Can you identify the ingredients in a martini, cosmopolitan, Manhattan, Mai Tai, Long Island Iced Tea, Harvey Wallbager and more? See how well you know your cocktails.
Cocktail Ingredients Quiz
Crazy for Cosmopolitans? You'll need vodka, Cointreau or triple sec, lime juice, and one other ingredient to shake 'em up at home.
Grenadine
Orange juice
Cranberry juice
Pink grapefruit juice
Some folks get fancy with the recipe, but a traditionally-made Mai Tai gets its signature flavor from lime juice, dark rum, grenadine (or simple syrup), curacao and what other key ingredient?
Almond syrup
Mango juice
Coconut milk
Orange juice
Shaking up vodka, cream, and this variety of liqueur results in a White Russian.
Coffee
White chocolate
Vanilla
Peppermint
The rim of a Sidecar glass is coated in what tasty substance?
Sugar
Salt
Cocoa
Honey
The non-alcoholic classic Shirley Temple contains ginger ale (or lemon-lime soda), orange juice and a sweet splash of what?
Fruit punch
Cranberry juice
Grenadine
Pineapple juice
Vodka or gin would need just this ingredient to be shaken or stirred into a gimlet.
Roses Lime Juice Cordial
Olive juice
Fresh lime juice
Pickle juice
Rye (or bourbon), vermouth, bitters and a cherry are the components of which classic cocktail?
Negroni
Old Fashioned
Manhattan
Rob Roy
Mix up rum, lime and Coca-Cola to make this drink.
Cuba Libre
El Presidente
Bronx
Corpse Reviver
Mint, sugar, lime, soda water and this liquor come together to be muddled into a mojito.
Cachaca
Tequila
Rum
Pisco
Standard ingredients in a Negroni include gin, vermouth and what other liquid?
Lemon juice
Egg whites
Angostura bitters
Campari
It's not just a punchline -- the Harvey Wallbanger is a fern bar staple featuring vodka, orange juice, and this odd liqueur.
Goldschlager
Rumplemintz
Galliano
Peach Schnaaps
When this is popped into a Martini in lieu of an olive, it becomes a Gibson.
Jalapeno pepper
Lime wedge
Gherkin
Cocktail onion
James Bond may be more commonly associated with the Martini, but writer Ian Fleming also had him slugging down Vespers, which are concocted from Lillet Blanc and which two liquors?
Brandy & Scotch
Gin & Vodka
Vodka & Bourbon
Bourbon & Brandy
Mix orange juice and this spirit for a hard-hitting Screwdriver.
Rum
Vodka
Champagne
Whiskey
Sure, you could ask for a vodka & cranberry with a lime wedge, but it's much more festive to order it this way:
Greyhound
Salty Dog
Cape Cod
Madras
If you've got bourbon, mint, and a splash of soda, you're on the right track to make the Derby Day classic, a Mint Julep. What's still missing?
Lime
Sugar
Bitters
Nothing
The Bloody Mary is a brunch standard, but this addition transforms it into a hearty Bloody Bull.
Beef broth
Red Bull
A whole hot pepper
Pepper vodka
Creme de menthe and cream are terribly tasty together, but if you want a Grasshopper, hop to the store for a bottle of:
Vanilla vodka
Creme de Cacao
Green food coloring
Mint extract
A Greyhound gets its distinctive flavor from vodka and this mixer:
Sweetened lime juice
Pineapple juice
Cranberry and orange juice
Grapefruit juice
We all know that a Long Island Iced Tea has no tea in the mix, but what liquor isn't part of the standard recipe?
Each week, we round up the top food articles we've spied Web-wide. This week, a special edition of our own bloggers' primo pieces from elsewhere on the Web.
Been seduced by "Mad Men" yet? Have Frankie Valli on repeat on the Hi-Fi? Find yourself buying dusty vintage TV trays decorated with mallards? Drinking a gin martini, up, for dinner?
OK, we're projecting. Half the Slashfood staff is enamored with the show (see New York Magazine's handy primer) that is about to plunge into its third hard-drinking, heavy-philandering, Gotham-glamorizing season this Sunday. We are over the moon about the style, the cocktail culture, and those insane retro recipes.
It's the perfect excuse for a cocktail party (especially a costumed one), so bust out the pearls and heat up the curlers -- or grab the fedora and tiepin -- because it's totally OK to drink with friends on a Sunday night. No one batted a heavily lined eye at such a thing back in the day.
Our party primer, with tune selections, deviled eggs and LeNell's perfect martini, after the jump.
"Noilly Prat is a necessary component of a dry martini. Without it you can make a Sidecar, a Gimlet, a White Lady, or a gin and bitters, but you cannot make a dry martini." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1958)
Are you A. a cocktail purist or B. a lucky stiff with a climate-controlled storage space? It's time to pair up and start stashing, 'cause the Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth you've been mixing into your Martinis since time immemorial is about to go the way of the Concorde. The Wall Street Journal reports that the makers of the august aperitif plan to expand the distribution of their "original formula," the European standard, to the exclusion of the current US version. Problem is, dry Martinis are a uniquely American construct, and the Euro version is, well, not exactly an ideal swap-in. It's regarded as a stand-alone beverage, rather than a cocktail ingredient, and from all reports, shies far from dry and subtle in several recpects.
"How sugary is it? If you took an old bottle of the dry vermouth and mixed it half-and-half with the Sauternes-sweet aperitif wine Lillet, you'd have a pretty good approximation of what to expect.
With the European Noilly Prat you won't get the crisp and untinged visual clarity now expected of a Martini unless you dial the vermouth back to about an eighth or a tenth of the mix." -- Eric Felten, Wall Street Journal
Yeeks! I've all but entirely shifted my loyalty toward Vya Vermouth over the past few years, but this news has me a tad shaken up. Anyone have a bit of cellar space to spare? I'll bring the olives and the D.H. Krahn.
Thanks to our pal Chess Ninja for this timely tip.
Is that a cucumber in your market totebag or are you just happy to see me?
I would say that more so than any of the other phallic foods, the straighter, thicker cucumber is probably the most, in my humble opinion of course, accurate. However, shape and size aren't the only things that matter when it comes to turning on a woman with a cucumber. Aside from its phallic shape, the scent of cucumbers is believed to stimulate women by increasing blood flow to the vagina.
That must be why so many of us love those cucumber melon scented bath products!
You know that on Halloween, it's all about candy for the costumed kids, but for those of us who are beyond the age of trick-or-treating (but not beyond dressing up!), the treats come in the form of drinks. Specifically for Halloween, we are talking about what my friends and I call "Booze Candy" -- cocktails made from candy- and chocolate-flavored liquors that are inspired by candy.
The Almond Joy Martini is something I've posted about before, but since it's Halloween, thought I'd bring up the drink named after one of my favorite candy bars. The cocktail mixes chocolate, coconut, and nutty flavors, resulting in a ridiculously delicious drink that could double as a dessert. I suppose if you left out the nutty liquor, you'd have a Mounds Martini since sometimes, you don't always feel like a nut!
Shake 1 oz. each of coconut-flavored rum (Parrot Bay or Malibu), Frangelico, Godiva or other chocolate-flavored liqueur, Hershey's chocolate syrup, and vodka. Add 4 oz. half and half or light cream, shake with ice, then strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with shredded coconut.
Most of these "what _____ are you?" quizzes you find online are often inaccurate but a fun way to waste a few minutes of your day. And they often reinforce some aspect of yourself that is true, or maybe you wish was true, and you get a little icon to put on your web site to make other people think you're that way too.
This one asks you a bunch of questions (though not enough, I feel) to find out what type of drink you are. Are you a hard drink like whiskey? Are you a drink with a little umbrella in it? Are you a martini person? Or maybe you're not an alcoholic person at all. The questions revolve around what activities you do when you drink (playing quarters? lying down? vomiting?), what snack you like to eat when drinking (peanuts? olives? nachos?), and the type of taste that appeals most to you.
For the record, the quiz said I'm a beer person. Which is odd, since I rarely drink beer.
Fall is my favorite season, for so many reasons (I'm a poet and I didn't even...well, you know the rest), and one of them is the food and drink options available. Fine Living has a list of 10 cocktails you can drink on those chilly fall days and nights. Maybe after a day of Christmas shopping, or when everyone is over your house on Thanksgiving Day and you're trying to figure out some way to have all of your family members get along.
It's Halloween night and the kids have gone out, made out like candy-bandits, come back, and are now safely in bed. Now it's your turn, so what better way to turn in for the evening than a sweet, candy-inspired cocktail, or what we like to call "booze candy?" Normally, I stay away from such sugary, syrupy drinks, but on Halloween, I make an exception for this, the Almond Joy Martini, of which I have written before but hadn't yet tried. Instead of the suggested garnish of shredded coconut, though, we did a swirl of chocolate syrup.
I'll just say that it's pretty damn good. If you feel like a nut, that is.
Flavor-infused vodkas are all the rage these days, particularly as the base to fancy cocktails. While lemon and other citrus fruits have been around for a while, infusers are becoming increasingly more exotic like pomegranate and lychee.
Lichido Liqueur isn't exactly an infused vodka. It is actually a liqueur. In fact, the website where it is sold ($22.99) says that it is a martini in a bottle made of vodka, Cognac and infused with not only lychee, but guava and white peaches. As long as it isn't too sticky sweet, it sounds delish!
Typically, our Slashfood Happy Hour is on Fridays, but with the extended Fourth of July weekend coming up, we thought we'd get started a day early.
Recently I tried a Blueberry Basil Martini. From the sound of it, I was skeptical since I had certainly heard of strawberries and basil, but never blueberries and basil. From the looks of it, I was skeptical, too. It looked like a berry-flavored smoothie from Jamba Juice served in a martini glass. However, the color is deceptive, and though it did taste a bit thick, it was not too bad.
Unfortunately, I don't know what the recipe is, but I did find a recipe online for a strawberry and basil martini, which could probably be modified. (By the way, the Blueberry Basil Martini I had was made with Bombay Sapphire gin, not vodka.)
My friend Todd is a mixologist. Technically, he is a college molecular biology instructor, but on the side, the guy can mix up some fabulous drinks. His specialty? What he calls "booze candy" - anything that's so super sweet that it's basically, well, candy. These are things that are made with fruit flavored vodkas, juices, cordials and liqueurs, and can be very appropriately served in a sugar-rimmed glass.
Normally, the sticky, almost syrupy drinks are too sweet for my personal taste, but if I drink them after dinner and with the mindset that they are dessert, then watch out. Booze candy is so easy is to drink, I can finish three of them without even realizing it.
A drink recipe I came across is so perfectly "booze candy, it's ridiculous: Almond Joy Martini. I love the dark chocolate covered coconut and almond bar, so I love the idea. I haven't actually made it yet, as I don't have all the ingredients, but the next time I have a cocktail party, I'm sure Todd and I will have to give this a try.
Almond Joy Martini
Shake 1 oz. each of coconut-flavored rum (Parrot Bay or Malibu), Frangelico, Godiva or other chocolate-flavored liqueur, Hershey's chocolate syrup, and vodka. Add 4 oz. half and half or light cream, shake with ice, then strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with shredded coconut.
"Noilly Prat is a necessary component of a dry martini. Without it you can make a Sidecar, a Gimlet, a White Lady, or a gin and bitters, but you cannot make a dry martini." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1958)
Here's an interesting idea: 
Most of these "what _____ are you?" quizzes you find online are often inaccurate but a fun way to waste a few minutes of your day. And they often reinforce some aspect of yourself that is true, or maybe you wish was true, and you get a little icon to put on your web site to make other people think you're that way too.
Fall is my favorite season, for so many reasons (I'm a poet and I didn't even...well, you know the rest), and one of them is the food and drink options available. Fine Living has 
Say that five times fast!
Typically, our Slashfood 
My friend Todd is a mixologist. Technically, he is a college molecular biology instructor, but on the side, the guy can mix up some fabulous drinks. His specialty? What he calls "booze candy" - anything that's so super sweet that it's basically, well, candy. These are things that are made with fruit flavored vodkas, juices, cordials and liqueurs, and can be very appropriately served in a sugar-rimmed glass.
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