After a few decades of making Margaritas myself, the recipe is fairly simple and fool-proof.  Start with a great base-spirit—I use el Tesoro, Siete Leguas and, over the past few years, Tequila Ocho.  Sadly, Herradura and Gran Centenario no longer have a place in my bar (with the exception of a few rogue cases left over from the 70s and 80s, smuggled into the country over the years.  The second prerequisite, of course, is fresh squeezed juice (no exceptions).

Margarita

2 oz.       Tequila Blanco

½ oz.      Cointreau (Controy is also great), Grand-Marnier is chingón-deluxe

½ oz.      Agave nectar

1 oz.       Fresh-squeezed lime juice

Dash      Fresh-squeezed orange juice

Dash      Fresh-squeezed lemon juice

Pour first eight ingredients in a tin-on-tin mixing glass with ice, shake and strain into a rocks glass with fresh ice.  Garnish with a thin-sliced lime wheel.  If you must salt the cocktail, gently roll one side of the lime-juiced glass in salt (make sure none gets in the drink).

]]> http://bonsavant.com/2010/05/381/feed/ 0 http://bonsavant.com/2010/05/qa-with-ted-haigh-origins-of-the-margarita/ http://bonsavant.com/2010/05/qa-with-ted-haigh-origins-of-the-margarita/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 20:53:11 +0000 Wyatt Peabody http://bonsavant.com/?p=328

I had the great pleasure of sitting down with LA’s own Ted Haigh–one of the world’s leading cocktail historians.  Our topic for the day: the Margarita–one of the most popular cocktails on earth.

Q&A with Ted Haigh
Origins: the Margarita

WP: as we know—the Margarita has more colorful purported originators than perhaps any other cocktail in history?  What’s your favorite story as to the true origins of the Margarita?

TH: my favorite story and the one I believe to be true are two entirely different things.  My favorite version is probably that of Santos Cruz, the head bartender at the historic Balinese Room in Galveston, Texas—who created the drink for Peggy (Margaret) Lee in 1948.  But that’s only because I actually met him—in his nineties at the time—he was very soft-spoken and a perfect gentlemen.  I know that a lot of people met Margarita Sames, as well.

WP: Margaret (Margarita) Sames, being the woman who supposedly created the drink at her home in Acapulco, Mexico, 1948.

TH: yes—during a Christmas party for guests, Nick Hilton (founder of the Hilton Hotel chain), Joseph Drown (owner of the Hotel Bel-Air), Shelton McHenry (owner of the Tail O’The Cock, in LA).  And, friends who included Lana Turner and John Wayne who, of course went on to help evangelize the drink.

WP: how did the recipes of Cruz and Sames compare?

TH: Cruz called for equal portions tequila blanco, Cointreau and lime juice (modeled after the Sidecar).   Sames was one part Cointreau, two parts tequila, one part lime (with a salt rim).

WP: so what do you believe to be true?

TH: that the original drink which would become the Margarita—the Picador—was invented in England around 1936, more than a decade earlier.  The book which featured it—WJ Tarling’s the Café Royal Cocktail Book—was actually published in 1937. The Picador calls for ¼ fresh lime (or lemon) juice, ¼ Cointreau, ½ tequila—shaken.   This is the basic Margarita recipe.

WP: in other words, the most famous agave-based cocktail in history was actually created in the UK—how were they even getting tequila?

TH: tequila seemed to get a bigger foothold in the UK than it did in the US—faster and earlier, that is.  You began seeing tequila cocktails there long before they took hold in America.  Hell, there were more than a dozen in Tarling’s 1937 book, alone.

WP: is it any surprise then that the serious bartenders in England, Scotland and Ireland are all going mad over mezcal—and have been for many years?

TH: No—they’re smart.  Just as they were in the 1930s.

WP: I’ve heard conflicting stories—does cocktail historian David Wondrich have a different opinion about this?

TD: He wants to trace it back through its whole family line—and I do too.  I’m just saying that the Picador is the first appearance of this Mexican drink; and that it’s really the first Margarita.  Now, we can mention the Sidecar as being the daddy of the Margarita and, as Wondrich would say, the Brandy Daisy as its granddad, or (as I say) the Brandy Crusta as its granddad.  We might actually even be able to come together on the matter if we presume that the Brandy Daisy came out before the Brandy Crusta—then maybe the Brandy Crusta was a variation of the Brandy Daisy. To me, the lineage to the Daisy is a little bit more tenuous; but to the Crusta it’s easy—I mean, you can draw a graph.

WP: is it possible that there was a Margarita zeitgeist?  I mean, it’s hard to imagine that people weren’t mixing tequila, lime and Curaçao before and certainly during Prohibition in Tijuana, for example.

TH: ah, here we are in Caesar salad territory.  That’s my point exactly—Tarling is among the people who could have afforded to actually fly on airplanes, as were the jet-setters of the day who bounced from LA to TJ to the UK.  For all we know, it was an American bartender (living in England) who created the drink.  What I find suspect is the people who claim to have invented it; but that might not be accurate either because things tend to happen when they’re ready to happen—technologically, sociologically.

WP: but given tequila (the national spirit of Mexico), lime (their traditional fruit) and the addition of a simple sweetening agent, can’t we assume that said recipe was concocted in or near Mexico?

TH: it’s at the sweetening agent where your argument starts to fall apart.  Take, for example, the Daiquiri—every single ingredient was intrinsically Cuban.  In the case of the Margarita, rationalizing begins at the Cointreau—sure, there were stars and jet-setters that could’ve brought it, but there is an absence of hard logic.

WP: So, all doubt begins with Cointreau?

TH: well, some used triple sec.  It should be noted that Cointreau originally was a triple sec and that all subsequent triple secs were imitations of Cointreau.  That is certain.  Mexico then created a product called Controy—which tastes less like Cointreau and more like a good orange Curaçao, ironically.  But either way, this concoction was sort of a celebration of an American’s nicely filtered version of that culture.  Thereafter, the Margarita was a very Anglo drink—hardly indigenous—whether English or southern Californian.

WP: so, who really invented the Margarita?

TH: nobody will ever know.

WP: how do you like yours?

TH: think Santos Cruz: equal parts blanco tequila, Cointreau and fresh lime juice.

*For a similar piece, as featured in an online exclusive for Los Angeles  Times Magazine, click here.

How many times have we had Pisco Sours–and how many poor executions have we endured?  Properly made, this cocktail should transport you to a strange and fantastic place, familiar and entirely unknown.  I have worked hard to duplicate the best Pisco Sour I’ve had, with the luxury of lessons from its maker, Lucas Paya, at the Bazaar in the SLS Hotel, Beverly Hills.  I have consistently failed to achieve his level of execution; but guest tend to spend the night after I begin making them.

Pisco Sour
-In a pint glass
-2 oz Pisco 100
-3/8 oz lemon juice
-3/8 oz lime juice
-¾ oz simple syrup
-1 fresh egg white
dry shake to emulsify whites
add ice and cold shake
strain into cocktail glass
top quick line of Angostura bitters (3 drops) and create zig-zag or star pattern

For great video content of Lucas making his famed Pisco Sour, from Los Angeles Times Magazine, click here.

Lucas Paya, Bar Centro, The Bazaar, SLS Hotel

Just as Picasso shown extraordinary talent decades before his journeys into cubism and surrealism, the best abstract painters can also replicate uncanny likeness of the human form.  Accordingly, the controversy with molecular gastronomy is not arising with its innovators, but rather from tawdry imitators.  And, when one participates, for the first time, in the proper execution of its unexpected contrasts, it all makes sense.  Barcelona native, Lucas Paya, has earned the term ‘bar chef’ like few others.  First, he has spent time behind the line, the bar and on the floor.  It all started for Paya vicariously at his father’s table—where he would listen and learn about the virtues of wine.  Then it was on to college at Escola Superior d’Hosteleria de Barcelona, where Lucas studied under José Maria Gotarda, a second-generation bar protégé, whose father earned mythical status as a bartender in the middle of the last century.

Paya went on to collaborate with two of the most important chefs in the world, Ferran Adrià, with whom he worked for five years as sommelier at El Bulli and José Andrés, in his current post at the SLS Hotel, in Beverly Hills, where Lucas serves as beverage director.  Under his guidance, the cocktail program is incessantly pushing the boundaries of form and function, drawing upon his own roots and the notorious proclivities of his collaborator, José Andrés, replete with spherification, liquid olives, liquid nitrogen and calcium chloride.  The remarkable thing is that would-be-gimmicks aside, the cocktails are delectable on their own merits—the show, as it were, is value-add.  But, when Paya is at the helm, the performance is executed in such an expert meticulousness, that one cannot escape awe. Drinking sangria outside of someone’s private home almost invariably results in colossal failure.  Bar Centro, at The Bazaar is redefining neglected libations, giving LA a reason to drink them again.  The Individual Sangria—the cutest cocktail in town—is served in a mini pitcher, to scale,  and features Pares Balta Cava, lime rounds, raspberry, verbena , gin, Cognac, Cointreau, simple syrup, orange skin and grapes.  And, it has to be the best sangria you’ve ever drunk.

Among his cocktails, Paya—who is as erudite as he is gracious and consummately Spanish—is reviving classics, with his own twist, of course, and unapologetically affronting the limits of his confines.  His version of the Dirty Martini calls for Ketel One and Noilly Prat, clean, topped with an olive brine air—the unexpected contrast of the salty foam, chased by the essence of pure distillate is brilliant.  The Liquid Nitrogen Caipirinha, features cachaça, sugar, lime and is topped with edible petals, lime zest and verbena; the concoction is nitro-whisked until one eats it with a spoon.  But Paya’s pièce de résistance has to be the Pisco Sour which is served in a pint glass, with Pisco 100, lemon & lime juices, simple syrup, fresh egg whites and Angostura bitters.  The result is ridiculously decadent, while refreshing and simply elegant.

For the record, we had the great pleasure of spending an evening in Saam—the private dining room at Bazaar, where phenomenal wine dinners are held, on a regular basis—in which Lucas paired the entire twenty-two-course menu with the most elaborate, expertly-executed cocktails I’ve ever had.  This is not to be missed in Los Angeles.

Ron Cooper—Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal—and Lucas Paya meet for the first time at SLS Hotel, in the Bazaar.

For a similar piece, from Los Angeles Times Magazine, click here.

]]> http://bonsavant.com/2010/05/351/feed/ 1 http://bonsavant.com/2010/03/asado-prieto/ http://bonsavant.com/2010/03/asado-prieto/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:27:21 +0000 Wyatt Peabody http://bonsavant.com/?p=288

Asado Prieto
2 oz        Del Maguey Santo Domingo Albarradas
½ oz     Carpano Antica Formula Vermouth
½ oz    Fresh squeezed lemon juice
½ oz    Fresh squeezed lime juice
½ oz    Agave Nectar
1    Luxardo Marasche Cherry (soaked in Chichicapa mezcal)
3    dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 6
1     dash Angostura bitters

Pour first five ingredients in a tin-on-tin mixing glass with ice, shake and pour into a double Old Fashioned glass.  Dash bitters; garnish with a thin-sliced lime wheel, lemon skin and Luxardo Marasche Cherry.

For this cocktail, I used the Schott Zwiesel Paris Tritan Crystal Double Old Fashioned [which I got at Bar Keeper, in Silver Lake (where we get everything).  Joe has a ridiculous wealth of all things necessary—from the esoteric rarified to bar essentials—and his prices are fantastic].

As for the ice, we used the MoMa Japanese molds; I can only imagine the look on Ron Cooper’s face, between the spheres and the ‘precious’ ingredients.  Ironically enough, the end result is actually one of the most authentic expressions of the Palenques that I’ve experienced.  All of those ingredients actually marry to create a libation that transports you—one can actually smell the roast.

Enjoy.

The question is, unfortunately, all too often asked, “Is ice really that big of a deal?  To those who have, for whatever strange reason, not gotten the picture yet—yes, ice is that essential in the making of a good cocktail.  Don’t feel ashamed—miraculously, one can order a top-shelf cocktail in multi-million-dollar resorts all over the world today and get bad ice.  As Eric Alperin says, “Ice is the barman’s flame.”

The reasons are simple: temperature control, proper dilution, sensory stimulation and aesthetics.  And, all of the above are worth the hassle.  I love drinking out of Mason jars, but when it comes to Burgundy, I’m going with crystal.  The same logic applies throughout the world of gastronomy—reflective not of snobbery but, rather, a simple respect for authenticity and integrity.

Good ice is a simple pleasure to achieve—whether at home or at work.  Good molds/trays, decent water and a good freezer.  If your freezer smells, abandon said endeavor; if you lack good water, distilled water is preferred and boiled water will suffice just fine.  When it comes to the vessel, that’s an entirely different animal—one can begin with a simple ice cube tray and ascend all the way to spherical absurdity that borders on precious (depending on who you are).

When it comes to spherical ice—if you cannot justify spending a few hundred dollars on the Japanese model (which is, of course, the best—as they are killing it in Tokyo), the MoMa Store has a decidedly approachable solution, which runs you $16, for 2″-diameter ice spheres.

On the plainer side (which will still get you out of the ice rut) Amazon has their simpler version which are, nonetheless, a much better alternative to the average.  You can also get really sassy and freeze pieces of fruit (i.e. lime/lemon) and/or fruit juices.

Regardless of your means, take control of your ice—you’ll be glad you did.

Las Perlas—mezcal’s new Los Angeles home, thanks to Cedd Moses and Mark Verge— is opening tonight!  When you go (which better be soon), ask for Raul Yrastorza, the man in charge, who has actually walked the palenques of Oaxaca with Ron Cooper (founder of Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal).  Raul gets authentic maguey distillates like few people—among his offerings are el Melón, which I cannot seem to get enough of.  As with all of his cocktails, insist that he use Del Maguey—you’ll be glad you did.

el Melón
2 oz    Mezcal (Raul has a particular affinity for Santo Domingo Albarradas [as I do])
¾ oz    Lime juice (fresh squeezed, obviously)
¼ oz    Lemon juice (same)
½ oz    Agave nectar
½ oz     Combier Liqueur d’Orange
2 small pieces of cantaloupe
Muddled goji berries
Cantaloupe foam
Top with salt, pepper and edible flower

Cantaloupe Foam
8 oz     Fresh squeezed cantaloupe juice
1 oz     Agave nectar
½ oz    Combier Liqueur d’Orange
4 oz    Egg whites
½ tsp    gelatin powder

Add all ingredients into an ISI cream foamer, charge, shake and apply.

Manzanita de Chimayo
1½ oz    El Tesoro Reposado Tequila
½ oz    Del Maguey Crema de Mezcal
1 oz    Apple juice (fresh pressed)
¾ oz    Lime juice (fresh squeezed)
½ oz    Agave nectar
¼ oz    Crème de cassis
1     Lime-cube (lime wheel frozen inside of two-inch ice cube)

Pour first five ingredients in a mixing glass; add ice, shake for at least one minute, strain into old-fashioned glass, with single two-inch lime-cube.  Delicately pour Crème de cassis directly onto ice cube, allowing it to slowly descend, creating contrast.

Pour first eight ingredients in a tin-on-tin mixing glass and dry shake; add ice, shake and pour into a coupe glass.  Dash bitters; garnish with a thin-sliced lime wheel.

In this case, I used the Schott Zwiesel Pure Martini Glass—Angelinos, call Bar Keeper in Silver Lake.

Saludos,

Wyatt

Last night Matthew Biancaniello claimed victory in yet another cocktail competition, having placed just behind the Roger Room’s Jason Bran.  The two will travel together to New York, representing Los Angeles in the 42BELOW Cocktail World Cup, next Sunday.  From there, it’s on to New Zealand for the 42BELOW Cocktail World Cup on March 23-28th.