Educate me: Liqueur

[monkeymay]

Did you pour it over the sugar cube with a splash of water to release the green fairies?

A friend brought some back from his last trip abroad and we had it as part of
a collection of mind altering party favors. Unfortunately, hard to say what got us off. I love things with ritual and bitter flavors ( Fernet Branca, anyone?), so absinthe seems destined as part of my liqueur cabinet. The stuff the liquor rep dropped off at the restaurant does not have the same hallucinatory effect that the imported stuff has...

There was a great book on Toulouse Laturec put out by the same group that published 'Monet's Table". It contained some cooking journals and I remember quite a few cocktail recipes involving liqueurs, particularly absinthe. As the book has somehow disappeared into the black hole that is my life I can't remember all the details...

Monkey

[James2]

I did, I did! You know, it turns milky when water is added b/c some of the oils (thujone, asarone, etc.) that are present in Absinthe are soluble in alcohol and only paritally so in water so that when you add water, they precipate out!

I plan to indulge heavily in a few weeks when I go to Nova Scotia. I can't wait. I know lots of good Chantarelle picking spots too!

I have never tried Fernet Branca, but I have always wanted to. I'd love to try Chartreuse also!

I find bitter food and drink very interesting! It's like, what gives? And usually something does...a cholesterol binding molecule, a psychoactive compound, a cardiac stimulant...

[Isa]

Ok James, if I have the chance, I will try it.

[monkeymay]

I think I'm attracted to the bitter taste because it's like the last of the frontiers... It always seems so much more interesting to me than regular 'sweet' taste - I mean I KNOW what sweet tastes like, it never seems to have a huge depth of quality to me. But bitter...it's so unknown - it's like looking at pain to figure out what color it is and what you can stand... what it LOOKS like...
Bitter is figuring out what it's made of and identifying the different components...it forces you to think about what it is...
and in the long run how it makes you feel (usually good in an interesting sort of way )
It's like giving in to the "dark side" Obi-Wan

It all reminds me of a line from 'Venus in Furs' by the Velvet Underground:

I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years.
A thousand dreams, that would awake me,
Different colors, made of tears

Ah, bitterness, it's what makes life sweet

an under the influence Monkey

[James2]

I worked in northern BC, in a First Nations community, for a couple of years as an ethnobotanist. My next door neighbour was a shaman. Part of the processes of identifying the medicinal properties of different plants involved getting a 'feel' for the plant (maybe it's personality).

Most of the plants used for medicine and food were very bitter. I'll bet those people have/ had a broad repertoire of descriptive terms for bitterness. Wouldn't it be interesting to try to broaden our concept of bitterness (as you suggest Monkeymay) by exploring other cultural concepts of it?! I think that the extent of this sweet obsession is pretty new in human evolution.

My fav. VU album is New York!

[monkeymay]

As for a sweet obsession being fairly recent in human evolution, I think I'd have to disagree with you there.I think man's desire for sweet is primal. It's the first thing we taste as babies. Breast milk is sweet. Usually our first foods are sweet- mashed bananas, applesauce...it's always much easier to feed kids something sweet than say, mashed broccoli (And I know cause I've got 2 kids).
So I think as we get older and our taste buds grow, we learn how things taste, and the bitter becomes more acceptable. Remember taking a sip of your parents cocktail and thinking it's the most disgusting thing in the world? Well, now I love the taste of that smoky scotch. Black coffee and nicotine - why is that the first thing I want in my mouth in the morning? Maybe the desire for bitterness develops as our buds degenerate because it's what we can REALLY taste?

On a side note, have you read Micheal Pollan's "The Botany of Desire"?
Great book, especially for an ethnobotanist as yourself.He proposes that plants have evolved to gratify human desires so that humans will help them multiply. He uses four examples to illustrate this theory -
Desire sweetness - the apple
Desire beauty - the tulip
Desire intoxication - marijuana
Desire control - the potato

The apple is interesting because it's cultivation in nineteeth century America developed out of a need pioneers had for a source of sweetness in their diet and sugar to make alcohol. So out of human desire for sweet, the apple (with the help of Johnny Appleseed) was able to proprogate an entire new continent. Facinating how this stuff works!

(BTW VU New York is one of my fav's too)

Monkey

[James2]

Hey, sorry for taking so long to reply. I've just been running around in the woods with some fiends (err, friends).

I've heard of that book. Great last name, eh? That's like the mycologist David Pilz at OSU. I knew a biology prof. whose first name was Darwin. I often wonder if some people's careers are predestined?

You know, it sounds as though this pollen fellow is suggesting that plants can anticipate human desires and therefore manipulate them to survive. He is probably assuming too much. Natural Selection predicts that the organisms best suited to their environment will survive to pass on their genes. So, it's sort of conciousness-less.

I love the bitter thing. I've got a great curry recipe that uses freshly ground coriander and cardamom that is quite bitter. Another of my favourites is a Cordero Al Chilindron that I picked out of a Basque ethnology. This is different from other Chilindron that I have tried. Man, it just blew my mind the first time I had it. It was just so barbaric. It is basically chunks of lamb seared then dregded then bathed in a sauce of pureed brandy, mulatto peppers, and roasted garlic. I sometimes throw some rosemary branches on top while it is simmering. The brandy is so concentrated that the flavour assaults your mouth, then dissappears! Each time I eat it, I feel like Kublai Khan's armies are on the warpath and my mouth is the steppes. It is so interesting. If you want I can post a more detalied recipe (with my modifications).


Have you read the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One hundred Years of Solitude? It's great! Your comment on black coffee makes me think of one of the main characters who morning sustenance is a steaming mug of it. If you haven't, read it! He's great b/c he seems to be able to eloquently blend fantasy with reality (hence the genre magical realism). His books are full of plaster eating girls, gypsies selling ice, people dying of love-sickness. Great stuff!

[monkeymay]

Nice to see you back, out of the fiendish woods...

Marquez, huh? Reminds me of my other favorite bitter line, from 'Love in the time of Cholera' -
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

I LOVE that line, there's something about it I can't even describe... when I eat little amaretti cookies with my coffee I always think of it...

One Hundred Years of Solitude - thank you!!! So great, haven't read it in years, now will be at the top of my summer reading list...

As for the Pollan book, read the chapter on Marijuana - it's a hoot - it might cause you to rethink natural selection and plants anticipating and manipulating humans....

BTW do you know anything on Terrence McKenna? An old aquaintance used to rave about him and his theories - not all of which I'm clear on, but the one that stands out was man's evolution was brought on by use of halucinogenics by primates who deliberately sought out psycotropic mushrooms and plants to bring on visions (of maybe what they could be )
Any of this sound familar???

Oh yeah, and I do want the recipe.

Monkey

[James2]

Funny you mention McKenna, I was going to post about him in my last one. He was great! He was like the Tim Leary of this era. A bardic kind of guy. I think he believed that hallucinogenic mushrooms came from space or something. He had devised an elaborate argument to support it, too.

I managed to procure a clipping of an ayahuasca vine from the one that T and D McKenna collected in the Amazon. It's hanging on , but barely.

That is a great line from Marquez (from the beginning, I think). That stuff's food.

Have you read any Salman Rushdie? His stuff is great too, not in the intoxicating, all enveloping way that Marquez is, but in a sort of poetically playfull way and invigourating. He is neat b/c he gets right to the great mythic questions in an indirect, but intimate way. I really liked the Satanic Verses and the Ground Beneath her Feet.

Here is that recipe. To me, it's unusual. Which is it's appeal.

a couple handfulls cubed, well aged lamb
1 whole onion
lard
1 T. flour
1 cup cognac or brandy
2 garlic cloves, roasted
cayenne (little bit)
1 roasted pepper (I use mulatto)
balsamic v.


Slowly fry onion in lard (or olive oil) until golden, add lamb and flour.

Blend brandy, cayenne, garlic, mulatto, and vinegar. Add to browned lamb simmer until lamb is tender. You can always alter the sauce with extra lamb stock.

I also place a sprig or two of rosemary on top and you can add a few tablespoons of tomato paste.

[monkeymay]

What do you serve with it? Just curious. I like the flavor profile of it. Tell me, do you fry your tomato paste with the lamb also, or are you adding it later?

As for Rushdie, alas no. Another in a big stack of must reads...

What is an ayahuasca branch - something I'm not familar with.

Speaking of mushrooms, I recently cooked a party for a client who handed me a bag of the 'magic ones' and asked me to fix them into something edible.As we were serving wild mushroom quesadillas (his inspiration for bringing out the bag), I soaked and incorporated them into the mix of chanterelles, morels and crimini, thyme, garlic and fresh cilantro. They were great!
They were served to a select group (myself included) and it's been one of the best ways I've ever enjoyed them!

[James2]

If I add tomato paste, I just pull a bit of the sauce out and mix it in, then add it back to the whole lot. I am just an amateur, so, there are probably better ways of going about it.

Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic drink consumed by many indigenous groups in the Amazon River Basin. It is a mixture of the Ayahuasca vine and other DMT containing plants. The interesting thing is that DMT is not orally active (which is why it is popularly smoked or historically snuffed). Compounds in the vine render DMT orally active by disrupting the enzyme system in our stomaches that would normally break it down (MAO). It is known as the 'plant teacher' because it apparently 'tells' the people things when they take it...

I have a friend who did his Msc. work in the Peruvian Amazon. He said it was amazing. The only thing that the people he worked with (Quechua?) bought were flash lights, gasoline and pots. Everything else came from the jungle. Anyway, he gained their respect and trust over the course of time and before leaving, a community shaman told him that he should try Mama Ayahuasca! He did, and said that he hallucinated for hours that his body was crawling with snakes. Finally, a huge anaconda reared its head and swallowed him whole.

I've never taken it. I also grow Peyote, but I've never tried that either. Here in Canada both are legal (thankfully). I would try them, it's just that I have spent so much time trying to keep them alive!

[BonViveur]

Originally Posted by monkeymay

Did you pour it over the sugar cube with a splash of water to release the green fairies?

A friend brought some back from his last trip abroad and we had it as part of
a collection of mind altering party favors. Unfortunately, hard to say what got us off. I love things with ritual and bitter flavors ( Fernet Branca, anyone?), so absinthe seems destined as part of my liqueur cabinet. The stuff the liquor rep dropped off at the restaurant does not have the same hallucinatory effect that the imported stuff has...

There was a great book on Toulouse Laturec put out by the same group that published 'Monet's Table". It contained some cooking journals and I remember quite a few cocktail recipes involving liqueurs, particularly absinthe. As the book has somehow disappeared into the black hole that is my life I can't remember all the details...

Monkey

Tolouse Lautrec used to have a cane with a secret glass tube filled with absinthe. Maybe you are also talking about the cocktail he invented? The Earth Shaker it's absinthe, cognac and red wine. Better to just add cold water very slowly to see the white dance called the "Louche"