I bought Gotham City Cocktails because we have a bottle of locally made bourbon that we have been sampling called Blue Note. I say "sampling" in that we didn't drink any (we're not hard-liquor drinkers very much) until we binged Deadwood. In the course of which, we made a drinking game of sipping a shot of bourbon every time somebody said c---sucker.
We got very drunk.
But it turns out we liked Blue Note more than any bourbon we'd ever had. (Note: We haven't had many.) Anyway, I saw Gotham City Cocktails coming up for release, and thought I'd buy it and use it to make bourbon-based drinks and use up that bottle of Blue Note.
But my wife took the bit in her teeth, and decided we'd try them all. Every single drink.
I married well.
That involved going to the biggest liquor store in the area and buying many liquors, liquers and mixers. We did just that, and spent $300 in the process. And still didn't get all the mixers we needed from the book. (We had made a list. We didn't finish it.)
But we got enough to start. And tonight we tried drink No. 1: "The Burnsider." It involves ginger beer, cointreau, lemon juice and orange peel. I had no idea what "cointreau" was, and had to Google it. Doesn't matter, though, does it? All that matters is if it tastes good.
And boy howdy, does it. This snappy, spicy drink is awesome. I don't think I could have more than two at a sitting, and I probably wouldn't taste the second one if I did. Great drink, tho. I recommend it. At least one on a given night, anyway.
I'll continue to post as we make it through the book. I hope some of you take the journey with us.
Replies
COCKTAIL NO. 6
“Inspired by Bane, the foe who is rumored to have broken the Batman’s back”
PEÑA DURO
Recipe
½ lime, cut into 4 wedges
1 barspoon granulated sugar
4 fresh mint leaves
1 ounce white rum
1 ounce overproof rum
1 ounce club soda
Review
With two kinds of rum, this one packs a punch. And half a lime is a lot of fruit for one drink! My wife says muddling the lime wedges is a chore, and not easily done. My suggestion is to not muddle them, and instead suck on them after you finish your drink. They tend to absorb the sugar and alcohol, for a second kind of drink.
COCKTAIL NO. 7
“Inspired by Gotham’s most famous socialite, Kathy Kane”
THE ELEGY
Recipe
1½ ounce dry vermouth
1 ounce blanc vermouth
½ ounce pomegranate juice
3 ounces club soda
Lemon twist, for garnish
Review
It was a strange flavor. Was it the vermouth? Or the pomegranate? But my wife said it gave the drink “depth,” and it’s really light. Very little punch, so you could have several. Also, we didn’t have enough club soda for two drinks, so we used tonic water for the second. It wasn’t as good.
It took me a second to remember that "Elegy" was the name of the first Batwoman collection, and (without looking it up) probably the title of the first storyline.
i think I would be down for both Old Gotham and Gotham City.
A slight aside when I moved into my current apartment I thought, "Yes, I love Old Fashioneds I will buy some bitters for that" I think I've made tht 2-3 times in the past 7+ years. I actually found a biscuit recipe that uses bitters. Pretty awesome.
Plenty of bitters in these recipes. Somewhere this book said that bitters are one of the four ingredients necessary to call something a cocktail. That's the first I've heard of that, but for all I know it's true.
COCKTAIL NO. 8
“Inspired by an extravagant and lively time in Gotham City’s history.”
THE GOTHAMITE
Recipe
1½ ounces vodka
¾ ounce Cointreu
½ ounce limoncello
¾ ounce cranberry juice
1 dash orange bitters
Amarena cherry, for garnish
Review
Just as advertised, the Gothamite is light and citrusy. But it also has a lot of flavors I couldn’t really identify. In some ways it reminded me of a cosmopolitan, only with a few more dashes of this and that. It’s tasty, but definitely a sipper — I recommend taking it slowly. And it goes really well with something salty.
I'm sorry I haven't been posting about Gotham cocktails for a week or so. We've certainly been drinking them -- I just haven't been writing about them. That takes effort. Also, as noted, we are drinking cocktails. At what point do you expect me to stop and work? That's practically uncivilized.
All kidding aside, I experimented with returning my desktop up to the Comics Cave for a variety of reasons, and for a variety of reasons (not least of which it suddenly made posting more inconvenient), it didn't work. That experiment having failed, I am back in the "office" downstairs, and will resume writing about cocktails.
One thing I've wanted to mention is our new refrigerator. This was not an extravagance; the old one was leaking and had always had problems and glitches. We got a new one that's the same size but is infinitely better. For one thing: It makes ice balls.
Is that sideways? Might be. Anyway, having cool cocktail-friendly ice balls is an incentive to cocktail-ize.
I should note that one side of the ball is always shaved off, likely having to do with however it's molded. Which makes them more Ice Death Stars than ice balls. Which is even cooler.
And my wife is over the moon about the new fridge, because it actually makes four kinds of ice. I didn't know there were four kinds of ice. But in addition to ice balls and ice cubes, it makes shaved ice and "mini-cubes." Those are also useful for cocktails because they melt quickly (being small) and dilute the stronger ones faster.
Here are the two kinds of ice that live in the actual freezer:
The other two kinds of ice come out of the recess in the door where we can also get cold, filtered water.
This is one of the few times I still like living in the future.
Glad to see you're back to this thread.
(I had been doing my drinking vicariously through you.)
COCKTAIL NO. 9
"A quick, effective, and delicious part of every cocktail arsenal."
BATARANG
Recipe
3 fresh mint leaves
1 ounce gin
1 ounce blended scotch
½ ounce fresh lemon juice
½ ounce Simple Syrup
1 dash orange bitters
Strong and tasty. Like sweet lemonade with a delayed punch.
In the movies people knock shots back in a gulp, but I sip this one. Maybe there's a difference between the ones you gulp and the ones you sip, but I sip all of them. This one sips just fine, but being a shot, doesn't last long. My wife makes them in a shaker with enough for two shots for each of us.
The first batch my wife made was a little bitter, so she modified the recipe. She sent me the new one: "I modified this recipe by adding only 3/4 ounce of gin and scotch, 1 whole ounce of Simple Syrup (instead of 1/2) and a bar spoon of orange bitters." It's perfect this way.
COCKTAIL NO. 10
"Everyone wears a mask in their own way."
ALTER EGO
"This cocktail is a favorite at the bar Mr. Alibi, which you might know as as the spot Two-Face visited after escaping Arkham Asylum. The bartenders there make it when any customer is in the 'mood.' Amer Picon can be difficult to source but is easily replaced by China-China, an additional orange-flavored liqueur with a similar taste. Alternatively, you can add another one-fourth ounce maraschino liqueur and skip the orange liqueur altogether. Whiskey and grapefruit juice are a classic winning combination — a useful pair for creating youor own mixed drinks.
Recipe
2 ounces rye whiskey
1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
¼ ounce marschino liqueur
¼ ounce Amer Picon (substitute China-China or marashino liqueur)
Grapefruit twist, for garnish
Shake the whiskey, grapefruit juice, maraschino liqueur, and Amer Picon with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a grapefruit twist.
My wife crowed after I drank this, "I made you drink grapefruit juice and like it!" I don't know why that was important to her, but I truly don't like grapefruit juice. Or grapefruits, for that matter. In fact, I don't like IPAs, because they all — and I mean all — taste like grapefruit juice to me. Which is so bitter to me I can't stand it.
But I couldn't taste the grapefruit in this drink, and I'm a guy who can taste coconut oil in a Snickers bar. (I can't stand coconut, either.) I could taste the maraschino a little, but not as much as in other drinks that call for maraschino. So I think they canceled each other a bit.
The end result was a drink that had a hint of bitterness, more than a hint of sweetness, and a LOT of rye. As I've discovered, I like rye. So I liked this drink.
Yeah, IPSa are overrated.
I do like grapefruit juice, and this drink sounds delicious.
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