Peg O’ My Heart

Last evening I made something new for the Mrs. and myself called a “Peg O’ My Heart”. It went over real well with the wife, and I liked it pretty well too.

The recipe:

2 oz. dark rum

1 oz. lime juice

1/2 oz. grenadine

Shake the ingredients in a shaker half-filled with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

The drink is very fruit forward and more than a little sweet. This is in keeping with the time period of the drink. It pre-dates Prohibition when sweet drinks were far more common. In that it has more in common with 19th century cocktails than it does with the drinks of much of the 20th century. I personally didn’t find the sweetness cloying, but if you wanted to cut back on the sweetness making it with less grenadine (say two teaspoons) should work just fine.

I’ve seen on the net where some “Peg O’ My Heart” recipes call for 1 1/2 oz. of light rum instead of the larger amount of the dark.  This is a mistake, and may date from the time when Bacardi company was suing folks for making “Bacardi Cocktails” without using Bacardi rum. It very well could be some places got around that problem by tweaking the “Peg O’ My Heart” to bring it more in line with the “Bacardi Cocktail” (which consists of 1 1/2 oz. light Bacardi rum, 1 oz. lime juice, and 1 teaspoon grenadine.) The original “Peg O’ My Heart,” as far as I’m concerned, is simply the better drink.

Martini

I like to have a martini,
two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host. - Dorothy Parker

Speaking Of Vintage Cocktails....

Over the last couple of years I have become something of a devotee of the Monkey Gland Cocktail. Oh, yes, that is indeed the stuff. I have been recommending it enthusiastically, and have been successful in making converts, with the exception of the crowd that dislikes anything that even vaguely tastes of licorice. (Why anyone wouldn't love licorice is beyond me, but...)

The Recipe:

1 and 1/2 oz. Gin (Preferably good quality. Bombay Sapphire and Boodles work well, though I prefer Tanqueray.)

1 and 1/2 oz. orange juice

1 teaspoon grenadine

1 and 1/2 teaspoon pastis or absinthe (I use Pernod, though it is equally good with Ricard or Herbsaint. Absinthe is generally too expensive to be used in such a manner.)

Combine in a shaker half filled with ice. Shake the hell out of it and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish.

Enjoy!

P.S. Can you tell I've got Friday on my mind?

Sometimes I'm No Man At All

Last night I was faced with a dilemma. I was in the mood for a cocktail but we were completely out of gin. It also didn't help that we had no lemons or limes in the house either. It was my own fault. I'd been in more of a beer (homebrewed English style mild ale) and Irish whiskey (Powers-regular label) mood of late, so I'd let my bar supplies lapse. So I put away my Vintage Cocktail guide and opened my trusty Bartenders Bible and looked for something I could make with the ingredients I had at hand.

To my surprise I found a simple recipe I hadn't tried before, so I gave it a whirl. All it called for was 1 and 1/2 oz. light rum and 1 oz. sweet vermouth. Stir it with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. It had a nice golden brown color and it was absolutely delicious. The herbal qualities of the vermouth were pronounced without being too much, and the bite of the alcohol was just right. In fact, this was exactly the sort of cocktail I have been looking for. Something interesting enough that I could turn to it again and again, AND simple enough that I would never forget how to make it if I came upon a less than knowledgeable bartender. It was perfect.

Except for one thing. The name of the drink is a bit of a problem. It is called A Little Princess, and no matter how hard I try I just cannot imagine myself walking up to the bar and proudly calling out, "Give me a Little Princess my good man!" I do not think of myself as someone drowning in his sense of machismo...but there it is all the same.

So it looks like I will have to drink my Little Princesses in the privacy of my own home.