The Agony and the Ecstasy

October 4, 2022 steveboilard4 Comments

In the mid-1960s–at almost the same moment that the movie The Agony and the Ecstasy was released–a somewhat different motion picture came to the silver screen. The movie I’m talking about did not star Charleston Heston or Rex Harrison (as The Agony and the Ecstasy did), but instead it starred a lanky actor by the name of Fred Gwynne. Yes, I’m talking about Munster Go Home.

Munster Go Home capitalized on the popularity of the sitcom, The Munsters. Gwynne played a lovable Frankenstein’s Monster who headed a household of monsters that considered itself to be the typical mid-century American family. The TV show got pretty good ratings, and was even nominated for a Golden Globe(!) It was pretty saccharine, but what sitcom wasn’t in those days? True story: In grammar school, the teacher asked me and my classmates to name our favorite shows. I said “The Monsters,” because I naturally assumed that the TV advertisements were mispronouncing the name. I was laughed out of the room.

Anyway, I tell you all this because in my ongoing quest to find interesting Halloween libations for this month’s project, I happened across two Munsters-themed drinks: The Herman (named after Herman Munster, obviously) and The Lily (named after Herman’s vampire wife).

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get to it!

The recipe: Both the Herman and the Lily are heavily based on Chartreuse–a potent liqueur that clocks in at 110 proof. The color of Chartreuse is….hmmmm, I’m trying to think of just the right descriptive word for it. I’m sure it will come to me.

Meanwhile, the recipes are as follows:

The Herman

Add 1.75 ounces Green Chartreuse, 1.25 ounce Creme de Cocoa, 1 ounce fresh lemon juice (strained), and 1 egg white (strained) into an empty cocktail shaker and use the “dry shake” method (without ice) to emulsify the egg white. Add ice and shake until the sides of the shaker form frost. Dip one side of a chilled glass in lemon juice and roll in cocoa powder. Use a Hawthorne strainer to pour the drink over a mesh sieve, and into the chilled glass.

OK–that’s pretty fussy. The Lily is similar but even a bit more fussy:

Combine 1.5 ounces Green Chartreuse, 1 ounce Creme de Cocoa, 0.75 ounce fresh lemon juice (strained), 0.75 ounce raspberry puree (strained), and 1 egg white (strained) into an empty cocktail shaker and “dry shake.” Add ice and shake until the sides of the shaker form frost. Pour it into the same cocoa-powered glass as with the Herman.

What could go wrong?

The Ratings: Here’s where the Agony and the Ecstasy reference surfaces. The Ecstasy is my joy in finding such a cool pair of drinks, based on a campy, cult television show, that remind me of my childhood and look really cool. I mean, look at the pictures from the online recipe!

The agony is how they turned out in reality. I made the Herman first, and its appearance is, frank(enstein)ly, nothing like the recipe picture. The green of the chartreuse was completely obliterated by the creme de cacao, and perhaps also by the lemon juice and egg.

Now, the whole point of this drink is a rich, thick, green appearance, kind of like a Shamrock Shake. As you can see from the photo, my version is the color of turkey gravy.

Now, the only source of the supposed green appearance is the Chartreuse, which doesn’t look up to the task. Here’s a pic of my bottle:

Not exactly up to Fred Gwynne’s standards.

As you can see, the liqueur is too yellowish, and is easily overwhelmed by the other ingredients. The result is an unappealing drink distinguished only by its ugly color. So, I can’t give the appearance of this drink anything more than one point. It’s not appetizing, it doesn’t evoke Herman Munster, and it’s kind of watery.

Now, if you thought the appearance was bad, let me tell you about the taste. It’s true I’ll drink anything (especially when I’ve invested $33 for a small bottle of Chartreuse), but I immediately regretted that action. (My wife literally spit out her sip into her hand–I’m not making this up.) This drink tasted foul. I should emphasize that I faithfully followed the recipe, with its “dry shaking” and straining and chilled glass and whatnot. I was expecting something rich and creamy and sweet, given the presence of creme de cacao and egg white. But the lemon juice (one full ounce of it!) dominated the drink. The Herman has a distinctly sour taste, which fights against the cocoa on the side of the glass. It reminds me of a granite counter cleaner that’s been churched up with yak’s spit.

Just for yuks (literally), I tried making it again without the lemon juice. Sadly, this was no better. Trying to isolate the issue, I tried a small sip of the key ingredient (Chartreuse) by itself. Ah, this was the problem. I’d never tried Chartreuse before, and I never plan to have it again. Now, I’m told that Chartreuse is made up of 130 different herbs and other plants (cinnamon, mace, hyssop, peppermint…), that the recipe goes back to the 17th century, that it’s produced by French monks, etc, etc. And maybe all that’s true. But it doesn’t change the fact that it tastes like Altoids dissolved in mid-grade gasoline.

Anyway, the taste of this drink scores a solid zero points.

As for the name: I guess “Herman” is kind of cute. I’ll give it the two points. Whatever.

Grand Total: 3 points.

By the way: I did try making the Lily, and it was slightly better. The raspberries improved the flavor and the appearance. I’ll give the Lily a grand total of 5 points.

My version of the Lily. Nothing to write home about, but at least it’s not the Herman.

Halloween Cocktails

Haunted Graveyard

October 3, 2022 steveboilardLeave a comment

I’m drawing my drink recipes from a variety of sources, including cocktail books, suggestions from readers, and other blogs that have gone down this Halloween cocktail road before. In the latter category is a website by an “Icelandic Girl” named Helga Dis, who lives in Reykjavik. The blog is dedicated to trying out new drinks. As she’s trapped on a God-forsaken island in the North Atlantic, she has to make many of her ingredients from scratch, which causes one to appreciate BevMo.

Anyway, Helga’s got four drinks from 2020, and the “Haunted Graveyard” is one of them. Let’s try it!

The Recipe: Add 2 oz of bourbon, 1 oz of maple syrup, a couple of orange slices, and ice to a cocktail shaker. Shake and pour into a glass with fresh ice. Add a few drops of orange cocktail bitters, and add a garnish of torched rosemary. This last ingredient is created by simply holding a lighter under a small spring of rosemary until it gets a little charred. Helga’s instructions include this embarrassingly nervous warning about the process:

“Now for the mandatory fire warning. Burning the rosemary garnish is optional, and we do not recommend doing this unless you have a fire extinguisher close by. You should preferably have another person on standby in case anything goes wrong. Having a bowl with water close by might also be a good idea as the sprig can simply be dropped into the water in emergencies….Be careful not to burn your fingers or anything other than the sprig.” Thanks, Firepup.

Anyway, I somehow managed to mix this cocktail without immolating myself:

The Ratings:

The taste is rich and flavorful. It’s very drinkable indeed. The maple and orange flavors really come through, though you hardly even notice the bourbon. The rosemary is a ghostly presence, but it’s definitely there. And I love rosemary. So this gets a solid 3 points out of four.

(Here I should admit that we didn’t have any oranges in the house, so I substituted segments of mandarin oranges for proper orange slices. Afterwards, my wife suggested that I should have substituted pineapple for the [nonexistent] orange slices. So I tried this on a second attempt:

Holy Hawaiian Pizza! This was a huge improvement. The pineapple has a bit more sharpness than the (mandarin) orange, and thus weaves its way between the bourbon and syrup quite nicely. If the recipe had called for pineapple instead of orange, I would have given the taste 4 points.

The appearance isn’t that remarkable, with the usual bourbon hue. But the spring of torched rosemary is distinctive. Perhaps just knowing that it’s been torched adds some Halloween vibe. I’ll give it 2 points.

The name gets the full 2 points. Not just a graveyard but a haunted graveyard. That’s pretty phantasmic. Way to go, Icelandic Girl!

Grand Total: 7 points (8 points for the pineapple version).

Halloween Cocktails

Edward Bulwer-Lytton Strikes Again

October 2, 2022 steveboilard1 Comment

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Thus began Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel, Paul Clifford. The book has been maligned as an archetypal example of bad writing, with its florid phrases and purple prose. But, in my opinion, it stands up as a novel…at least by 19th-century standards.

Still, over time, that introductory phrase–“It was a dark and stormy night”–became a trope for hack writing, a meme before memes were a thing. It was maligned in Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” comic strip in the 1970s. In 2009 a movie by that name was released by Larry Blaimore, the man who brought us the inimicable “Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.” (And I actually do recommend that film.) Oh, and inevitably there came to be an annual contest poking fun at Bulwer-Lytton’s opening line. So, it’s well established that “Dark and Stormy Night” is a thing. And not a very good thing.

But for our purposes, “It was a dark and stormy night” sets a stereotypical Halloween scene. Think of the “Old Dark House” movies, which include, of course, the classic film starring Boris Karloff from 1932, and a 1963 remake starring Tom Poston (who you’ll remember from “Newhart”). Maybe next year’s October theme should be ODH movies…

So if it hasn’t been made clear already, today’s cocktail is something called a “Dark and Stormy.” It’s a well-established drink, based on dark rum. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a Halloween drink, but the name does give it a reason to appear on our list.

The recipe: It’s simplicity itself. Combine 2 oz dark rum, 3 oz ginger beer, and 1/2 oz lime juice into an ice-filled glass. Stir, drink, and enjoy.

The ratings: I have to confess that this is the first time I’ve tried a Dark and Story. And I was pleasantly surprised. It’s one of the more drinkable rum-based drinks that I’ve encountered.

It’s appearance leads with a nice, honey-colored hue. The darkness of the rum is ameliorated a bit by the ginger beer, but it would be easy to darken it a shade with a heavier proportion of dark rum. Or maybe even add a bit of dark molasses? Sadly, there was no molasses in the house, so I wasn’t able to test this theory. In its basic incarnation, I can’t give it more than 2 points.

The taste is awesome! The substance and potency of the dark rum is nicely balanced by the ginger beer. The lime juice prevents the drink from being too cloying. It’s remarkably easy to drink. In fact, I was able to throw three of these back with no problem at all. Though perhaps that’s an indication of other concerns… Anyway, this is fully deserving of the full 4 points.

Frankly, the name is the only reason this drink is on our list this month. But what an evocative, moody name it is! It fully deserves the full 2 points.

Grand Total: 8 out of 10 points.

I think, in the background over the rest of this month, I’m going to experiment with some variations on the Dark and Stormy. I just tried adding a bit of coffee liqueur, but that didn’t do much for me. I think I’ll try adding Kahlua, molasses, more dark rum, and/or some imperial stout. I’ll keep you posted on developments. Or experiment yourself and let me know what you come up with!

Halloween Cocktails

Halloween Spirits!

October 1, 2022 steveboilard5 Comments

Certainly I must be the first person to notice the double meaning of the word “spirits” around Halloween….

Uh, I had this graphic specially commissioned for this blog…

Anyway, it’s finally October, when I traditionally turn over this blog to a series of 31 posts on a particular Halloween-related theme. And as I revealed a few weeks ago, the theme this year is Halloween cocktails. Now, I should admit that I’m not much of a mixologist, but I’m thinking that Halloween cocktails, with their scary and creepy vibe, would be more forgiving than the those rather punctilious drinks you’d have around, say, Christmas. It also provides me with an excuse to stock my bar with a bunch of the more epicene liqueurs that I normally eschew. I’m looking at you, Tempus Fugit Liq De Violettes.

Each day I will make a different Halloween cocktail, drink it, and rate it. Such is the kind of self-sacrificing behavior I’m known for. Then, I will rate the drink along three dimensions:

(1) Appearance–i.e., to what extent does it evoke the Halloween season? Up to 4 points.

(2) Taste–i.e., is it even drinkable? Up to 4 points.

(3) Name–i.e., does it at least have a cool moniker? Up to 2 points.

Thus, each drink can score up to 10 points. At the end of the month I’ll summarize the top picks, and maybe add one final surprise.

So let’s get to it! Our first drink is a Pumpin Martini.

Pumpkins, more than anything else, symbolize Halloween–or at least they have since the mid-19th century. Before that time, the English-speaking world was carving turnips for Halloween (I’m not making this up). It thus fell to the Americans to introduce the larger and much easier-to-carve pumpkin for making Jack O’Lanterns. It’s yet another example of American ingenuity.

For today’s cocktail, we use actual pumpkin innards, which certainly sounds promising. I used canned pumpkin puree, but if you want to be really authentic, just use some of the scoopings left over from carving your jack o’lantern.

The recipe: Combine 2 oz vodka, 1/2 oz heavy cream, 1/2 oz pure maple syrup, 2 Tbsp pumpkin puree, and 1/4 tsp of pumpkin pie spice in a shaker with ice. Shake and serve in a martini glass. You can coat the rim of the glass with graham crackers if you like, and that sounds like a great addition, but alas, our cupboard was bare.

The ratings: From the outset, let me acknowledge that someone who shall remain nameless (but his last name is Boilard and he is about 32 years younger than me, and he shares half of my DNA) warned me that I couldn’t allow pumpkin-flavored drinks to qualify as “Halloween spirits,” because in my Halloween candy blogs last year I lambasted fall-themed candies for being not properly Halloween themed. OK. Maybe I was a little hasty last year. But more to the point, pumpkin-based drinks are highly evocative of Halloween. One of my most potent Halloween memories is the rich, pungent, musky smell of a jack o’lantern after the lid has been charred by a candle flame all evening.

Somehow, this Pumpkin Martini brings back those memories. For me, at least, pumpkin sightings were limited almost exclusively to the week leading up to Halloween. We’d carve our pumpkin with a kitchen knife, and Mom would toast the pumpkin seeds in the oven, which Dad would then consume by the handful while he watched Warriors basketball on our cheap, portable TV. A few days later my brother and I would don homemade costumes (invariably a “hobo”) and collect literally tens of thousands of calories worth of candy from homes displaying a lit jack o’lantern. This was of course the Golden Age of Halloween.

Brother Dave at left front, with me standing behind him.

Anyway, the point is that pumpkin-based cocktails are a legitimate expression of Halloween spirits.

So, on a scale of one to four, I give the appearance of this Pumpkin Martini a solid three points out of four. This is mainly due to the authentic orange color, which, while lightened by the whipping cream, still has the unmistakable pumpkin hue. In addition, the obvious creamy texture, evident by the slight undulations on the surface of the drink, scream (as a Halloween drink should!) that this is a festive and fun libation.

How it’s supposed to look. (Photo c/o A Couple Cooks.)

For taste, I give this drink 3.5 out of 4 points. It’s got honest pumpkin flavor, and the consistency is rich and velvety. The pumpkin pie spice adds depth and interest. However, upon the second or third sip (or in my case, upon the second drink) the taste becomes a little cloying. I do wonder if a healthy coating of graham crackers would have lengthened the staying power of this drink?

For the name, I give it 1 out of 2 points. I mean, it’s not really a martini (though it’s in a martini glass). But it’s definitely pumpkin, and the name “pumpkin martini” is playful and contrarian.

In sum, this is a worthy kick-off for our month of Halloween cocktails.

OVERALL SCORE: 7.5 points.

Reminder: I’m still soliciting recommendations for Halloween drinks to test-drive this month.