Recipes By Robert Simonson
110 recipes found
Fanciulli Manhattan
Francesco Fanciulli (1853-1915) was given the unenviable task of succeeding John Philip Sousa as the leader of the United States Marine Band. After he refused an officer’s request to play a tune, Mr. Fanciulli was arrested for insubordination. But Fanciulli later had a cocktail named after him. The drink’s origins are murky, but it is clearly in the manhattan family, the chief difference being a touch of the amaro Fernet Branca, perhaps a nod to the musician;'s childhood years in Italy. This recipe is from Philip Greene, a Washington-based cocktail historian.
Mezcal Negroni
Americans have been ordering classic cocktails with mezcal instead of the typical spirits. One of the most popular is the mezcal Negroni, in which the gin is replaced with the smoky agave spirit. The switch works well because mezcal is as assertive in its flavors as gin is, and can stand up to flavorful tough customers like sweet vermouth and Campari. A number of different mezcals work well in this mix; Del Maguey’s Vida brand is a good place to start in your experimenting.
Mezcal Corpse Reviver
Charles Cerankosky, a Rochester bar owner, has fielded plenty of creative orders in his day. One of the most unusual requests was to use mezcal instead of gin in a Corpse Reviver, a sour that dates back a century. This twist is not a natural fit, so Mr. Cerankosky replaced the usual lemon juice with a mix of lime and grapefruit juice to better complement the mezcal. With all that’s going on in this drink, the mezcal almost gets lost, if that’s possible. Still, its smokiness lingers in the back, and the panoply of flavors is intriguing enough to lure you back for another sip.
Tom Collins
The Tom Collins is perhaps the ultimate highball and one of history’s most enduring cocktails. It was historically made with Old Tom gin, which is sweeter than London dry gin, but the drink works well with both types of the spirit. (Old Tom only recently became available again, thanks to the clamoring of mixologists.) A peculiar methodology is used in mixing up a Tom Collins. Though it contains fresh juice, which usually dictates that the drink must be shaken, it is nonetheless often built in the glass in which it is served. But shaking the drink and then straining it into an ice-filled highball works as well, and arguably leads to a better integrated cocktail.
Old-Fashioned
The old-fashioned is one of the oldest mixed drinks in the cocktail canon. (Original name: whiskey cocktail, which became old-fashioned whiskey cocktail, and then just old-fashioned.) It is a stirred drink, usually built in the glass in which it is served. Both rye and bourbon are suitable base spirits. For the sweetener, purists muddle up a sugar cube with water and a couple dashes of bitters, but simple syrup works as well. Twists can be orange, lemon or both (known as “rabbit ears”). A fruited version of the drink came into vogue after Prohibition and involves the muddling of a cherry and orange slice along with the sugar. That version remains widespread, but we advocate the more elemental rendition that took hold in the late 1800s, one that allows the flavors of the whiskey to shine.
Moscow Mule
Wickman House, a fine-dining destination at the tip of Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula, serves as many Moscow Mules today as it does the state’s beloved brandy old-fashioneds. The Wickman recipe is the classic formula: vodka and lime juice topped with ginger beer and served over ice in a copper mug.
Snowbirds and Townies
Tonia Guffey, the head bartender at Dram in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said he was inspired to create this holiday drink “by those chocolate oranges you get from your mom for Christmas every year and you kind of hate and love them — the ones with the hard chocolate shell you have to break open.” The bitterness of Fernet Branca is tamed by three sweet holiday flavors: orange, cocoa and cinnamon. As with most of her cocktails, the name is a music reference — in this case, a song about winter by the rock band Further Seems Forever.
Campbell Swizzle
Valkyrie House Old-Fashioned
Slow Clap
The bartender Ivy Mix’s inspiration for this drink began with an appreciation for Greenflash’s very hoppy West Coast IPA, and a wish to round out its character with softer flavors. A calming, floral chamomile syrup and the mild amaro Cardamaro serve that purpose, while the barrel-aged Spring 44 Old Tom Gin adds structure and a different edge to match that of the beer. The hops and tannins notwithstanding, this is a drink with an appealingly citrusy, floral personality.
Manhattan
There are some who adhere to dry-martini dogma when making a manhattan, thinking the drink improves with less vermouth. But the classic, best and most flavorful ratio for this drink remains two to one. Whether you use bourbon or rye is entirely a matter of taste. Bourbon will get you a slightly sweeter, more mellow drink; rye a drier, spicier one. Both versions can be excellent. Use homemade cocktail cherries if possible, or a quality brand like Luxardo. Eschew the common neon-red orbs found in supermarkets. They are cherries the way that stuff movies theaters put on popcorn is butter.
Martini
The martini is the undisputed king of cocktails, nearly a category unto itself. The frosty, austere, all-alcohol icon has bewitched palates and imaginations for more than a century, to a measure no other drink can even approach. The trend toward drier martinis, with only trace amounts of vermouth, began after World War II. (In martini vernacular, “dry” means less vermouth, “wet” means more.) That style remains popular. But, thank goodness, in recent years crusading bartenders have brought proportions back close to historical, wetter dimensions. A martini isn’t a martini without the herbal tang of vermouth; a 3 to 1 ratio of gin to vermouth should satisfy both tastes, given that the vermouth is of good quality and fresh.
Oaxaca Old-Fashioned
Some rye or bourbon, sugar, Angostura bitters and a twist: The old-fashioned cocktail is a dependable formula. Here, tequila and mescal take whiskey's place in a south-of-the-border spin on the traditional recipe. Invented in 2007 at Death & Co. in the East Village, by the tequila specialist Philip Ward, this drink quickly started appearing on menus across the country.
The Improved Dirty Martini
“Dirty martini” is a dirty word for many bartenders who find the drink — a martini with a salty slop of olive brine — unimaginative and unappetizing. Naren Young, a New York bartender, decided to create a better version, called Olives 7 Ways, with several bespoke ingredients. That cocktail, served at Saxon & Parole, is fairly complicated to make, so Mr. Young came up with yet another, easier variation for the home bartender.
Rum and Tonic
What sort of rum and tonic you might like depends heavily on the kind of rum you prefer. And the world of rum is so wide and various, there are many directions you can go. The light-bodied Bacardi makes for an easy choice, and an easy, if simple, drink. The rhum agricoles made in Martinique will give you a much more complex cocktail, with grassy and vegetal notes. And Banks 5, a blend made up of rums from various places, brings sweet fruit notes like banana to the glass. Most rums, however, require a more aggressive tonic partner, like Schweppes.
Pineapple Express
With its understated, background fruit notes, Plantation Pineapple Rum Stiggins’ Fancy can easily be used in a wide variety of classic cocktail recipes without upsetting the drink’s balance. It makes a good old-fashioned, rum sour or El Presidente. The Pineapple Express, created by Freddie Sarkis of the Broken Shaker in Chicago, is simply a daiquiri with a split of pineapple rum and rhum agricole doing the work usually done by a white rum. The combination adds more richness and character to the drink, though you may not notice the pineapple until the second or third sip. That’s a testimony to the subtlety of the cocktail.
Daiquiri
The daiquiri is a classic sour — that is, a family of cocktails made with spirit, sugar and citrus juice — whose simple, straightforward appeal has been obscured for years by frozen, fruity variations. One doesn’t need a blender to make one, just fresh limes, good rum and sugar. The proportions of syrup and juice can be adjusted, depending on whether you prefer a sweeter or more-tart style.
Tequila and Tonic
Ivy Mix, an owner of Leyenda, a Brooklyn bar with a focus on Latin spirits, thinks this drink requires an earthy lowland tequila (that is, grown in the valley section of Jalisco), such at the Partida reposado, which is aged slightly, and has toasty, nutty flavors. For its tonic match, she reaches for Canada Dry or Schweppes, which have “more quinine kick” in her opinion. For a switch, try this recipe with mezcal. But, since that smoky spirit is typically more pungent in flavor, use only an ounce and a half.
Bitter Coffee
Maksym Pazuniak, who has tended bar at Cure in New Orleans and The Counting Room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a devotee of challenging tastes. Bitter Coffee, a hot, creamy concoction suited to the winter holidays, takes as its base Cynar, the bittersweet Italian liqueur that incorporates flavors of artichoke and rhubarb, among others. A few minutes of easy whisking over a stove yields a full-flavored mugful in which the maple-vanilla roundness of the drink are snapped to attention by the edgy amaro and steaming coffee.
Tom and Jerry
This drink has nothing to do with the cartoon cat and mouse, or Jerry Thomas, the celebrated New York barman of the 1800s, who often boasted of inventing it. It is a rich holiday elixir, a relative of eggnog that flourished in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is frequently (though not definitively) credited to Pierce Egan, the English chronicler of sports and popular culture. Robert Simonson brought this version of the drink, which is especially popular in Wisconsin and is bordering states, to The Times in 2012. It is adapted from Audrey Saunders, the owner of the Manhattan cocktail bar Pegu Club. She decreased the sugar and added Angostura bitters and vanilla. “It makes a huge difference,” she said. It’s best on snowy days, when it can warm and comfort from within.
Irish Coffee
Jack McGarry, a co-owner of the Dead Rabbit bar in Lower Manhattan, is so particular about his Irish coffee that he arranged a search for the best cream available in the Northeast. He settled on Trickling Springs, available at the Stinky Bklyn cheese shop in Brooklyn. But any good cream (and Irish whiskey) will do, as long as you use high-quality, freshly brewed coffee and very cold whipped cream. Making the sugar syrup takes a few more minutes, but pays off in a subtle sweetness.
Boulevardier
This simple cocktail, basically a Negroni made with whiskey instead of gin, dates back to the late 1920s, but has recently enjoyed a comeback in bars across the country. It even inspired the name of the Dallas restaurant that supplied this recipe.
Classic Negroni
Nostrana, an Italian restaurant in Portland, Ore., has offered a Negroni of the Month since 2010, all original creations, some of them quite odd (squid ink Negroni, anyone?). But the house Negroni follows classic lines, using equal parts gin, vermouth and Campari.
How to Make Cocktails
There's an art to crafting a classic cocktail. Robert Simonson shows you the basics.