A Decade of Spirited Dinners
Related recipes: • Ginger Marinated Shrimp • Mai TaIPA
Cocktails will be flowing and guests will be glowing as the tenth annual Tales of the Cocktail festivities get underway this month in New Orleans.
Billed as the world’s premier cocktail event, Tales attracts tens of thousands of visitors to the city from all over the globe. Cocktail luminaries including authors, professional mixologists, brand ambassadors, consultants and bar owners will join cocktail enthusiasts for some 200 events over the five-day festival including seminars, new product introductions, tasting rooms, competitions, luncheons, dinners and many other activities and programs to explore the culture and history of dining and drinking.
Tales founder Ann Tuennerman is especially excited about this year’s thirty-plus Spirited Dinners and luncheons.
“There’s a reason almost every restaurant ever constructed has a bar,” she said. “Cocktails and cuisine are meant to be together. Our Spirited Dinners and luncheons take that idea to the next level.”
Spirited Dinners have become a popular Thursday night tradition at Tales of the Cocktail. Each restaurant hosting a dinner – this year on July 26 – will pair the talents of their chef with those of some of the world’s best mixologists to create one-of-a-kind cocktail and culinary pairings.
These amazing mixologists have created a cocktail revolution and rebirth. A whiskey sour made with a mix? That drink may be nice, but won’t be found at “Tales of the Cocktail” where almost every ingredient added to the spirit is either fresh or made from scratch. Urged on by spirits industry leaders, these cocktailians have reached back in time to the way cocktails used to be made.
Today’s mixologists are like culinary chemists. They create their own tinctures, syrups, infusions, juices, and all manner of bitters. They make use of fresh herbs and spices, seasonal ingredients and other items found in a chef’s kitchen or garden to create cocktails that pair with the food.
Dale DeGroff, based in New York City and known throughout the industry as King Cocktail, pioneered the modern interpretation of cocktails by revisiting the 200-year-old history of the cocktail in America and is credited with re-inventing the bartending profession.
DeGroff authored The Craft of the Cocktail and is founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans.
When DeGroff began a 2002 cross-country book promotion tour for his first book, he hosted spirits dinners and gave bartending classes in every city he visited. “The classes often turned into cocktail parties,” he recalls.
“I loved working with a wide cross section of chefs and creating cocktails to pair with their cuisine. Sometimes, in tasting the pairings, we would have to adjust a dish or the cocktail to get the desired flavor profile,” he said.
And this month he returns to New Orleans to host another such evening.
DeGroff begins the Fulton Street Ruth’s Chris dinner with a take on a classic French 75 to be served with passed hors d’oeuvres such as spicy lobster and a surf-and-turf roll.
“The French 75 is such a classic drink,” he said. “I chose the gin version for this cocktail which has a slight ginger note contributed by the Canton ginger liqueur.”
DeGroff’s next drink, Blood and Sand, paired with Chef Vernell Gibson’s duck confit Napoleon on polenta cakes with a black berry demi-glace, features eighteen-year-old Chivas aged in the wood along the wharfs on the Scottish coast.
“It’s a heavy scotch,” said DeGroff, “with a smoky, woody, tobacco-y flavor.”
For the main course, DeGroff pairs a Smoked Bloody Bull with the filet and shrimp entrée served with Brussels sprouts and bacon and Lyonnais potatoes. Most of the usual ingredients—Campbell’s beef broth, tomato juice, a dash of Tabasco cracked pepper and Absolut Peppar Vodka—are used but with a splash of orange juice. In addition, the mixture is flash smoked with a chef’s smoke gun before serving.
New York based Don Lee, a transplanted Californian, left his career in information technology to pursue a growing passion for food and wine.
Lee lectures on the neuroscience of cocktails, often with DeGroff, his partner in creating the cocktails for the Ruth’s Chris Steak House’s Spirited Dinner.
“I try to infuse drinks to evoke an emotional response,” said Lee.
One of his drinks, Sol Oculto, which roughly translates to Hidden Sun, is a riff on a Tequila Sunrise, said Lee. The drink blends Olmeca Altos Blanco Tequila with agave nectar, pomegranate and grapefruit juices and a thin slice of jalapeno, shaken and strained into a rocks glass. The cocktail is paired with ahi scallop ceviche.
Lee’s other drink for the dinner is a Vieux Gari, with Martell cognac, sweet vermouth, Canton, and dashes of Benedictine, Angostura and Peychauds bitters. Lee’s drink makes a good match with the restaurant’s crème brûlée with fresh berries.
Emeril’s Delmonico has another intriguing team of bar chefs working with Executive Chef Spencer Minch on their Spirited Dinner.
Jason Grier and Ezra Johnson-Greenough were tapped to create the cocktails for the four-course dinner.
As founders of the Brewing Up Cocktails events group in Portland, Oregon, Grier and Johnson-Greenough often mix craft beer into their craft cocktails.
The duo got started in their current enterprise following a 2008 Tales cocktail/beer seminar conducted by Steve Beaumont.
For the first course, Emeril’s Delmonico is preparing a ginger marinated grilled Gulf shrimp dish with grilled pineapple, toasted cashews, fresh salad greens and a citrusy lime dressing.
To pair with the dish, Grier and Johnson-Greenough created a Tiki style drink, called a Mai TaIPA with both the El Dorado Silver and 8-year-old rums, a triple-sec liqueur, lime juice and a hoppy pale ale.
For the next course, the cocktail team chose a Wit-ty Flip with Drambuie, lemon, orange bitters, allspice dram, a whole egg and a little witbier (wheat beer).
The drink is paired with an orange-honey glazed Moulard duck breast with spiced cous cous, pine nuts and currants.
A jerk spiced pork roast with coconut rice, tostones, and molho vin is paired with a Sierra Highlands, 15-year-old Drambuie with framboise, lambic syrup, lemon and Kellerweis beer.
The dessert course, a ginger panna cotta with caramelized pineapple, macadamia nut crunch and Star anise raw sugar sauce rounds out the dinner with a Chocolate Stout Flip, made with El Dorado 15-year-old rum, a bittersweet herbal liqueur, egg, bitters and chocolate stout beer.
Grand Isle’s Chef Mark Falgoust, although a native of Algiers, treasures his growing up years hunting and fishing in his grandparents hometown of Pierre Part in the heart of Louisiana Cajun country.
The menu for Grand Isle’s Spirited Dinner reflects his Louisiana heritage as well as bar chef Billie Keithley’s gourmet sensibilities.
The dinner begins with a cold jumbo lump Louisiana crabmeat appetizer in aioli.
With this dish, Keithley paired a Primo-Prima with Breckenridge vodka and bitters, Jamaican allspice sugar lemon water, garnished with cayenne and a lemon twist.
Guests will enjoy a Carpaccio of Gulf yellow fin tuna and a summer salad next, accompanied by The Witnesses, Keithley’s concoction of Breckenridge vodka, four peppercorn raspberry syrup, lemon juice and a combination of soda and Sprite to top it off.
An oven roasted Abita quail with boudin dressing and pan sauce follows with a Crescent City Manhattan, Keithley’s version of the renowned cocktail.
Falgoust makes just about everything in house including the boudin and other sausages. “We cure all our meats on premise and make all our pâtés from scratch,” he noted, “providing all the cooks with a sense of pride and respect.”
For the drink pairing, Keithley mixes Breckenridge bourbon and bitters, Angostura bitters and peach brandy topped with a soaked cherry and dark cherry foam.
A seared, au poivre, aged rib eye with braised radicchio is the next course served with a New O’Fashioned, Breckenridge bourbon whiskey, sarsaparilla root syrup, Breckenridge bitters, blood orange and cherry.
A fifth course, chocolate ginger cake with vanilla ice cream is paired with a Keithley creation of Breckenridge vodka, Dude sweet chocolate sauce, Saint Germain, Fernet-Branca and topped with a lemon foam hat.
“I truly love what I do,” said Keithley, whose business card reads “The Liquid Chef.” “I have a dream job! It’s so cool, bringing back the classic cocktails the way they were before store-bought mixes.
Details. Details. Details.
Tales of the Cocktail’s two hundred events are held from July 25–29, 2012. Details at talesofthecocktail.com or (504) 948-0511.