Monday I Have Friday on My Mind: Poetry and Cocktails with Nata Traub

Diminuendo and Crescendo

I really hate recipes. I know I provide them, but I suggest you use them as you would sheet music if you were a jazz musician. I approach creating a cocktail the same way I would make music. So whereas I provide a recipe for a Cocktail, they are not meant to be absolute. It is a suggestion for you to improvise. Create your own magic. On any given day, one  or two bottles will talk to me more than others. I enter the kitchen and a spice will strike me. Inspiration comes from all places. Like an improvisation, the notes are all there, but how they form and come out, are from the mysterious pit of creation. There really is no predicting.

I spent an afternoon making some liqueurs and syrups, while listening to my Uncle Paul (Gonsalves of the Duke Ellington at Newport, Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue fame). That 27 bars that changed jazz music history. Who could have known? The confluence of all things in the Universe to make that moment happen. Magic. Unknowable, unanticipated, unexplainable. No recipe there.

In this vein, here are a few ratios for basic cocktail making, sheet music if you will.

The Sour style, with a liqueur sweetened cocktails (margaritas and sidecars, etc.) are most often:

2:1:1 ratio of  spirits: liqueur: citrus

The Basic Cocktail
(Created by David Wondrich)

2 ounces base spirit.
1 ounce aromatized or fortified wine.
1 teaspoon of liqueur.
A dash or two of bitters.

What Duke Ellington had to say about saxophonist, Paul Gonsalves."He wants to be liked by everybody, and doesn’t want anything from anybody except a kind word and a water chaser."