Alan Ilagan

Our annual summer gathering, this year christened The Last Word Lavender Party, takes place tonight. While many of our friends are lucky enough to be out of town and soaking up the sun on a Provincetown beach, we’ll be hosting a poolside escape right in our backyard, weather-permitting. We are notorious for having it rain on our party parade, so after over a decade of rain-outs, we just count on the wet stuff, and if the sun deigns to peek out, it’ll be a bonus. Bring a bathing suit just in case. Someone usually ends up in the pool, rain or not.

{For this event, I will be wearing my treasured sample of Tom Ford’s ‘Lavender Palm’ cologne.}

The Last Word Cocktail

3/4 oz. gin
3/4 oz. chartreuse
3/4 oz. fresh lime juice
3/4 oz. maraschino liquer

A few years ago I found the recipe for this – called a Sun cocktail – in the Style Section of the New York Times. Since then, it has become a summer staple – for its refreshing seasonal charm and ease of assembly. It’s a grapefruit-based concoction that gets some of its sparkle from the addition of a dry sparkling white wine.

The original recipe is buried somewhere in my files, but I usually just wing it because with the ingredients involved it’s tough to wreck it irreparably. Here’s a rough estimate of what goes into it:

Sun Cocktail

3 parts pink grapefruit juice
1 part citrus vodka
1/2 part blackberry Schnapps
1 part dry sparkling white wine

You can adjust the proportions to suit your own taste. Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher, add a decent helping of ice, and stir. Garnish the drink with fresh blackberries or grapefruit slices.

Last night, before he set about to grilling the swirdfish and zucchini, Andy made me a gin & tonic the way he likes them. It was a happy twist as refreshing as the lemon he used. As stated previously, he grills while I garnish, and he usually cooks while I cocktail.

According to him, the classic gin and tonic originated in England, and used to be made with a twist of lemon (at odds with the lime that you see in most places – and that I tend to favor). He also insists that the gin of choice be Bombay Dry Gin – not Bombay Sapphire, and not Tanqueray. (Personally, I prefer Tanqueray Rangpur.)

I’ll see if Andy can post his technique and recipe over on our sister-site, www.ALANandANDY.com. (I know there was something about counting to seven that was involved…) For now, I will say he did a fantastic job – a rim job if you will, as he slid the lemon over the glass lip before dropping it in.

For a small cocktail gathering at our Boston Brownstone, the question comes down to this: which libation is worthy of being served to properly kick off the summer? It’s come down to a few finalists – a watermelon jalapeno vodka slurry, a lemon-basil gin martini, or a cucumber melon martini. There may be a surprise lavender-horse too, in the form of a lavender martini that I might try out for this summer’s July party.

I will consult the stars (meaning the weather channel) and determine what sounds best for the evening. So much of a decent cocktail selection depends on the season and the weather.

Oprah Winfrey has given the world many gifts over the years, but none have had more of an impact on my life than the Moscow Mule. The image of her squeezing every last drop of juice from a lime – using her mouth – will forever be part of my iconic lexicon.

This version uses vodka, fresh lime juice, ginger beer, and ice. Nothing could be simpler.

Some days, especially the rainy ones, are perfect for perfecting a few test cocktails. That would have made this week ideal for an extensive libation list, but these photos are from a few weeks back when I was trying to come up with something for our Indian Weekend. The idea was to temper the heat of much of the Indian food with the coolness of a mango-based drink. Of course, after our lengthy run of Amber Jewels, no one was in the mango martini mood for the next day’s Indian feast, so we never got the chance to try them out properly.

That was for the best, as I have yet to find a decent brand of mango juice. (Pressing citrus is one thing, but I don’t want to have to puree fresh fruit while entertaining, so I was looking for something commercially produced.) The bottom line is, I don’t yet have a good mango martini recipe, so if anyone else does, please let me know. That said, even the ones that don’t taste all that great can still look pretty good.

The hunt is on for some extra-special spirits, and so far it’s been a Holy Grail-like journey with nothing to show for it. We’ve been planning an Indian-themed birthday weekend for Jo Jo and her brother Wally, and I’ve found a cocktail that sounds amazing – the Nagpur. One of the ingredients, however, is Sub Rosa Saffron vodka – a specialty vodka produced in Oregon and seemingly unavailable in New York. Having recently located a small bottle of saffron, I toyed with the idea of creating my own little vodka infusion, but I’m not quite ready to give up all that saffron for a cocktail or two. Besides, if someone else has already done the work, I’d rather contribute to their enterprise than start my own.

According to the Sub Rosa Spirits website, “The Saffron vodka is intense. As complex as a gin with 8 spices, this distillate is beguiling with toasted cumin on the nose, lemony coriander on the mid-palate, a hint of ginger, just a touch of heat and the aromatics of saffron at the end. Inspired by Indian and Asian food… These vodkas use fresh ingredients and darn expensive ones too. Saffron is the most expensive spice on the planet. No essential oils were used for flavoring. What you taste is fresh herbs and spices suspended in alcohol.”

That sounds heavenly, and the perfect base for the Nagpur. It would also work wonderfully with the chicken makhani, basmati rice, and red lentil curry I have planned for the meal.

The other libation is more simple and straightforward – Cobra Beer. This is less important for me as I don’t really drink beer, but it would be nice to offer our guests something with an Indian tint to it, and I’m told Wally loves the Cobra Beer, so we’ll continue to look.