The Bitten Word

Southern Cocktail Week: Spicy Shrub Paloma

Garden & Gun (February/March 2014)

 

Feb. 1. 7:10 p.m.
Cocktail #3
Feeling: Jovial

We've made a shrub once before, when we made a Cranberry-Lime Shrub Sparkler for Fakesgiving. We love them -- they're cocktails with vinegar, which adds such a great sweet/sharp undertone.

This is actually the cocktail we started making first, because to make the grapefruit shrub, you infuse vinegar for a week ahead of time. You also have to make a spicy simple syrup ahead of time. Making the drink on the night of the party is easy, but this cocktail takes planning.

We rarely ever drink tequila. It's just not usually our bag. But we like this drink a lot. It's a lighter, more summery cocktail than the others we have at our party. So it's a fun thing to throw in the mix.

Our guests like this Spicy Shrub Paloma, but it's probably not anyone's favorite drink of the night. We suspect that has a lot to do with the fact that it's 25 degrees outside. Pour this drink on a hot summer night and you'd have a total hit.

We continue pouring full glasses. Why?? It is unknown.

Southern Cocktail Week: Redless Snapper

Garden & Gun (February/March 2014)

 

Feb. 1. 6:40 p.m.
Cocktail #2
Feeling: Relaxed

Our friends Drew and Ralph love Bloody Marys more than anybody else we know. So we were excited to see what they think about this Redless Snapper, which is essentially a happy-hour version of a Bloody. (We're already familiar with a Red Snapper, which is a gin-based variation of the classic brunchy Bloody. This Redless Snapper, created by Raleigh, N.C., mixologist Kevin Barrett, takes things even a step further by subbing in tomato water for the tomato juice.)

Everybody, including Drew and Ralph, really loves the Redless Snapper. Thanks to the gin and the flavor-infused tomato water, it's bright and clean and bracing in exactly the way a Bloody Mary isn't.

Two cocktails in, everyone's getting chatty...

Southern Cocktail Week: Hamilton Cobbler

Garden & Gun (February/March 2014)

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

See, a lot of our friends did "dry January," in which they gave up drinking for the first month of the year. Clay did too. (Zach didn't, but still stayed pretty clean -- only a few glasses of wine during the whole month.) Dry January is part health cleanse, part New Year's resolution, part proving to yourself you can do it.

So as the month was drawing to a close, Clay had this great idea: Let's invite all our friends over on February 1, and we'll make all the cocktails from the new issue of Garden & Gun. The February/March issue has a mouthwatering mint julep on the cover, and an exhaustive Guide to Southern Cocktails inside. As the magazine says, "There's never been a better, tastier, or more fun time to have a drink in Dixie."

The issue actually features 11 libations from Southern mixologists. We settled on seven for our little get-together.

"Come over around 6," we told our guests. "We'll have little tasting samples of the cocktails, and then people can go do their own thing for dinner."

It didn't quite turn out that way...

Holiday Whiskey Punch

Garden & Gun (December 2013)

Sure, chicken is in our holiday survival bunker.

But so is whiskey. And it's already come in handy this year. 

For Thanksgiving last week, we stayed in D.C. Our friends Trevor and Owen offered to host, and a crowd of nine of us gathered for dinner. We were asked to bring cocktails and dessert. We considered a second run at the pumpkin-y Pilgrimage Cocktail, which we had liked very much. But we always love an opportunity to try a new recipe.

So we chose this Holiday Whiskey Punch from Garden & Gun.

First, let's talk about the magazine. How is it, exactly, that we haven't yet talked about Garden & Gun with you?? 

We made mention of it over a year ago, and haven't quite circled back to it yet. If you haven't seen an issue before, the content is a mix of food, sport and Southern culture. There's not quite as much food in each issue as we might like (which is perhaps one of the reasons we haven't cooked from it before). But the magazine is beautiful and the photographry is absolutely georgous. If you have someone on your holiday list who loves magazines but might enjoy something a bit more unusual, give them Garden & Gun. Seriuosly. We have so many friends who have subscribed in the past few years, and they all love it as much as we do. 

Don't worry, though -- there are no guns in this punch. Let's talk about it.