Michael Ruhlman » cognac

Friday Cocktail Hour: Between the Sheets

Michael Ruhlman — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:27:04 +0000

Friday cocktail hour: Between the Sheets. Photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

I was, by chance, in the offices of the venerable publisher Little, Brown with Donna a few weeks ago during a surprise trip to NYC, and the editor I was speaking with about a potential book deal mentioned a cocktail book they'd published the previous fall. He described it. I asked, nay, demanded, to see it. He swiveled around, swiveled back, and there it was. A book that immediately pissed me off. "HEY!" I wanted to say, "THIS IS MY TURF! THIS IS RATIOS!" (If you didn't know, I wrote a little book called Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. We developed and built a Ratio app for iPhones and iTouches and then we—that is, my friend Will Turnage—built ...

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The Friday Cocktail Hour: Gascon Sidecar

Michael Ruhlman — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:04:17 +0000

The Sidecar. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Some cocktails seem worthy of making based on the name alone, regardless of what’s in them. Since reading that there was a cocktail called a Sidecar 20 years ago, I’ve wanted to make one. But the brandy threw me off. Brandy is an after-dinner sipper, not a mixer. And if it’s just brandy, rather than Cognac, why bother at all? And if it is Cognac, why mix it? But damned if the Sidecar didn’t keep itchin’ at my heart, wanting to be scratched. I loved it for its simplicity, 2 parts brandy, 1 part orange liqueur (such as Cointreau), 1 part lemon juice (which seemed like a lot of lemon—¼ lemon juice). I happened to be shopping at a good independent grocery store here in Cleveland called Heinen’s, and ...

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