Cocktails and Records

It’s saturday evening and I find some spare oranges in the fruit bowl. It’s perfect for a Bronx (a.k.a martini with orange juice) and easing us into an evening watching one of Woody Allen’s finest - Bullets over Broadway - set in 1920s New York.

The Bronx was apparently the third most popular cocktail in the world in 1934 (with the martini and manhattan in top place), after having become wildly successful during the Prohibition era. Although I suspect that all the vermouth and orange juice also conveniently covered the taste of poor bootleg gin, the Bronx, like the martini, still retains a feeling of sophistication about it - despite this great clip from 1933.

The Bronx (perfect style)

- 1/4 oz vermouth rosso
- 1/4 oz dry vermouth
- 1 oz gin
- 1 1/2 oz orange juice

Shake with ice cubes and strain. If you like it drier, skip the vermouth rosso.

Q. What could be better than a blue drink?
A. Why, a yellow one of course.

This week I have discovered the joys of Advocaat, the vile looking liqueur made with brandy, sugar, egg yolks and more sugar. Generally a fan of short crisp cocktails and bitter (i.e. drinks which actually taste of alcohol), I have been avoiding Advocaat for years - the association with tacky sweet drinks and giggling grandmas was just too strong.

But something posessed me in the supermarket last weekend. Innocently wandering through the booze aisle, I found myself strangely drawn to the yellow bottle on the top shelf and before I knew it, I was furtively smuggling it into the trolley. As I explained/justifed to the Significant Other after, you can never have too much alcohol in the house and isn’t it good to push the boundaries and try something new…?

And it tastes great!

I recommend trying the Fluffy Duck (as modelled in our loungeroom to the right):

• 1.5 oz Barcardi rum
• 1.5 oz Advocaat
• fresh cream
• lemonade

Bung it all into a glass and stir.

It’s sweet but it’s refreshing, a nice Easter drink…

It might be the first and last time that I ever say this, but thank you Queen Elizabeth II.

Why?

Because she has given me the Dubonnet cocktail.

There I was a few weeks back bored and half watching an episode of recent BBC documentary series The Monarchy when I noticed one of the royal staff giving a very detailed and specific rundown on what exactly the Queen likes to drink pre-dinner. My ears pricked up.

She will only drink the Dubonnet cocktail. The cocktail is equal parts gin and Dubonnet (a French wine-based aperitif), stirred over ice and served in a pre-chilled martini glass.

Obviously because I do everything that the Queen tells me I rushed out and bought some Dubonnet to try this myself. Or rather, I tried to rush out because hardly anyone stocks the stuff.

But I have finally located some and boy, is it great. In fact, here’s one I made 5 minutes ago just to illustrate this entry:

The Queen is right - it is a great drink. And the pleasing red colour (poorly illustrated by our red wall) makes it even better.

Long live the Queen (until the next top cocktail tip). Wonder what her favourite ale is…

It’s that time of the year when everyone does their end of year list/retrospective thing looking at the best and worse of the year. I suspect that these lists are often intended to make the lister look really cool and on the case. I’m nowhere near cool or on the case but that’s not going to stop me…

THE CRUCIAL STUFF

Cocktails

The cocktail of choice this year, apart from the superlative martini, is the bitter (yet sweet) Negroni. That’s equal parts:

• Campari
• gin
• sweet vermouth

Ice. Stir. Bitter. Pink. Nice.

Records

Midlake have probably been my band of the year. The Trials of Von Occupanther was a fantastic album which although released in 2006, I only really got into this year.

I seemed to have missed the boat in 2007 in terms of live music. Last year was superb (Steve Reich, Konono No. 1, Amadou & Mariam, Nicole Willis, Teenage Fanclub doing Bandwagonesque) but little has cut it this year other than well, Midlake, Orchestra Baobob (at the Jazz Cafe last month) and The Bad Plus (at the ICA in July).

Staying on the stereo from this year:

• Japan’s super kick ass jazz group, Soil and Pimp Sessions (which was probably was the gig of the year, but I sadly missed it)
• Laura Nyro’s Eli and the Thirteenth Confession
• CSS’s Lets make love and listen to death from above 7″
• Art Blakey’s Mosaic
• East Kilbride’s finest, The Pearlfishers’ Up with the Larks
• The very best of ethiopiques - excellent compilation of 70s Ethiopian soul and jazz
• the Carousel soundtrack. Obviously.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Good things

• The excellent dream I had where I went drag car racing with Bill Wyman. We ran into Morrissey at the track and he bought me an icecream. A nice time was had by all.
• Getting sunburnt in Scotland.
• John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, losing his seat to Maxine McKew, pinko former ABC journalist. Poetic justice.
• The rise and rise of Charlie Brooker.
• Leo Hickman’s The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of our Holidays - a really well researched and well written book about how tourism is destroying the world. Sadly, I read this whilst on holiday in France.
• The fact that I managed to start writing this blog after many years of procrastination.

Bad things

• 99.9% of all primetime TV output. Will we ever be free from reality TV?
• Richard Dawkins managing to put even me off aethism.
• BBC Radio London shunting Norman Jay’s excellent music programme to digital, only to replace it with Heckle and Jeckle style presenters and lazy talkback radio; something that there’s not nearly enough of on BBC Radio London…
• The number of people I keep encountering who hate current London mayor Ken Livingston so much, that they would seriously consider voting for professional buffoon Boris Johnson instead.
• Having to pretend to care about Madeleine McCann.

Merry Christmas everyone - see you on the other side.

1. I put on a Digitalism 12″ the other day and didn’t realise for a good few minutes that it was on the wrong speed.
2. Ice has found its way into my martinis recently.
3. A brochure called Music & Memories, which offers such mail-order delights as Liberace boxsets, DVDs with titles like Irish Lighthouses: Folklore, History and Beauty! and Working with Tractors, as well as Dickie Valentine and Connie Francis CDs, has popped through the mailbox and I am loving it!
4. I can’t stop listening to bloody Whitney Houston.

It has come to my attention that for a site entitled cocktailsandrecords there has been little mention of either. This has been largely due to the serious lack of either in my life recently. For the past few weeks our house has had no:

• gin
• vodka
• malt whisky
• blended whisky
• cointreau

A truly awful situation.

I have attempted to remedy this sorry state of affairs over the past couple of days and was planning on celebrating this Friday evening with both a cocktail and the new Von Sudenfed LP.

Well, I’ve got the cocktail, a martini (that’s a proper martini with gin and just a smidgeon of vermouth + necessary olive) but Rough Trade have failed to deliver on the music front. I went to the Dray Walk store this lunchtime and they have, in the words of the strangely helpful guy behind the counter, “suddenly run out of Von Sudenfed records”. A rush on Mark E Smith? Unbelievable.

I am instead basking in the early 90s with Monie Love…