Cold meals / dishes - quick and easy recipes - page 53

In German, the language of beer, radler means “cyclist.” In beverage terms, a radler is a kind of beer-based “sports drink”—lager mixed with a soft drink, similar to an English shandy—a refreshing pick-me-up for guzzling when you stop at a kneipe, a countryside tavern. It’s simple and cooling, even when you’re not cycling the Alps. What to buy: You’ll need a pale lager with hoppy bitterness, like Weihenstephaner.

Technically this is a radler (the German version of lager and lemonade) but the spirit—a beer of low-hop bitterness, combined with something fruity and refreshing—definitely skews shandy. Instead of soda, we call for a second beer, a Belgian lambic flavored with raspberry. What to buy: You’ll need a wheat beer with low hops, such as Erdinger Hefe-Weizen, and a raspberry lambic (we’re fans of Timmermans Framboise Lambicus).

Substituting tangerine juice for lime in a margarita is a revelation. The taste is gentler, a little sweeter, and far more aromatic—the tangerine flavor acts as a shadow for the orange liqueur, amplifying its presence. If you can get a Meyer lemon to garnish with (it adds a final burst of citrus perfume), go for it. If not, a regular Eureka lemon will do just fine.

Ah the shandy, Britain’s low-alcohol pub drink, the ultimate session sipper. This one calls for ginger beer, mixed half-and-half with a mild-tasting lager (no bitter hop bombs, please). Enjoy one for lunch when you have to go back to the office and keep a clear head, or whenever you want a little something that cools and stimulates without making you foggy.

Digestifs are boozy after-dinner drinks said to tame the effects of a rich, heavy meal. They’re ridiculously easy to make: Just add citrus peels or herbs to grain alcohol and steep, then strain and mix with simple syrup. Digestifs keep forever (we store ours in the freezer so they’re already chilled), ready whenever you want a nightcap or a cocktail mixer. This recipe relies on the peel from blood oranges to create a wonderfully aromatic digestif that just happens to be perfect for margaritas.

Who doesn’t love a good G&T? Well, the Spanish certainly do. Condé Nast Traveler reported that Spain is home to the biggest gin drinker population (per capita) in the the world. Although this refreshing take on the classic gin and tonic would be great on a hot summer day, we’d be happy to sip on one (or a few) as a pre- or post-dinner libation all year round. Perhaps make a batch to wash down a feast of our homemade paella recipe.

This recipe from the blog Confections of a Foodie Bride cranks up the intensity of hummus, incorporating kalamata olives in an otherwise standard chickpea-and-tahini affair. The results are bold and surprising: the perfect thing to shake up a snack spread. Game plan: Make the hummus up to 5 days ahead and refrigerate it in an airtight container. Let sit at room temperature for an hour before serving.

Named for the French Quarter in New Orleans (a.k.a. the Vieux Carré), this sophisticated, spirits-driven cocktail is a lot like the Big Easy itself: a fun and potent blend of diverse elements. What to buy: Bénédictine, a gold-colored liqueur first produced by Benedictine monks in the 16th century, adds a sweet, aromatic flavor to cocktails. Peychaud’s Bitters were created in New Orleans around 1830 by the Haitian apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud.

The classic Old Fashioned is whiskey with a bit of sugar, aromatic bitters, and dilution in some form, from a splash of either water or club soda. The earliest mention of an Old Fashioned–style drink is from 1806: Drinks writer Robert Simonson, author of The Old-Fashioned: The Story of the World’s First Classic Cocktail, calls this “the primordial cocktail,” older than either the martini or the Manhattan Drink.

Proportions for the classic Manhattan are two (sometimes three) parts whiskey to one part sweet vermouth, with a little aromatic boost from bitters. The drink is believed to date from 1874, created by a bartender at New York’s Manhattan Club. “Since New York was a rye town in those days,” writes cocktail expert Dale DeGroff in The Craft of the Cocktail, “the original Manhattan was made with rye whiskey.” Bourbon Manhattans are a thing in the South.

Classic, elegant, and stiff, the martini is a simple fusion of gin and dry vermouth, stirred together with ice, and strained into a chilled glass. The main variables are the proportion of gin to vermouth, and what you choose to garnish with. This recipe uses a 2-to-1 for the former, though 4-to-1, even 5-to-1, is popular. For some, washing the martini glass with dry vermouth, then dumping the vermouth in the sink before stirring straight gin with ice, is just right.

Except for the gin and tonic, no other cocktail is as quintessentially English as pink gin, also known as gin and bitters. A few drops of aromatic, sweetly spice-scented angostura bitters are a gentle enhancement for the bracing, juniper-driven taste of London Dry–style gin. We give you two options: a simple version (just chilled gin and bitters), and the same thing served over ice, topped off with a splash of soda water.

According to Rob Chirico, author of the Field Guide to Cocktails, this iconic New Orleans cocktail dates to the 1850s, when it was served at the Sazerac Coffee House. American whiskey eventually replaced the brandy of the original. Rinsing the glass with absinthe gives the cocktail the right touch of herbal perfume without upsetting the balance—you can always substitute Pernod if you don’t happen to have a bottle of absinthe.

In this update on a Colonial favorite, rum meets the old-fashioned fruit-and-vinegar infusion known as a shrub. There’s no added sugar in this cocktail—we like its tangy edge, but if you prefer something a little sweeter, you can add 1 teaspoon of simple syrup to the cocktail shaker. What to buy: A richly flavored dark rum works best here. Try Cruzan Estate Dark or Barbancourt 3 Star.

Shrubs, a.k.a. drinking vinegars, were popular in Colonial America. At their most basic, shrubs are infusions of fruit in vinegar, sweetened to soften the tart edges. This one combines two quintessentially autumnal fruits—apples and cranberries—in a shrub that can be used as the base for various celebratory drinks. Game plan: Use this to make a refreshing, nonalcoholic Cranberry Shrub Spritz. For something stiffer, try a Rum-Cranberry Shrub Cocktail.