2012 December « Putney Farm

Mixology Monday Cocktail: Alone, Bitter at the Beach

December 17, 2012

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Alone, Bitter at the Beach

It’s time for Mixology Monday, and if you couldn’t guess already, this month’s theme is “Humbug”. Firstly we want to thank JFL at Rated R Cocktails for hosting this month and Fred Yarm at Cocktail ~~Virgin~~ Slut for reviving Mixology Monday. Now lets get to the theme:

Lets face it the holidays suck, yeah I said it. You put yourself in debt buying crap people will have forgotten about in a month. You drive around like a jackass to see people you don’t even like, or worse they freeload in your house. Your subjected to annoying music, and utterly fake, forced kindness and joy. Plus if you work retail your pretty much in hell, so don’t we all deserve a good stiff drink? So for this Mixology Monday unleash your inner Grinch. Mix drinks in the spirit of Anti-Christmas. They can be really bitter and amaro filled. They filled with enough booze to make you pass out in a tinsel covered Scrooge heap. They could be a traditional holiday drink turned on it’s ear. Or they could be a tribute to your favorite holiday villain. If you celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa then you still suffer through the holidays, so feel free to join in with your Anti-Holiday drink as well. Whatever it is add a hearty “Humbug!” and make your drink personify everything annoying or fake about the holidays.

While “some people” here at the farm have similar crabby feelings about the holidays, some of us don’t (ahem), but we both immediately said “tiki” when we thought of “anti-Christmas” cocktails. And when you are in a long holiday line at the store and the items won’t scan, and the kids are starting to squirm, and nobody can find the manager, and the next person in line is sneezing on you and yapping about their sex life on the phone, and and now you will be late for dinner, and you just can’t listen to one more fu…..umm, you need a trip to the beach. And, if anything, a tiki drink is a trip to a beach. Far, far away…maybe by yourself.

So now that we had a direction, we started in on our “anti-Christmas” cocktail. The Alone, Bitter at the Beach combines, light rum, golden rum, aged Jamaican rum and Lemon Hart 151 rum with lime juice, pineapple juice, passion fruit syrup, a dash of absinthe and a big dose of Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit bitters over crushed ice. Garnish with a lime wheel and the most cutesy, annoying holiday-themed item you can find. The Alone, Bitter at the Beach starts with pleasant notes of rum and citrus then you get the sweet / tart kick of the passion fruit and some heat from the booze. Standard tiki. But on the finish you get the herbal and anise flavors of the absinthe and a dry, almost tannic note of the hopped grapefruit bitters. We think the Alone, Bitter at the Beach fits the holiday season perfectly- too much good stuff that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth (literally and figuratively) and a bit of a headache.

Our kind of reindeer.

How did we get here? We stared with the Zombie as a template and then made sure to tune it to match the theme. Boozy? Oh yes. We took one of the booziest cocktails and added another ounce of aged Jamaican rum. Is that too much? Probably, but it is the holiday season, after all. Bitter? Medicinal? Well the absinthe and grapefruit bitters took care of that (and many tiki drinks do include grapefruit and absinthe, so we aren’t too far off the reservation). And we made sure to keep Falernum and allspice liqueur out of the drink- no pleasant holiday spices allowed. The garnish and cocktail napkin were our own special touches. Now if we only had a Grinch mug……

Alone, Bitter at the Beach:

Ingredients:
- 1 oz. light rum (El Dorado)
- 1 oz. gold rum (El Dorado)
- 1 oz. aged Jamaican rum (Appleton 12 yr.)
- 1 oz. Lemon Hart 151
- 1 oz. lime juice
- 1 oz. pineapple juice
- 1 oz. passion fruit syrup
- 2 dashes absinthe
- 6 dashes grapefruit bitters (Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit)
- Lime wheel, for garnish
- Christmas ornament, for garnish (optional)
Assemble:
1. Place all the liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly and strain into a large glass or tiki mug filled with crushed ice. Top with more ice if needed. Garnish with a lime wheel and something holiday-themed and overly cheerful. Serve with a loud “harumph!” or “humbug!”.
Related articles
- Mixology Monday Cocktail: The McCovey Cove (putneyfarm.com)
- *Mixology Monday!* Red & Green Themed Signature Cocktails Special Edition! (mysweetwedding.wordpress.com)
- Mixology Monday Announcement: Garnish Grandiloquence (measureandstir.com)
- Cocktail DIY: Stocking Your Bar At Home (putneyfarm.com)
- Hanukkah Cocktail: The Bees Knees (putneyfarm.com)
- MxMo LXVII: Garnish Grandiloquence Roundup (measureandstir.com)
- The Temperate Zone Cocktail (theliquidcultureproject.com)
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Posted By: putneyfarm Category: All Recipes, Entertaining, Musings, Rum / Cachaca Tags: christmas cocktails, Cocktail, Cocktails, cooking, cuisine, food, humor, mixology monday, photography, photos, recipes, tiki drinks
Warm Napa Cabbage Salad

December 15, 2012

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Warm Napa Cabbage Salad.

This is one of our all-time favorite salads, probably because it is almost an “anti-salad”. It does have lots of Napa cabbage, but it’s bathed a warm vinaigrette along with a good dose of bacon, sautéed mushrooms and blue cheese. Unlike most salads that feature light flavors, this dish is a full-on umami-bomb. But we aren’t complaining, this is the good stuff. The still crisp, and slightly bitter cabbage holds up against the strong, salty flavors of the bacon and blue cheese, the vinaigrette adds acidity and the sweet mushrooms round out the flavors and textures. What you get is a complete bite with a full spectrum of flavors and textures. And the last taste is as good as the first. This is a restaurant-quality dish.

And that isn’t surprising, as warm Napa cabbage salads are a bit of a specialty in some of our local restaurants. In fact, one local restaurant has changed owners and themes several times over the years, but the one constant is the warm Napa cabbage salad. It pretty much keeps the place in business. And as cooks move from job to job they take this recipe with them. So we are never surprised to see this dish on new menus. A good dish is a good dish, and there are only so many ways to make Napa cabbage appeal to the masses.

If you are unfamiliar with Napa cabbage, it is also called Chinese cabbage, Nappa cabbage or Celery cabbage. The Napa cabbage is large, usually the size and shape of a football or rugby ball, and has light green feathery leaves. Most consider the Napa’s flavor slightly sweeter and more delicate than green or red cabbage. But this is still cabbage, and the Napa has the bright, slightly bitter flavor you would expect. Napa cabbage needs mild weather to thrive, so it does well all year in the Bay Area, otherwise look for Napa cabbage in fall, early winter and spring. It’s hard to miss at the market. Just look for the big green oblong cabbage.

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Posted By: putneyfarm Category: All Recipes, Dinner, Lunch / Salads / Sides, Vegetables Tags: best napa cabbage recipe, Cocktails, cooking, cuisine, food, garden, photography, photos, recipes, vegetable, warm napa cabbage salad recipe

Green In Winter

December 13, 2012

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We often mention the cognitive dissonance of the Northern California seasons. Green in winter, brown in summer. We will focus on the green….and the flowers that hang on through winter. The roses get their petals knocked off by the rain, but they keep coming back. The rosemary is still in bloom and a few of the bees are working the blossoms. The hummingbirds scrap over the remaining flowers (and let us know to back off!). Our kind of winter. Continue reading →
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Posted By: putneyfarm Category: Garden and Orchard, Musings Tags: art, Cocktails, cooking, flower, flower photos, flowers, food, garden, Northern California, photography, photos, recipes
Sweet Potato Cupcakes With Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

December 11, 2012

32 Comments
Sweet Potato Cupcake With Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting.

If you visit Putney Farm regularly, you may notice an affinity for cupcakes. And this isn’t because cupcakes are all the rage these days (not that there is anything wrong with that), but because we have two boys with lots of friends, birthdays, sports and school events. And everyone knows we cook and are willing to ~~be dragooned~~ “volunteer”…. 😉 So when we want to feed a ~~horde of crazed kids~~ crowd, cake or cupcakes are very good options. (So is barbecue, but that is for another post.) We often make chocolate cake for a crowd, but there is something about the cupcake that is even more special. People from ages one to one hundred just love a cupcake. It’s sweet and tasty, it’s easy to handle and it’s all yours.

But sadly, many cupcakes really aren’t all that good, the big blob of frosting covers for a dry chunk of cake. The problem, surprisingly, is the overuse of butter in most cupcake recipes. While we love real butter, it has water along with the butterfat and when the water cooks out it makes for a drier, crisper cupcake (the science is pretty solid, btw). This is good for pie crust, bad for cake, and especially bad for small cakes with a lot of surface area vs. mass (that would be the cupcake). The secret to a moist cupcake is to use vegetable oil (no water) and often to add another moistening ingredient. And this recipe not only uses oil but adds mashed sweet potatoes for an extra moist and sweet cake. Yum.

Sweet potatoes in cupcakes? Well yes. They work famously well in biscuits, so why not cupcakes? You don’t taste sweet potato, but mixed with winter spices and orange zest you get a super-moist, caramel-colored cupcake with deep wintry flavors. Topped with sweet caramel cream cheese frosting, this cupcake is good all the way through. And as the oil and sweet potato keep the cake moist, you can easily adapt the recipe for either large or thimble-sized cupcakes with no loss of quality. A neat trick, and something to keep in mind when the size of the crowd may vary.

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Posted By: putneyfarm Category: All Recipes, Dessert Tags: best cupcakes, caramel cream cheese frosting, Cocktails, cooking, cuisine, Cupcake, dessert, food, news, photography, photos, recipes, sweet potato cupcakes

Hanukkah Cocktail: The Bees Knees

December 9, 2012

102 Comments
The Bees Knees.

Since Hanukkah is the “Bees Knees” of holidays (“dude, eight nights of presents, not just one”), we figured it’s time for a celebratory cocktail. And the Bees Knees not only tastes good, you can make a kosher version of the cocktail….really. In all seriousness, we do have some Jewish heritage in the family and we host an annual Hanukkah dinner with homemade latkes, jelly donuts and now, this cocktail. And the Bees Knees does fit the Hanukkah theme.

At first, we looked for Hanukkah cocktail themes and it was a challenge. It is a festival of lights (not that helpful, flaming tiki drinks?) and oil is a main theme (there are a few cocktails with oil, but we aren’t going there), but happily the promised land is “the land of milk and honey” so we found a theme to build from. And as it turns out, raw honey is kosher, and we have plenty of raw Putney Farm honey. Even better, you can get kosher gin from the No. 209, a San Francisco based distillery (we used Bluecoat gin in this post, but will have the No. 209 at Hanukkah dinner). And it looks like fresh lemons are kosher, and we have plenty of Meyer lemons. Hmmm…

Well, guess what? You just read the recipe for a Bees Knees cocktail. The Bees Knees combines dry gin, lemon juice and honey syrup (1 to 1 very hot water and honey) and is served up or on the rocks. Created in the prohibition era, the Bees Knees is easy to make and very tasty. And if you prefer rum, a light rum version makes a Honeysuckle, a dark rum version makes a Honey Bee. Add some champagne to the Honeysuckle and you get an Airmail. If you use rye or bourbon you get a Daisy Black. So you do get four or five drinks out of the deal (it’s not eight, but five cocktails from one basic recipe isn’t too shabby).

While almost all cocktail writers have positive feelings about the Bees Knees, many describe it as “inoffensive”. But we will take some issue with that. If you use basic store-bought clover or orange blossom honey, the flavors are pretty light. But if you use raw “forest” or wildflower honey in the Bees Knees you get much deeper herbal and bitter notes. Putney Farm honey is a forest honey made mostly from wildflowers and herb blossoms, it has some herbal and minty notes with a slightly bitter and piney finish. Good stuff, and perfect with a dry earthy gin. Along with the sweet acidity of the Meyer lemons, the herbal notes of gin and forest honey make for a very substantial cocktail with layers of flavor. So we suggest you get some raw honey from a farmers market and then try the Bees Knees, it won’t be simply “inoffensive”, it will be a special cocktail and a fitting celebration of Hanukkah.

The Bees Knees:

Ingredients:
- 2 oz. dry gin (No.209 kosher, if you like)
- 1/2 oz. honey syrup* (a bit more if using Eureka lemons, rather than sweeter Meyers)
- 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
- Lemon wheel, for garnish
Assemble:
1. Combine the gin, honey syrup and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, coupé or flute. Garnish with the lemon wheel. Serve.
* To make honey syrup combine equal parts honey and very hot water in a sealable container. Shake until combines. Stores in the fridge for 3-4 weeks.

Related articles
- Make your own honey syrup (mnn.com)
- Eight Nights of Hanukkah Cocktails (thisamericanbite.com)
- Weekly Cocktail #32: The Bullseye (putneyfarm.com)
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Posted By: putneyfarm Category: All Recipes, Cocktail Recipes, Entertaining, Garden and Orchard, Gin Tags: Bees Knees, bees knees cocktail, Cocktails, cooking, fifestyle, food, Hanukkah, hanukkah cocktail, news garden, photography, photos, recipes
Cauliflower and Broccoli Salad With Hazelnuts and Pecorino

December 7, 2012

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While we sometimes ~~bitch and moan~~ whine about winter vegetables this time of year, we do enjoy them quite a bit. It just takes a little more work to get the best out of them, and being as lazy as the next guy, we prefer more flavor and less work. In summer we put most fresh veggies on a plate with some olive oil and salt, or give them a quick sauté and voilà! Perfection (well, at least a good dish). In winter, we break out our thinking caps and some cookbooks and get to work. So when Carolyn brought home some purple broccoli and broccoflower (or romanesco, depending on appearance), we ~~got off our butts~~ motivated and made this salad. And it turned out well enough to make the blog, and become a regular dish here at the farm.

This salad combines blanched cauliflower and broccoli with sharp pecorino cheese, crisp apples, hazelnuts and bacon (optional) with a classic vinaigrette. Our goal was to build a dish that covers multiple flavors and textures but still highlights the inherent sweetness and crunch of the vegetables. The broccoli and cauliflower still lead, but the cheese and bacon add salt and umami, the apples acidity and crunch and the hazelnuts add nutty and slightly bitter undertones. The vinaigrette brings it all together. It is a very pleasant bite and will even get kids to eat their broccoli (we tested it, it worked).

And the cool thing about this salad is that you can interchange almost any variety of broccoli or cauliflower. So if you have purple broccoli, broccoflower, romanesco or orange cauliflower, they will all work. And if you just want either broccoli or cauliflower, that works too, but we do suggest a combination as they play well together. If you get lucky at the market you can make this salad with a full range of colors, it will be beautiful and a good dish for entertaining. And all you need to do is chop and boil water, so it is an easy dish.

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Posted By: putneyfarm Category: All Recipes, Dinner, Garden and Orchard, Lunch / Salads / Sides, Vegetables Tags: Broccoli, broccoli cauliflower salad recipe, Cauliflower, Cocktails, cooking, cuisine, food, garden, photography, photos, recipes, salad, vegetarian