Drinks Archives - Page 7 of 22 - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Drinks

12
Jul
2021

Damn The Weather – The Sittaford Mystery

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Gin

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are drinking with the Dame because the Sittaford Mystery, as wonderful a story as it is, (and it is an absolute cracker) did not have the most inspiring food within its pages. So, I am playing with the atmospherics of the book and sharing a cocktail called Damn The Weather with Dame Agatha.

The Sit-tea -ford Mystery?

Despite having hardly any food and passing references to generic cocktails, what the Sittaford Mystery has in abundance is tea:

p73 – A good cry and good cup of tea – there’s nothing to beat them, and a nice cup of tea you shall have at once, my dear
p74 – I’ll send the tea up to you
p75 cup of tea
p 76 Strong tea, bread and butter. Devonshire cream and hard-boiled eggs
p 86 I ought to be able to produce a quiet cup of tea,
p178 Tea was laid ready. Mrs Willett poured out
p179 She must be sipping tea with that determined ladykiller Captain Wyatt
p186 A cup of tea

Despite its prevalence, there was no way I was going to do a post on the perfect cup of tea. Least of all because I don’t like it.

And bread and butter and hard-boiled eggs also seem a little….well…basic.

Next to tea, this is quite a boozy book with more than one reference being made to generic “cocktails” and also to brandy. I found a recipe on Difford’s for a cocktail called Damn The Weather which seemed very fitting to the setting of the book. Let’s see why.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Setting

The scene that met his eyes was typical of the English countryside as depicted on Christmas cards and in old fashioned melodramas. Everywhere was snow, deep drifts of it….up here on the fringe of Dartmoor it had attained a depth of several feet”

– The Sittaford Mystery, Agatha Christie

Sittaford is a tiny village, pretty much cut off from the rest of the world due to the terrible weather. Which makes it the perfect setting for one of Christie’s closed circle mysteries.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Plot

Mrs. Willett, the winter tenant of Captain Trevelyan, and her daughter Violet have invited guests for afternoon tea. After eating, the group decide to do a bit of table-turning (ie summoning the dead). A message comes from beyond telling them that Captain Trevelyan is dead.

A Short Aside on Table Turning

To my mind table-turning has to be the most inefficient way of contacting the spirits ever. From what I can gather the table rocks back and forth for each letter…so even to spell out the first part of the message TREV DEAD that is 20 + 18 +5 +22 rocks of a table. 65 rocks of a table to spell a four-letter word? No thank you. How long did that take? How bored do you have to be for that to become viable entertainment? I mean even trapped in a snow storm Dartmoor in the 1920’s I would be spelling out H-E-L-L -N -O on the table turning.

Anyway, after they have spent HOURS ( my words, not Christie’s) getting that 8 letter message, Major Burnaby, the Captain’s best friend decides to trek the 6 miles on foot to the Captain’s house to make sure he is all right.

He is not.

Trev is indeed dead, having been hit over the head with a sandbag. Estimated time of death? Five twenty-five. The exact same time as the ghostly message from beyond.

(Cue spooky X-files type music).

As if that is not enough, we also have:

An errant nephew being arrested for the murder
An escaped criminal
A reporter keen to get a good story
The mystery of just why the Willetts wanted to rent Sittaford House in the first instance
Retired police inspectors
Newspaper prizes
Boots hidden in the chimney
Aunts in the know and,
Maybe my favourite Christie heroine yet, the adorably plucky Emily Trefusis. (I am going to forgive her madly standing by her man, even though he is an idiot) because I love everything else about her.

The Sittaford Mystery has an average rating of 3.76 on Good Reads and comes in at # 26 at the time of writing on the All About Agatha podcast rankings. I feel Iike it a bit better than that but, I have not read all the books yet!.

The Covers

The covers for The Sittaford Mystery (called The `Murder at Hazelmoor in the United States) are amazing!

I love the nods to the table-turning at the weather and also the dead body on the carpet. I also like that the French version is called 5:25. You might also be wondering why some of the titles are called Murder At Hazelmoor and not the Sittaford Mystery. This was because the American publishers of the book thought their audience would prefer murder to mystery. Tell me, which title do you prefer?

The Recipe – Damn The Weather

You can find the Difford’s guide recipe here.

Other Food Mentioned in The Sittaford Mystery

Whisky and soda
Tea, bread and butter, Devonshire Cream and hard-boiled eggs
Eggs and bacon (i think every book thus far has referenced b&e)
Cold tongue, pickles, stilton, biscuits and soup
Beer
Bullseyes
Pate sandwiches

Oh, so maybe there was more food than I remembered! Still the Damn the Weather was a fabulous cocktail.

Just a quick note on the adaptation of The Sittaford Mystery. It’s kind of terrible. For some reason, they made it a Miss Marple instead of a stand-alone mystery as written. And to be honest Miss Marple does not do a lot. It’s worth a watch but it is not the best Christie adaptation out there.

Next up in the Christie list is Peril at End House for anyone who wants to read along.

Have a great week!

12
Apr
2021

The Red Signal Cocktail

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Vodka

The Red Signal Cocktail came about by a bit of an accident. I recently tried to make a cocktail called the Seamist. Except, I could not get some of the ingredients so I had to improvise. The finished version looked beautiful and tasted lovely. It is the exact sweet/sour fruity taste that I love in a cocktail plus a tinge of dryness from the cranberry and a touch of bitterness from the grapefruit.

But there was something about it that was not right. And it bugged me for days on end. It tasted great, it looked beautiful. So what was wrong with it?

She Comes in Colours Everywhere

Let’s digress for a moment. As a child, I was OBSESSED with paint charts. I have already mentioned that I was a weird only child. But I don’t think I have mentioned that my parents would quite often spend their weekends going to display homes and DIY stores and inevitably during these excursions, I would pick up a paint chart (or two). I would then try to memorise all the names and the matching colours. And then get them to test me on the way home. Or during the week. Yes. School wasn’t enough. I wanted to be tested on random things outside of school as well.

For a while there I wanted to be the person who named those colours. Actually, you know what? I still do want that job! So, believe me when I say that I know my Paris Creek (pale slate green grey) from my Camisole Quarter (pale pink) to my Shampoo (mid Blue).

I. Know. My. Colours.

And the colour of this cocktail is not a Seamist. No wonder I felt in my deepest soul that there was something wrong with it!

Seamist is a pale grey green with a tiny touch of blue.

And I think we can all agree that this cocktail is possibly the very opposite colour of a greeny-grey.

So, the name of Seamist had to go. Life is hard enough at the moment without having additional cognitive dissonance caused by the colour of a cocktail! And because I had played around with the ingredients, it wasn’t a true Seamist anyway.

So, then the dilemma became what to call it.

The Red Signal

Luckily, for all of us, I happen to be reading The Hounds of Death. This is a book of short stories by Agatha Christie where each story has a spooky or supernatural twist. I am still undecided on what to do with the volumes of Agatha Christie’s short stories. When I started the Dining With The Dame series, I only ever considered her novels. And believe me, it’s hard enough to find food references to blog in some of the novels, let alone something a tenth of the size!

But, lo and behold, in that collection, there is a story called The Red Signal.

Is a tale of

Premonitions and intuitions
Seances
Falling in love with the wrong person
Madness and murder
And a weird sixth sense called The Red Signal!

Now…you tell me Isn’t The Red Signal a much better name for this cocktail?

The Recipe

The Red Signal Cocktail

Print Recipe

A sweet sour cocktail inspired by the Agatha Christie short story – The Red Signal.

Author: Taryn Nicole
Prep Time: 3 minutes
Total Time: 3 minutes
Yield: 1 1x
Category: Cocktails
Method: Shake

Ingredients

Scale

3 parts cranberry juice

3 parts pink grapefruit juice

2 parts vodka

Lemon and lime quarters

Ice cubes

Mixed berries for garnish

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Shake the juices and vodka in a cocktail shaker over ice.

Gently muddle the lemon and lime quarters in a highball glass to release some of their citrus oils and some juice. Add ice cubes to the glass.

Strain the cocktail into the glass and give a light stir.

Garnish with mixed berries of your choice.

Other food mentioned in The Red Signal

Welsh Rarebit

Have a great week friends and remember if you feel “the red signal” pay it some heed!

Or make this cocktail!

28
Mar
2021

Cherry Brandy – Murder at the Vicarage

categories: Dining With The Dame, Drinks, Marple

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are drinking with Dame Agatha and Miss Jane Marple. The beverage of choice as we journey to St Mary Mead and murder most foul will be homemade cherry brandy.

I must confess, I was not looking forward to Miss Marple. For all his pomposity, I very much like Hercule Poirot and I love the interplay between Poirot, Hastings and Inspector Japp. Poirot and Japp are also crime-fighting professionals which gives them some cred.

I also like the pluckiness of the female heroines we have met so far like Bundle and Anne Beddingfield and the adventure-seeking Tuppence. Miss Marple though? Has always struck me as being just an old biddy busy body. So I was delighted to read this very early on in The Murder at The Vicarage.

“My duty,” said Griselda. “My duty as the Vicaress. Tea and scandal at four-thirty.”

“Who is coming?”

Griselda ticked them off on her fingers with a glow of virtue on her face. “Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Wetherby, Miss Hartnell, and that terrible Miss Marple.”

“I rather like Miss Marple, ” I said. “She has, at least, a sense of humour.”

“She’s the worst cat in the village,” said Griselda.

Then a bit later on:

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.”

Knowing that other people shared my view made me like this book a lot more than I thought I would. And I really liked this book! Despite Marple.

The Murder At The Vicarage – The Plot

Colonel Protheroe has been murdered. With a gun. In the study of the Vicarage. It seems like no one in St Mary Mead liked the Colonel. Even the vicar had been overheard saying that anyone who killed him would be doing the world a service.

As if that’s not all, we have:

Shennanigans with the handsome painter who is setting all the female heart’s aflutter
Suspicious husbands
A girl called Lettice. Maybe this is only interesting to me, given I was very nearly called Romaine.
Irregularities in the church accounts
False confessions aplenty
A mysterious woman in the village aptly called Mrs Lestrange
Suitcases containing stolen silverware and picric acid found in the woods
Threatening phone calls
Slashed paintings

It might actually be a good thing that the wicked cat Miss Marple is around to bring the villains to justice!

I LOVED the sense of humour in this book:

Unblushingly I suggested a glass of vintage port. I have some very fine old vintage port. Eleven o’clock in the morning is not the usual time for drinking port but I did not think that mattered with Inspector Slack. It was, of course, cruel abuse of the vintage port but one must not be squeamish about such things.

Murder in The Vicarage – The Covers

There are some truly bonkers covers for this book. My favourite of course is Tom Adams’ surrealist vision for Fontana which features a tennis racquet embodied as a vicar. More disturbing is the cover bottom right which makes it look as if it might have been the KKK who put Colonel Protheroe away!

Even stranger – in these early covers? Not a Marple in sight! As much as I am not really a fan, what kind of sexist ageist BS is that?

Murder at The Vicarage – On The Screen

Murder at the Vicarage featuring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple is on You Tube.

Persons of note in the episode are:

Mark Gatiss as Ronald Hawes the church curate.
Derek Jacobi as Colonel Protheroe
Jane Asher as Mrs Lester
Tim McInnerny as Reverend Leonard Clement
Miriam Margolyes as Mrs Price-Ridley

“Of course, of course” said Miss Marple. “I quite understand. Won’t you sit down? And might I offer you a little glass of cherry brandy? My own making. A recipe of my grandmother’s”

– Murder at The Vicarage

The Recipe – Cherry Brandy

Unlike Miss Marple, my grandmothers didn’t hand me down a recipe for cherry brandy so I had to find one on the internet. I used this recipe from Larder Love and I really liked the result. Not a bit like that awful cherry cough syrup which was my fear! I popped in two star-anise as well as the cinnamon called for in the recipe. The resulting cherry brandy had a lovely subtle spiciness to it.

Other Food Mentioned in The Murder At The Vicarage

“Oh, we’ll go!” she said cheerfully. “A glass or two of homemade liqueur is just what one needs on Sunday evening. I think it’s Mary’s blancmange that is so frightfully depressing. It tastes like something out of a mortuary”.

Whisky and Soda

The next book, if you are reading along, is The Sittaford Mystery. Snuggle in, this one will see us snowbound in a tiny village on Dartmoor.

Have a great week!

07
Mar
2021

Inflatable Flamingo

categories: Cocktail, Gin, Rosé

Summer is officially over here but hopefully even as the days grow shorter and colder we will still have time for a few more summery cocktails like the Inflatable Flamingo! The name is so reminiscent of relaxing by, or in, a pool that you can almost feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. And Inflatable Flamingo is also a very cool name for a very fun drink!

Don’t let it’s pretty pink innocent nature fool you though, the Inflatable Flamingo packs quite a punch with a combination of gin and rose that could leave you…wait for it….legless if you have too many! Ah flamingo jokes….most of them are outstanding but if you really feel you need to put your foot down, I’ll flaminstop.

I used the Four Pillars Christmas Gin from 2019 as my gin base which added some spice into the summer berry flavours of rose and berries but your favourite gin will work well. A Hendrick’s would also be quite fabulous in this!

The recipe makes around 9 serves so why not make up a pitcher of these, grab some friends and hit the pool? Or maybe just float on down the street?

The recipe for the Inflatable Flamingo comes from Adriana Picker’s gorgeous book, The Cocktail Garden. Not only does this book have some great cocktail recipes (Peach and Pineapple Sage Old Fashioned anyone?) but the most beautiful illustrations as well!

The Inflatable Flamingo – The Recipe

Inflatable Flamingo 4 — Recipe via cooked.com.au

I quite often sing to myself when I cook and as I was making the Inflatable Flamingo the song running through my head was Float On by Modest Mouse, particularly the bit that goes:

Alright, already
And we’ll all float on, alright
Already, we’ll all float on, alright
Don’t worry, even if things end up a bit
Too heavy, we’ll all float on

They seemed like some wise words for modern times.

Take care my friends and float on!

12
Feb
2021

The Late Blumer Cocktail

categories: Books, Cocktail, Gin

Happy birthday Judy Blume! Let’s all celebrate the 83rd birthday of one of my favourite young adult authors by raising a toast with a cocktail known as the Late Blumer!

Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret was one of my FAVOURITE books growing up. I must have read it a hundred times! The issues of boys and bras and periods and feeling confused and anxious all the time spoke to me in a way that no other book at the time did.

I read and reread this edition of the book. Funnily enough, I rarely reread books nowadays but as a child? I could finish a book on a Monday and start it again the following day. Having said that, I am currently rereading Are You There God and it is totally transporting me to back then!

I also read all the other Judy Blume books that were available in the Glen Waverley Public Library. But Are You There God was by far my favourite.

The Late Blumer Cocktail

I found this cocktail on A Beautiful Mess years ago The link to the cocktail recipe on the site no longer works. So, I am very glad I printed it when I did. Thank you so much for the recipe Elsie!.

The Late Blumer is a fruity gin cocktail with some spice from the ginger and some herbiness from basil. In other words, my kind of cocktail! I love the combination of gin and ginger so this one was always going to be right up my alley in terms of flavour and it did not disappoint!

Here is my printed recipe:

And here it is a version with the measurements I thought worked best.

The Late Blumer

1 serving

30mls Gin
1 ripe apricot
4 raspberries plus 1 more for garnish
2 basil leaves plus more to garnish
Gingerale to top up your glass – mine was around 150ml.
Ice cubes

Mudde the apricots, raspberries and basil leaves in the bottom of your cocktail shaker.

Add the gin and let sit for around 5-10 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse.

Add some ice cubes to a glass and top with the gin mixture. You can strain this of you do not like bits of fruit in your cocktail. Fill to the top of the glass with ginger ale.

Garnish with additional basil leaves and raspberries and enjoy!

Judy Blume NY Post (1) — **via The New York Post**

Here’s to you Judy Blume! Happy birthday!!! Your writing has helped shaped the lives of generations of girls. Because we always knew that if we needed some understanding, some kind words or encouragement, we didn’t even need to ask “Are you there Judy?” All we had to do was open a book.

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

– Judy Blume

Tell me, where you a Judy Blume fan? What was your favourite?

Have a great weekend!