Cold meals / dishes - quick and easy recipes - page 54

A hot toddy is the perfect comfort drink for cool nights. In this honey-sweetened rum and cider version, a touch of Fernet-Branca—herbal and bracing—keeps things interesting. What to buy: A richly flavored dark rum, such as Cruzan Estate Dark or Barbancourt 3 Star, works best.

Food writer and cooking teacher Nadine Abensur introduced us to this superpunchy pestolike sauce from North Africa in her book The Cranks Bible: A Timeless Collection of Vegetarian Recipes. Chermoula is delicious with grilled fish and grilled or steamed vegetables, a secret flavor weapon for making healthy stuff taste great. Game plan: Chermoula is best right out of the food processor, but it will keep for up to 1 week in the fridge.

The G and T has become the dominant warm-weather gin cocktail, maybe because it’s one of the simplest: just gin, tonic water, and an aromatic boost from a lime wedge. Variations on the gin and tonic include taking it Barcelona style. And if you want to try making your own spiced tonic water, go for it.

A simple, refreshing mix of vodka and freshly squeezed grapefruit juice (add a touch of simple syrup if your grapefruits are a bit too tart). To turn it into a Salty Dog, moisten the rim of the glass and dip in salt.

The Tom Collins is a fine old drink—cocktail writer David Wondrich notes how it turns up (in a slightly different form) in Jerry Thomas’s seminal Bon Vivant’s Companion of 1877. Wondrich cites the drink’s “simple elegance”: just gin, lemon juice, and sugar, topped off with fizzy water. What to buy: Finely milled superfine sugar dissolves rapidly, avoiding any risk of graininess in the finished drink.

The ultimate hangover cocktail, a good Bloody Mary makes everything better. We’ve switched it up with tequila, pickled jalapeños, and an eye-opening dose of cayenne pepper. What to buy: Buy whole pickled jalapeños from a well-stocked market or Latin grocery, or make your own.

This handy Vietnamese sauce does double duty as a dip for fried foods and a dressing for cold salads, such as this one with grilled shrimp. The sauce is a perfect balance of tangy and sweet, with fish-sauce umami and a little spike of heat. To tone down the fire, seed the chiles before mincing. For more intensity, double the amount of fish sauce and omit the water.

Famed New Orleans barman Henry C. Ramos is said to have invented this rich, potent, and frothy egg white and cream cocktail in the 1880s. Orange flower water gives it a lovely aroma.

This is a classic, refreshing sparkler made with sloe gin, regular gin, and lemon juice, shaken and topped off with club soda. What to buy: Sloe gin is a red liqueur made from gin infused with sloes (also called blackthorn), a relative of plums.

A recipe for what we call the Americano goes as far back as 1861, when it was served at Gaspare Campari’s bar in Milan, says cocktail author Rob Chirico. During Prohibition the drink found favor with booze-deprived tourists from the U.S. and became known as the Americano or American Highball.

During the late 1990s, it was impossible to enter a bar and not hear a few ladies (and occasionally some dudes) declare, “I’ll have a Cosmo!” Nowadays, the drink carries a shroud of shame—it’s pink and passé after all—but it’s still a tasty cocktail that packs a punch.

Orange liqueur and Cognac-based Bénédictine are shaken with heavy cream in this after-dinner drink inspired by the flavors of a Creamsicle.

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