Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [100]
4. Let the bottle sit at room temperature for about 24 hours. You’ll know the soda is done when you press on the bottle again and it feels very taut and hard. Put the bottle in the refrigerator. As soon as it’s cold, it’s ready to drink. Open the bottle with care—it may be very bubbly. It will lose effervescence over the next few days, so enjoy it promptly.
Makes 2 liters
MARGARITAS
I started out drinking frozen strawberry margaritas when I was in college, and if a margarita wasn’t sweet and rosy pink and so cold my head hurt when I swallowed, I wouldn’t drink it. I have changed, probably for the worse. I now drink only margaritas made with fresh lime juice (in a pinch you can use lemon), decent tequila, and $45-per-bottle Grand Marnier, served straight up. No rocks, ever. Ice dilutes the alcohol. Which is what I mean by changing for the worse.
I think fresh lime juice is more important to a top-shelf margarita than top-shelf tequila. But squeezing limes for more than a few margaritas can make you tetchy, which presents a quandary when you serve margaritas at a biggish party. Good margaritas or crabby hostess? At my first-ever barbecue party, I wanted to serve margaritas, so I bought a bottle of pale green margarita mix. Before anyone else arrived, as my sister and I set the table, we made ourselves “good” margaritas with fresh lime juice, decent tequila, and $45-per-bottle Grand Marnier. I felt stingy, drinking good margaritas while mixing bulk margaritas in a pitcher for the guests. But I really do dislike squeezing limes.
My father arrived. The man who taught me to show a horse who’s boss, appreciate crime fiction, and kill a chicken. Could I really give him a mediocre margarita? I could not. I made him a good margarita too. Then my inimitable and dear ninety-nine-year-old grandmother arrived, the woman who taught me to wear dangly earrings, and to pat corn tortillas by hand. Could I really give her a second-class margarita? Of course not. She got a good margarita. My friends Melanie and Stan arrived. I love Melanie and Stan—that’s why we were having them over! I couldn’t give them bad margaritas! In the end, everyone got good margaritas and I didn’t even mind squeezing the limes because I was drinking a good margarita.
You can buy margarita mix, and it is very convenient and very cheap, and it tastes very cheap. I’m against it. As Christopher Hitchens says of choosing one’s booze, “Pick a decent product and stick with it. Upgrade yourself, for chrissake. Do you think you are going to live forever?” Always buy more limes than you think you need; limes can be very stingy with their juice and it’s hard to know what you’re dealing with until you cut them.
Make it or buy the mix? Make it.
Hassle: Squeezing limes
Cost comparison: $0.78 for a margarita made from mix. $5.68 for a margarita using the following recipe.
¼ cup tequila, as good as you can afford
¼ cup Grand Marnier (or Cointreau)
¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice (from 2 to 3 limes)
Kosher salt, optional
1. If you want salt on the glass, run a squeezed lime around the rim of a martini glass and dip in a saucer of salt to coat.
2. Pour the tequila, Grand Marnier, and lime juice into a cocktail shaker with a handful of ice. Shake vigorously. Strain into the glass.
Makes 1 generous margarita or 2 little ones
BITTERS
For $900 you can buy a copper still that looks like a cross between a samovar and Ali Baba’s lamp. Although the Manhattan used to be my favorite drink, I was not up for making bourbon, which takes years to age. But when I was flipping through my mother’s 1975 copy of Liqueurs for All Seasons one day, it occurred to me that bitters were completely within my grasp and time frame. Just a single drop of a potent aromatic bitters transforms a rude slug of whiskey and vermouth into a Manhattan. I went on to make a lot of bitters, including one with cherry and vanilla,