiful spearmint in stock, so I used one bunch to make simple syrup and most of another on a half-dozen juleps. "Your putting in too much mint!" he complained. (He wasn't drinking any, but he's an honorary Kentucky Colonel--whatever that means--so he claimed kibbitzing rights.) Cute New Bear loved his, so he can go hang.

All in all, we had maybe a dozen people. Diego and Uncle Betty finally made it and UB told me he wanted to try making something called a "brown, bitter, and stirred" he'd had at a pub in Logan Square. Turns out this was actually the name of some kind of recent mixology challenge, and the version we ended up making was something called a Bitter Maestro, partly because we had the specific amaro called for, Amaro Nonino. Everything else but the dash of grenadine we had to fake: bourbon instead of rye, Calvados instead of applejack[*], and Lillet instead of Dubonnet rouge. Talk about a cocktail with a lot going on in it! It seemed to work, but I think I'd have to have more than a sip to know for sure.

I wasn't even planning on follow everyone else to the bar afterwards, but I'm glad I did since it gave me the chance to catch up with a few lads I wouldn't've seen otherwise, such as the elusive clintswan and SquareBear (who opened our conversation with one of the most amazing stalkerish lines I have ever heard). I also ran into a knot of South Suburbaners, who I'm surprised remembered me given that I met them at the North End a decade and a half ago and have hardly run into them again since. I really should've been more messed up the next day than I ultimately was, but I plan to stay in tonight and not presume upon fate. After all, the end of the week is filling up with events like there's no tomorrow.



[*] Yes, we used the Chauffe-Cœur. (Imagine the sound of my heart breaking.) Uncle Betty is luck I love him like a gay Latino brother.

Is there a more gratifying vote of confidence in your skills as a host than guests who are loath to move on the next event they're committed for? It was a very good crowd this year, which was all the more impressive given the thrown-together nature of the guest list. Nuphy and Mr Brown are friendly acquaintances from well back at this point, but Nuphy knew the orphan couple only fleetingly from a previous get-together and they knew Mr Brown not at all. But you'd never have known it given how famously they all got along.

The Southern vibe helped a lot. In sum, we had a native Kentuckian, a native Tennessean, a NOLAn, and a native Californian assembled from Southern parts. bunj nailed it when he told me over the phone from North Carolina, "I'll let you get back to your Southern exiles in the North and I'll get back to my Northern exiles in the South." Needless to say, the theme drink incorporated bourbon and lots of it. I'm indebted to Domestic Daddy for this one (and to monshu for bringing it to my attention).

CatherineDa's Harvest Punch
1 c sparkling applehard cider
3-4 oz. bourbon
1 oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters

I thought the hard cider (I used the J.K. Scrumpy's that niemandsrose turned me on to) would make the drink pleasantly drier and I felt vindicated by the response. It helps that, despite being bourbon drinkers, this is not a crowd with very sweet tastes for the most part. Our orphan couple rarely eat dessert, they told us, but there's no one who can't be won over by Mr Brown's maple-pumpkin cheesecake.

The rest of the menu was filled out with old favourites: cornbread-sausage stuffing, chipotle sweet potatoes, and swiss chard a la española (my one contribution to the meal). monshu debated which wine to open and finally concluded, "This is a Muga event." But there was a veritable parade of liquor bottles across the table--and across the apartment to the parlour--for sniffing as well as sipping purposes.

With all that mixing and matching, I'm going to be one seriously hungover puppy tomorrow, but it will be worth it. Any amount of distress is worth the glow in monshu's face as he surveyed his handiwork and pronounced it good.

Last night was my first return visit to Lokal since that rainy day in February before a pal's gallery opening. And like that time, there were one or two missteps. The first--getting the brunch menu--was more amusing than annoying, and could readily be ascribed to the fact that we were the first couple to take a table that evening. I was less understanding of the lukewarm temperature of everything but the soup. Kitchen mistake or poor service? All I know is that Justin was no Thomas. But, my god, that soup! One spoonful and you wonder why you never thought of pairing ginger and butternut squash.

I was sad not to see the cabbage rolls on the menu and the pierogi weren't as amazing as my memory made them out to be, but on the other hand who knew we could enjoy chard so much? (I'm sure the proximity of luscious pork belly had nothing to do with that.) The signature cocktail bis every bit as revolting as I remembered, but I perked up at the mention of Żubrówka on the menu. Since I couldn't really imagine a mixture of that with mint and orange juice being something I wanted to ingest, I asked for a szarlotka. And even though Justin hadn't a clue what I was talking about, he managed to procure one for me anyway--without a doubt the strongest I've ever had. (I never go over 1/1, and on a weeknight it's more like three or four parts juice. But I swear this was two-thirds vodka.)

But what does all that matter when the night is so very lovely and the company even more so? My best girl and I sat right by the window where I could watch a sky that had been grey only hours before clear up and take on the golden hues of burnished metal. The fact that she had her heart set on a dessert that was listed on the website but unavailable in house turned out to be a positive, as it set us off in search of the ice cream parlour I'd spotted from the North Avenue bus. It's called Just Indulge and it's further evidence of the encroaching presence of frozen custard. (Life was safer when I had to go back down to St Louis to get mine.) Eager service verging on overwhelming, but tempered with warmth and coziness.

But of course, every Date Night comes at a cost. And the price of this one became readily apparent when I discovered the Old Man sacked out on the sofa, an empty container of Häagen-Dazs on the table and Fox News on the telly. A cursory inspection of the kitchen revealed a nearly empty bag of kettle chips and I decided not to investigate further. Sometimes what happens at home should stay there.

Okay, I see what all the fuss is about the Dolin blanc: it's so lovely, I can easily see drinking it straight. Last night, I tried it in both a "vermouth cocktail" (with an equal amount of Dolin dry and a dash or two of bitters) and in the Ephemeral. The latter may not be all that and a bag of chips, but it is at least all that. The recipe:

• 1½ oz. Ransom Old Tom
• 1 oz. Dolin blanc
• ⅓ oz. St-Germain
• 3 dashes orange bitters

I've since found a revised version calling for ¾ oz. of the Dolin and 2 tsps. of the St-Germain, which I'm eager to try. Not that the one I had was too sweet, but it would be interesting to dial down the floral notes a bit and see what emerges. Also, the original recipe calls for celery bitters, so by substituting orange I'm unbalancing it a little.

Right now, I'm trying a variation on the vermouth cocktail with Lillet in place of the Dolin blanc and a slice of orange. Nice, but I think I might enjoy a sweeter version (i.e. just Lillet and Dolin blanc) a bit more. At this rate, I think I'm rapidly becoming an apéritiviste.

Today his_regard came by and served as a Special Cocktail Consultant for what to do with some of the more difficult liquors in our cabinet. One of these is the North Shore Aquavit, which monshu surprised me by bringing home in a rush of enthusiasm after tasting a house cocktail made with it at In Fine Spirits. His suggestion was to use it as a substitute for absinthe. Hard to believe I don't have any, isn't it? Pastis, as I've found, is not a good substitute; it tends to overwhelm the drink with loads of anise and not much else.

He didn't have any immediate suggestions for the Geai bleu which I brought back from Canada, but to my surprise he pronounced it less sweet and syrupy than the Sortilège that he enjoys neat. We tried mixing it with limoncello and found that it basically erased the blueberry notes. Hmm. He knows his Koval and his Haus Alpenz, but his suggestion for Vana Tallinn was simply "I drink it in coffee. And hot chocolate." As for the Ransom Old Tom, that's a puzzler that may have resolved itself, since I finally got around to trying the Martinez, as recommended in the Oh Gosh! cocktail blog, and it is good. Also surprisingly strong for a drink which incorporates twice as much fortified wine as gin.

Or maybe I just had too light a lunch. We made up for that at dinnertime, though, with a hearty squash soup designed to use up the last of the ham from two weeks ago. As tasty as it was, it was lacking a little something--which turned out to be fresh sage from the garden. It was a summery twist on what's really a very fall dish. We were very lucky, since he conceived of it before the weather turned and I find it hard to imagine enjoying it as much on a sticky day like yesterday.

Not too sticky to take in the last free concert in Millennium Park, however. Tuppers was very put out by some of the bad behaviour around us (particularly Armpit Sniffing Overall Daddy and the Cell Phone Snapshot Women), but I go expecting that, so it was copacetic. Nuphy was there, too, and pronounced it better than the night before, when the humidity was so bad it pushed the strings out of tune. As a bonus, I got to see his daughter, who was attending a wedding reception downtown, then we all went off to the Gage, where Tuppers stunned me somewhat by devouring most of a Scotch egg and a bowl of fried chicken livers.

I wasn't in the mood for that much grease, so I limited myself to a drink which despite being called a "gin fizz" had very little of either. At first, all I could taste was the whiskey, but it got sweeter as I went, so I'm left wondering if it simply wasn't mixed very well. his_regard tells me I need to check out one of the frou-frou cocktail lounges in town if only to marvel at the mixmasters' art. Sounds like a project for cooler weather, when the long pants at long last come out of storage.

Last night, I stumbled home to find a bottle of North Shore Distillery aquavit in the kitchen. Aha! I thought the Old Man went to In Fine Spirits again! I was a bit taken aback, since I thought he had no real love for akvavit, but I thought maybe he was remembering how impressed I was with it on a previous visit. But, no, it turns out that he had tried a variation on the cocktail I'd had back then and it inspired him to try to recreate it back home. (The word from the lab is that more experimentation is needed.)

Myself, I'd already done more mixing than was good for me. (Happily, going from rum to gin to bourbon seemed to have no pronounced ill effects the next day.) M³ had scored me and Dale tickets for a benefit at Excalibur and the rum in the cokes was premium. As people began drifting away, we wondered where else we fogeys could go to dance and Dale suggested Late Bar in Avondale. It is now officially my favourite New Wave bar in Chicago; think Club Foot but with the sophistication and androgyny of Berlin.

Part of my loves the fact that classic cocktails are ubiquitous, but I'm not so thrilled that they're spreading beyond the ability of callow bartenders to pull them off. This place, however, inspired immediate confidence; it's refreshing to take one look at a drinks menu and know without checking that not one of the martinis contains vodka. My big inner girl so thrilled at the sight of "sloe gin fizz" that I skipped right over the bourbon-based selections.

It was all good, however, because M³ soon decided his Italian manhattan was too generous if he was going to drive back home latter that night. The twist was Dumante VerdeNoce instead of vermouth, and it was a subtler one than I anticipated. Definitely going back there to test the menu some more! (And maybe this time, the fetching young DJ will have brought alone his BiGOD 20.)

ETA: Further experimentation has lead to these proportions:

• two parts aquavit
• two parts Koval ginger liqueur
• one part gin
• dash of orange bitter

Notes: In Fine Spirits uses Old Tom's. We substituted Tanqueray. We're not sure if they use any bitters or it's just the orange peel garnish that adds the hint of citrus; we'll find out next time we have fresh oranges handy.

Tonight we bade adieu to the cassoulet. Well, au revoir actually, seeing as we froze up several servings for later consumption. In the process, we discovered a container of split pea soup, two containers of chili, and something that I haven't successfully identified yet. I figure thaw it some night and eat it if it's edible or order in if it ain't.

Both of us were feeling sluggish today, but whereas monshu had the luxury of turning in early, I had a commitment to keep. The cold whittled down my list of invitees to an intimate gathering of the Scoutmaster, the Coleman, and the Coleman's Potential Boyfriend from Akron (henceforth "Dave"). Dave was a curious mix of deferential Southern-style politeness and confrontational opinions, but with the Coleman subdued almost to the point of irrelevance, it made for an easy evening.

Around ten, we headed over to Touché and found it packed despite the weather. Even though there was plenty of tasty out-of-town meat on the hoof, I just couldn't into it and left after scarcely and hour. When you're paying more attention to what's being broadcast on TNT than on the passing pageant, then you know there's no point in being out. Moreover, there are effects associated with eating a huge plate of beans which, while not readily apparent in the company of others eating the same, become acutely noticeable in the close quarters of a crowded bar.

So here I am, harnessing the power of TUMS once more to neutralise the lingering presence of the New Glarus Belgian Red, a "cherry ale" which is reminiscent of a kriek but without as much sourness. (It was a gift from one of monshu's coworkers that I promised to taste before he heads back to work overmorrow.) We also tapped into the Fetească Neagră as an accompaniment to the New Year's Eve coques. Verdict: Surprising drinkable for a $10 wine from the Balkans. (Certainly a class or two away from the horrid Georgian swill one of our houseguests once insisted we try.)

As much as I identify with the visceral rejection of relentless sales promotion that undergirds Buy Nothing Day, I can never bring myself to observe it. For all my miseriness, I just enjoy shopping too much. So it was that monshu and I were out on the street these last two days along with everyone else. In our defence, they were two really beautiful days for this time of year; I didn't even need a coat downtown at the Christkindlmarket today. (Californians, feel free to begin snickering away. Goddess knows I do whenever it's fire season and the talk turns to "air quality".)

Yesterday, we decided to steer well clear of any traditional big box districts (so no SamsBinny's run for us), which is how we found ourselves on Clark Street. Before hitting Gethsemane to get the fixings for my traditional advent wreath, we poked into Andersonville Wines & Spirits on the off chance of finding something from our local boutique distillery. I first found out about Koval through the Reader and was particularly intrigued by the part of the story which described how they made Bierbrand from a failed batch at the neighbouring microbrewery. Given the small size of their batches, I wasn't expecting to see bottles of this appear at AW&S a year later. (Unaccountably, I concluded that I had too many oddities already in the cabinets and failed to buy a bottle.)

But this time it was their ginger liqueur we were on the prowl for. Nuphy had talked it up massively I'd called to wish him a happy holiday. Evidentally he's not the only person taken with it because we were informed by the owner that the last bottle in stock had sold the day before. However, they still had bottles of of their rose hip liqueur, which had intrigued me on previous visits. (Would that I had bought that instead of Zirbenz!) Now I'm a fan of rose hips; I like 'em in tea and I like 'em in jelly. But would I like 'em in liqueur? Well I like this one. It has a strong fruity fragrance, but surprisingly the taste is less one-note than I expected. The rose hips are front and centre, make no mistake, but monshu also picked out vanilla notes and there's a hint of spice that neither of us can quite identify. I'm starting to muse the possibilities for drink mixing.

Today we decided to venture downtown, figuring that perhaps the worst was over--at least where we were concerned, which was the Christkindlmarket. monshu and I made it there ten minutes before they opened and already lines of a dozen people or more weren't uncommon at the more popular booths. The timber hall on the northern edge, however, was mostly empty, so we nailed down a table with two boots of glühwein while we waited for Nuphy to find us. After stuffing ourselves on potato pancakes, currywurst, leberkäse, and hot soup, we felt fortified to swim the madding crowds. Crowds where we lost monshu for nearly half and hour.

We finally found him in front of the stand for Bienes Honighaus Augsburg. In order to further enable my budding honey-snob tendencies, he bought me a six-pack sampler. I only had to make one or two cooing noises about the appearance of the canola honey for him to treat me to a 500 mg jar of that as well. It was creamed and so pale as to give it the appearance of marshmallow fluff. And as you might imagine, it's extremely mild. But not, however, characterless. Again, the precise undertone is devilishly hard to pin down (even for the Old Man, who's far better at this sort of thing than me). Even more than the kamahi honey, it can't be paired with anything too strong; sweetening a cup of linden blossom tea was exactly right for it. And, of course, it was lovely on a piece of whole grain toast.

monshu needed scotch, so we took a short stroll through the hood which took us past our favourite Korean-owned alcohol emporium. He settled on a bottle of 10 year-old Macallan as the most drinkable of the reasonably-priced alternatives while I browsed in search of new brands with which to supplement our collection of wild and wonderful liquors. I finally settled on a bottle from the Polmos Lublin distillery (formerly part of the state monopoly) with the enchanting name of "Żołądkowa Gorzka". Enchanting, that is, until my dictionary translated it as "gastric bitter".

Of course, if those godless socialists told you you had four limbs, you didn't trust them until you'd counted them again yourself. So it should come as no surprise that the name is yet another dirty lie. The vodka (or, if you prefer, wódka) is less bitter than a jar of Robertson's. Its label promises "orange and clove flavors", but if there's any clove in there, my untalented untrained nose can't detect a whiff.

My first thought upon seeing it, though, was That'd be nice in tea. So I brewed a mug of Tangerine Zinger™ which I "corrected" with half a shot. monshu things it may have ramped up the citrus tang a bit, but I think it just got lost and I'd've been better off with a different flavour. Maybe if it were a black or blackberry tea instead, then the spirit would add an extra dimension. Well, now that our couple weeks of St Martin's summer have faded and the weather has turned well and truly wretched, I should have a lot more opportunities to put this to the test.

Once again, I've been living life too fast and furious to have the time and--more to the point--the energy to write about it. Some highlights:

• Today I saw something I didn't think existed any more in this country, something I'd only ever read about in books: an itinerant knife sharpener. He was pushing a red-and-green cart with a whetstone mounted atop it down the sidewalk; I could hear the bell clanging from blocks away. It sounded remarkably like a knife against a sharpening steel, or was that only the power of suggestion?
• There was a deadlock Saturday over where to go for lunch so I successfully bid for Tre Kronor in Albany Park. My stekt potatis was slightly burnt, my köttbullar somewhat bland (which is perhaps why they were anomalously listed as "Norwegian meatballs"?), but it was all very filling and warming. Plus I got the Old Man to split a plate of pickled herring with me and found cloudberry preserves at the gift shop across the street. Go me!
• What really made my day, however, was seeing "Dandelion & Burdock" among the featured sodas lining the counter. (Unlike most brands, apparently, Fentimans' is actually made from fermented dandelion and burdock.) None of us could imagine what it tasted like; I would describe it as somewhere between chicory tea and birch beer. monshu wasn't pleased with the aftertaste, but I think a judiciously chosen alcoholic mixer could take care of that.
• Last year, monshu and I missed the annual Metro shelving sale at Container Store and have been kicking ourselves every since, counting the days until the next one. Worth it? I'll say; we tripled our shelf space in the pantry for a third the price I thought we'd have to pay (mainly by displacing our affections to the less-than-commerical-grade InterMetro line). I spent most of yesterday trying to figure out how best to arrange our worldly goods for easy retrieval. This could take a while.
• I finished up The Irish signorina last Friday and am already 150 pages into a new novel. A former Man Booker Prize winner describes it thusly: "The tone...throughout is one of vague, helpless desperation, while the wit is dry to the point of snapping." Any guesses?