In my long career, in the restaurant world, I’ve held most every position there is, from dishwasher and busboy to chef and manager and pretty much every job inbetween. While I have enjoyed cooking the most, my second favorite job has always been bartender. I love the interaction with the patrons and enjoyed the showy aspect of creating a good cocktail. I took pride in the drinks I poured and would handcraft each one.

While this country may be experiencing a “cocktail revolution” or “re-awakening” I still am disappointed by the number of bartenders that really have no clue about how to make a proper cocktail. To them, it’s just a matter of throwing some booze in a glass, adding a premade mixer, stirring it up and maybe adding some soda. There’s no thought behind how the drink is made and the general mindset seems to be “the stronger the better.” While this attitude seems to be changing, at least in the cities and at higher end places, it’s still business as usual at the vast majority of bars. That’s why I mostly drink beer. It’s pretty hard for a bartender to screw that up, but ask for something as simple as a Manhattan or Old Fashioned and all bets are off. And forget about any of the more complex drinks that require precision in measuring and a little technique. To most of today’s bartenders, the word jigger is a bad word and most would rather be dead than caught using the measuring device. Unfortunately though, well made cocktails need to be measured out. Without measuring there is virtually no way to get the proper balance a drink needs.

But even measuring doesn’t do much good when you add crappy ingredients to a cocktail. Bottled sour mix, OJ from frozen concentrate, and a whole host of packaged bar mixes might help to speed things along at busy bars, but they certainly have no place in the making of a good cocktail. It saddens me when I see someone order a margarita with a premium tequila only to watch the bartender ruin it by using a bottled mix instead of fresh juice.

That said, today I was playing around with cocktails at home. I had this crazy idea that I wanted to come up with a way to combine gin and fresh tarragon, one of the first herbs to come up in my herb garden. There wasn’t much out there, on the web or in any of my cocktail books to guide me in combining these two items so I was on my own. Grapefruit seemed like a natural way to bridge the gap as grapefruit pairs well with tarragon and all citrus fruits pair well with gin. I then needed a sweetener. Grenadine would work perfectly in this aspect, providing sweetness, flavor, and a little color to the cocktail, but I refused to use the store bought stuff as it tastes nasty and has no resemblance to pomegranate, which is what grenadine was originally made from. So I decided to make my own.

Homemade Grenadine

12oz POM pomegranate juice
12oz sugar
1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a large container with a tight fitting lid. Shake the mixture until your arms feel like they are going to fall off. Allow to settle for about 30 minutes and if there is undissolved sugar settling on the bottom, repeat the shaking process. Continue until all sugar is dissolved. Store, tightly covered in the refrigerator. Will last for about 3-4 weeks.

Once that was solved I decided I wanted to give my cocktail an old fashioned look and texture to it. I wanted a nice foam to top the cocktail and I wanted it to have a nice velvety texture to it. There is only one way to achieve the look and feel I wanted-raw egg white. Okay, I know what you are thinking, “Gross!!!” but egg whites have been used for years in cocktails, and trust me, by the time the cocktail has been properly shaken you won’t even know it is there.Many drinks relied on egg whites, the most familiar being the Ramos Gin Fizz and the whole family of Sours (Pisco Sour, Whiskey Sour, etc.). Nowadays, bottled sour mixes achieve that foaming action through the used of chemicals and additives. I think I’d rather take my chances with the raw egg white. If you are worried about food poisoning you can always use pasteurized egg whites but let’s look at the reality. Statistics say that about 1 in 20,000 eggs is infected with salmonella. That means you have a 20 times greater chance of dying by drowning, 4 times better chance of dying by choking on your food, and a 3 times better chance of dying from a slip and fall, than you do from contracting salmonella. Even then, if you are a healthy adult the chances of actually contracting the illness is even much slimmer. But again, I urge you to try this cocktail using the egg white, even if it is pasteurized. It is just not the same without it.

I have titled this drink “The Dragon’s Tongue Cocktail” as an old name for tarragon is Dragon’s Wort. Make sure you go lightly on the tarragon. It is an assertive herb and can easily overpower the other flavors in this drink.

Dragon’s Tongue Cocktail

2 oz. Gin (I used Tanqueray)
4 oz. grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed
1/2 oz. homemade grenadine
1 small sprig tarragon (3-4 leaves)
1 egg white

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add ingredients and shake for at least 1 minute. Don’t skimp on the shaking as it is this shaking that will create the lovely foam that sits on top of the drink. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and serve.

One January 1st, I posted about the dish, Hoppin’ John, and how, in many households, it is eaten on New Year’s Day to bring good luck. I could have chosen any number of recipes, from around the world, that are eaten for the same reason- to bring luck in the new year. I think one of the reasons I chose Hoppin’ John is because I’ve been thinking about my time down South for a few weeks. What got me thinking about my time living in Atlanta and New Orleans is the fact that a few weeks ago I got a craving for Hurricanes.

Anyone who has spent any time in New Orleans should be familiar with the bright red, potent drink carried all through the French Quarter in gigantic plastic “to-go” cups. It’s the drink that made Pat O’briens famous. The story goes, that in the early 40′s Scotch and Whiskey were hard to come by because of the war. Liquor distributors down south would force bar owners to purchase numerous cases of cheap rum, from the Caribbean just to get a case or two of the other liquors. Pat O’brien, facing a mountain of rum created a new drink using rum, orange juice, passion fruit syrup and lime juice, put it into hurricane shaped glasses (so named because they resembled hurricane lamps) and thus created the Hurricane. The drink became very popular among sailors as it was cheap and potent and remains popular today, not because it is cheap-Pat O’briens charges a hefty price-but because they still pack a mean kick.

As a young cook in New Orleans, me and my friends usually tried to stay away from the touristy spots in the Quarter, most often seeking out those shady, less wholesome (and that’s saying a lot in a town not known for its wholesomeness) bars that border the Quarter. Occasionally though, we would venture into the the heart of the Quarter in search of young ladies who had come to New Orleans to party. Hey….I was 23 years old, unattached, and we lived by the motto “work hard, play hard.” We struck out way more often than not, but that was okay in our minds. We still had a great time….I think. Many of these nights found us hanging out at Pat O’briens, throwing back hurricanes with wild abandon. Luckily, my roommate and I lived just off of one of the major bus lines that ran 24/7 so we always had a ride home no matter what time of night or morning.

Looking back on those nights, at Pat O’briens, those hurricanes were pretty nasty. All alcohol bite with a lot of sugar and just enough fruit juice to make them palatable. The drink has come a long way from it’s early days and unfortunately it hasn’t weathered well. Nowadays, you can even purchase a powdered drink mix so that you can take the taste of New Orleans home with you. Don’t bother unless you are the kind of person who also doesn’t mind subsitituing orange Kool-aid for orange juice in your Screwdrivers, Mimosas, or Captain & OJ.

Searching the web for recipes is quite confusing also. While there are a number of sites that give some great recipes, there are also a ton of sites out there that are offering up recipes, for Hurricanes, made with vodka, gin, tequila, amaretto, or worse, all of those alcohols together, in the same drink.

Just because a Hurricane is potent doesn’t mean it’s an “everything but the kitchen sink” kind of drink like a Long Island Iced Tea, Bahama Mama, or Alabama Slammer. Like so many of the cocktails created in the first half of the 20th century, the Hurricane requires only a handful of ingredients, mixed in proper proportion to create a well balanced drink. Be careful though, this drink is still quite potent and it’s easy to overdo it as they don’t taste nearly as strong as they are.

Hurricane
4 ounces gold rum*
3 ounces passion fruit juice or puree (I use Looza brand juice as that is what I can get most often, if you can get puree, then even better though if you use puree you might want to also add a splash of simple syrup as the puree is rather tart)
2 ounces orange juice
1/4 each lime
2 Tbsp. grenadine

Fill a hurricane glass or pint glass with ice and set aside. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add all the ingredients. Shake to mix then strain into prepared glass. Garnish with a cherry and orange slice.

*Many tropical style cocktails benefit from the use of gold or dark rums as opposed to white rums as gold and dark rums bring much more flavor to the drink and add a nice complexity. While this drink would still be good made with white rum, personally I would never substitute more than half the rum with white rum.