Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer accidentally breeds tobacco and tomatoes, calls the resulting hybrid a Tomacco and gets rich?
Unfortunately, the tomacco, albeit a cartoon invention, was the first thing that came to my mind upon hearing about the stramato.
A hybrid of - you guessed it - a tomato and a strawberry - its inventors are saying that their cocktail tomato" boasts a "beautiful strawberry shape, naturally sweet taste and a rich, deep red color."
Eh - I mean, it sounds good, but did the world really need another cocktail tomato? What was wrong with the old ones? Or just plain ol' cherry, for that matter?
For the first time in years, I won't be bartending this St. Paddy's Day. For the first time in years, I'll be on the other side, elbowing my way to the bar and signaling to a hapless, overworked barkeep that I, Keith Waldbauer, believe it's time for me to get my drink on.
And after all this time, boy am I ever thirsty.
So, what am I drinking? There will be Guinness, of that you can be sure. And, sure, I'll down a Tullamore Dew, two if I start feeling it. If the night gets away from me, I may even be talked into that Irish Car Bomb my friends are pushing toward me. First thing, though, let me tell you, I'll be tipping back a Tipperary.
Is it a typical Irish cocktail? No, not really. There's the Irish whiskey in it, of course, and then there is the name, which comes from both a town and a county in Ireland. It has a green tinge to it as well, courtesy of Chartreuse, a French liquer made by Carthusian monks since the 1700's.
So why a Tipperary on St. Paddy's Day, then, if the associations are rather slight? Because, my dear friend, while everyone else if fattening up on too much beer and slobbering over too many shots, you'll be at the end of the bar with a classic, 90 year old cocktail in your hands, taking your time with a well-balanced beverage. And with juuust enough Irish elements to keep you in the spirit of the moment. Here's my version of the Tipperary:
Tipperary
2 oz Irish whiskey (I generally use Bushmills) 3/4 oz sweet vermouth 1/4 oz green Chartreuse
Stir well, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish required here.
We have a 29th of February this year, making this a Leap Year ... making Friday a Leap Day. So what does that mean?
Well, we have an extra day to put off preparing our taxes (yes!), and an extra day standing between us and summer (boo!). Just like the Olympics and Presidential elections (yeah, we get yet another day of political sniping, too), Leap Years come every four years. It also means it's time to dust off an old classic cocktail called, ingeniously enough, the Leap Year Cocktail.
This hibernating little fellow comes courtesy of the Savoy Cocktail Book, first authored by Harry Craddock and remains, 78 years after publication, a benchmark for tradition-minded bartenders and scholars alike. There are over 750 recipes in the book, a few of which have notations augmenting their worth. I'm going to lift the entire quote regarding the Leap Year.
This cocktail was created by Harry Craddock for the Leap Year celebrations at the Savoy Hotel, London, on February 29, 1928. It is said to have been responsible for more proposals than any other cocktail ever mixed.
Well alrighty then! That's quite a feat considering the little bugger pokes its head out of the ground every Presidential cycle, but okay, I won't quibble with anything reaching its 80th birthday. The recipe is after the jump, taken from a more modern perspective from Gary Regan's excellent Joy of Mixology.
Here's a cocktail that is actually good for you. Chock full of anti-oxidants from the Sence rose nectar, cranberry juice, and pomegranate juice. Recipe courtesy of CocktailAtlas.com.
Rosy Pom
The Rosy Pom was crated for the Erotic Café inside the ZUMANITY Theatre at New York-New York in Las Vegas. Zumanity is a provocative cabaret-style production with a Cirque du Soleil twist. This playful cocktail, made with SEX Vodka and rose nectar, is the perfect drink to get you in the mood for a sexy show.
1.5oz Sex Vodka .5oz Sence Rose Nectar .5oz Cointreau 1oz Cranberry Juice Splash of POM pomegranate juice
Combine ingredients with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a rose petal.
Beer is one of my favorite beverages. However, I have never really gotten into beer cocktails. Apparently that isn't true for all drinkers of beer, especially in the Latino community. They've been mixing beer and Clamato for generations, or so I have recently found out. Well, word must have gotten out to the beverage companies because Anheuser-Busch and Cadbury Schwepps have recently announced the introduction of Budweiser & Clamato Chelada and Bud Light & Clamato Chelada.
Test introductions in initial markets were tremendously successful. So, as of Monday, January 14, 2008, the Chelada cocktail was rolled out nationwide. The drink is to be sold as a 24 ounce single serve can or as 16 ounce -4 pack cans.
This team up from the major beverage makers is aimed at making it easier to get a perfect beer/clamato cocktail. They may also be hoping to bridge cultures, as this combination is mostly a favorite in the Latino community. Chelada is actually a shortening of a phrase that means "my cold beer". If Chelada becomes popular in most demographics, it could be a real unifier for our divided nation. Maybe someone could mention that to our presidential candidates. You never know.
Natalie Bovis-Nelsen over at The Liquid Muse just sent me a great email about a cocktail that I want to share with you. A few months ago the staff over at bodog.com hired her to create a custom cocktail for their CEO, Billionaire Calvin Ayre.
I'll let Natalie tell the story in her own words. "Now, creating a drink for a billionaire is like buying Donald Trump a birthday present. How do you impress someone who already has the best of everything? I watched his episode on VH1 "The Fabulous Life of..." and realized this is a man who likes style and substance. So, I began with quality ingredients. Armed with the knowledge that Mr. Ayre is a gin man, I reached for the Bombay Sapphire. The next thing I took into consideration is that he lives in the Caribbean. The drink should be refreshing. A little breezy, a little tart, not too sweet. It should be easy to make (he throws a lot of parties) and it should have some classic flare.Basically, what I came up with was a variation of a Negroni. Created in Italy, and named for an Italian count, the Negroni smacks of Mediterranean glamour, yet is tethered in earthy aromatics. Whip up one up for yourself. Its the perfect summer drink. And, it'll make you feel like a billion bucks."
Natalie's recipe for the Billion-Ayre's Bet cocktail after the jump.
Since I just reviewed the Imperial Exclusive Vodka earlier today I thought I would share a recipe from their website using the Imperial Exclusive Vodka for your Happy Hour. À votre santé! (To your health!)
Grand Imperial Cosmo 6 parts Imperial vodka Splash of top shelf orange liqueur 1 part cranberry Splash lime juice Shake with ice and serve into chilled glass garnish with lime spiral
A few weeks ago I wrote about a cocktail that was created by The Cocktail Guru, Jonathan Pogash when I requested a drink with certain characteristics to it. This was at the long end of a Friday evening of sipping drinks at Bookmarks in the Library Hotel in NYC.
I asked all you Slashfoodies to help out in creating a name for the cocktail. There were many great suggestions and comments and it was hard to narrow it down to the final name.
I have only visited the Cocktail Guru once since that night, when I told him about asking you readers to suggest a name. I emailed back and forth with him to see which suggestions he liked, but this will be the first time he finds out the results.
The suggestions for the name of the cocktail and the final choice after the jump.
There's an "America's Favorite Neighbor" joke in here somewhere but I can't think of one at the moment.
A 2 year-old was accidentally served a margarita in his drink instead of the apple juice his mother ordered. The kid kept pushing the drink away after taking a sip and his mom didn't understand why. She opened the sippy cup and found the alcohol. She wasn't going to make a fuss, but later at home the child got sick and vomited. The chain says the incident was an isolated mistake. The child is fine now.
The reason this happened? Not only was the apple juice and the Triple sec/tequila mixture kept on the same shelf, they were kept in identical plastic bottles. Yikes.
Absolut Vodka has released their latest fruit-flavored libation, Absolut Pears. I'm planning to try it soon, so I thought I'd get warmed up for Happy Hour today by taking a look at a few of their recommended cocktails. Both recipes are from the Absolut Drinks website, where they have hundreds of self-created and user-submitted recipes for all of their flavored vodkas. Without further ado:
Pears Garden
4 parts Absolut Pears 2 parts lemon juice 2 parts simple syrup 1 part black currant liqueur 2 parts cranberry juice
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into chilled martini glass.
We here at Slashfood love holidays that, well, involve a little bit of beverage taste-testing. After all, it just wouldn't be acceptable to put a recipe out there that hasn't passed quality control, right?
Now, it is your turn. We'd like to hear what you drink for St. Patrick's Day. Do you take this opportunity to be creative and come up with your own cocktails, or do you simply pour your usual Saturday night beverage? As for me, I'll be sticking to a mug of Guinness, freshly poured at my local Irish pub. I may skip the green food coloring though.
We've been following the Baileys Drinkable Desserts contest for several weeks now, in which both professional and amateur mixologists could put together their most inventive concoctions and put them up for public voting, with the hopes of winning the grand prize of a trip to New York City for two for a private cooking class in the Gourmet Cooking Arts Center with Chef de Cuisine, Jennifer Day. The contest coincided with the launch of Bailey's two new flavored liqueurs, Baileys Mint Chocolate and Baileys Caramel. The liqueurs proved to be good choices for baking, as well as for making cocktails, but some of our favorite entries included the Caramel Apple Pie-Tini, The Baileys Vanilla Bean and I Want S'More.
The contest just finished up and the two winners have been announced: Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake in Mint Condition (amateur, pictured) and Mocha Mint Bavarian (pro). The recipe are after the jump.
Happy Mardi Gras folks! Just about everyone who has been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans has had one of Pat O'Brien's Hurricanes. A tall red drink served in a 24 oz. Hurricane glass which looks like the tall glass chimney of an old fashioned oil hurricane lamp. Sipping a Hurricane is one of the most popular ways to celebrate when in New Orleans, and I've had my share back in the years when I made my annual pilgrimage to Mardi Gras. It's a tasty drink with a bit of a kick, the saving grace is that it is served in a tall glass filled with ice so you can sip it slowly. If you slurp it down fast, then after a few you're gonna feel like you went through a hurricane yourself. Your clothes will start to come off, your popularity will soar, and you'll soon be wearing a lot of Mardi Gras beads and pearls.
Pat O'Brien operated a speakeasy during prohibition called Mr. O'Brien's Club Tipperary. The semi-secret password to get in was "storm's brewin". Then in 1933 after the repeal of prohibition Pat O'Brien moved across the street and opened Pat O'Brien's and a while later in 1942 moved to the present location at 718 St. Peter Street. The Hurricane was created at Pat O'Brien's some time in the 1940's during the war years. Whiskey was hard to get but rum was plentiful and to order a case of whiskey a bar had to order as many as 50 cases of rum first. So Pat O'Brien created this punch like drink to make use of the available rum.
It sits alone and untouched at the end of a long buffet table -- a bowl full of apples and bananas, maybe a seedy orange tossed in as an afterthought. Don't let your fruit salad meet this awful fate, spruce it up instead!
Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer accidentally breeds tobacco and tomatoes, calls the resulting hybrid a Tomacco and gets rich? 
For the first time in years, I won't be bartending this St. Paddy's Day. For the first time in years, I'll be on the other side, elbowing my way to the bar and signaling to a hapless, overworked barkeep that I, Keith Waldbauer, believe it's time for me to get my drink on.
We have a 29th of February this year, making this a Leap Year ... making Friday a Leap Day. So what does that mean? 
Here's a cocktail that is actually good for you. Chock full of anti-oxidants from the Sence rose nectar, cranberry juice, and pomegranate juice. Recipe courtesy of 
Natalie Bovis-Nelsen over at 
Since I just reviewed the 
A few weeks ago
There's an "America's Favorite Neighbor" joke in here somewhere but I can't think of one at the moment.
Yesterday I reviewed Vya Vermouth and so today I would like to give you some aperitif cocktail recipes to try out.
Yesterday I reviewed the unique 
We here at Slashfood love holidays that, well, involve a little bit of beverage taste-testing. After all, it just wouldn't be acceptable to put a recipe out there that hasn't passed quality control, right? 
We've been following the Baileys 
Happy Mardi Gras folks! Just about everyone who has been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans has had one of 
Creating the ultimate Mother's Day gift for the carnivorous mom
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