Tag: Cocktail


Jan
2023

Champagne Cocktail – Dead Man’s Mirror

categories: Champagne, Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Poirot

Hello food lovers and crime readers!   Welcome to the first Dining with the Dame of 2023!  We are celebrating the new year with a classic Champagne Cocktail and the final story from the Murder in the Mews Collection.  I improvised here as there is no food mentioned in Dead Man’s Mirror. However, the sound of a cork popping features in the story so a Champagne cocktail feels fitting. Besides, who doesn’t love a Champagne cocktail?

Champagne Cocktail 1

 

Dead Man’s Mirror- The Plot

Hmm…we have a dead man in a locked room. If it sounds familiar is because it is also kinda, sorta what happened in  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas which was last month’s read. This time the patriarch who meets an untimely end is Sir Gervase Chevenix-Gore.  Sir G as we will call him because if I have to type Sir Gervase Chevenix -Gore every time I name him, I’ll be writing this into next year summons Poirot to his home at Hamborough Close.   Much like Simeon Lee from last month, Sir G is obsessed with not having an heir to carry on the family name.  He is also a bit of a martinet when it comes to timeliness.   For instance, dinner is announced by a gong which is sounded twice – the bangs being seven minutes apart.  Guests who are late for dinner are not invited back! On this night Sir G himself does not appear by the second gong. He is found, shortly thereafter,  in his locked study, with a bullet in his brain and a pistol lying on the carpet by his body.  A piece of paper with the word “Sorry” written on it lies on the desk in front of him.  A clear-cut case of suicide.

Or is it?

We have

  • For the bullet to have smashed the mirror, Sir G must have shot himself at a very odd angle
  • As in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, we have a woman picking up something from the floor of the crime scene
  • Ruth, Sir G’s adopted daughter.  Sir G was keen for her to marry her cousin Hugo Trent which would keep the family line going.  Only Ruth has some secrets.
  • A lack of footprints in the flower bed

Champagne Cocktail 2

Luckily we have Poirot around to solve the mystery of the Dead Man’s Mirror!

Dead Man’s Mirror – The Covers

Dead Man's Mirror CollageAs expected, many of the covers feature a broken mirror.  I particularly like the one in the top which shows the dead man in the mirror, holding the note in his skeleton hand.  However, my absolute favourite is the one on the far right which shows the Egyptian head and scarab beetle, in reference to Vanda, Sir G’s wife who believes she is the reincarnation of the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut and a priestess from Atlantis.  It’s such a minor plot detail but makes an amazing cover! The broken mirror around her eye also gives it a bit of a steampunk look, decades before there was such a thing!

The Recipe – Champagne Cocktail

I am using the from a book called Fantastic Cocktails and Mixed Drinks.  I have added a garnish of an orange wedge and a maraschino cherry to make it look prettier!

Champagne Cocktail Recipe

Champagne Cocktail 3

 

“You see, I thought the first gong had gone, so I hurried up with my dressing, came dashing out of my room, heard, as I thought, the second gong and fairly raced down the stairs.  I’d been one minute late for dinner the first night I was here and Hugo told me it had about wrecked our chances with the Old Man, so K fairly hared down.  Hugo was just ahead of me and then there was a queer kind of pop-bang and Hugo said it was a champagne cork but Snell said “No”to that.

Dead Man’s Mirror – Agatha Christie

Links to The Christieverse

Mr Satterthwaite, who we last met in Three Act Tragedy makes an appearance in this story.  He not only mentions that case but also that he has seen Mary Lytton Gore recently.

Champagne Cocktail 4

 

Other Food & Drinks Mentioned in Dead Man’s Mirror

  • None

If you are wondering why this post is unusually early, it is because later today we are going to see The Arctic Monkeys, then tomorrow we are flying to Darwin for a week to celebrate the Fussiest Eater in The World’s birthday.  Neither of us has been there before so it will be an exciting trip for us.  It is by far the farthest north in Australia we have ever been!  Also, just to put the distance in perspective, Darwin is about 400km closer to Singapore than it is to Melbourne! I am expecting some delicious seafood, tropical fruit, and some spectacular scenery

I may have to delay next week’s post due to the holiday. However, we have all the more time now to get stuck into February’s read – Appointment with Death.

 

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Oct
2022

Gin And Ginger Beer – Triangle at Rhodes

categories: Cocktail, Desserts, Dining With The Dame, Gin

Hello crime readers and cocktail lovers!  Today we are reading (and drinking ) our way through a short story from the Murder in The Mews collection, Triangle at Rhodes.  And what better way to sit back and watch the shenanigans taking place on this gorgeous Greek island than with a cocktail in hand?  A gin and ginger beer happens to be one of my favourite  cocktails so I was delighted to find it mentioned in my favourite story in this collection!    I will also point out that the gin and ginger beer is not the most commonly named cocktail in Triangle at Rhodes, pink gin is mentioned multiple times and may have been a better choice.  However, as I am largely reading / rereading the Christie books as I blog about them, I have already used Pink Gin as the recipe for Three Act Tragedy! If you are reading along and would prefer to have that as your tipple, click the link above!

Gin and Ginger Beer1

 

Triangle at Rhodes- The Plot

.Poirot is on holiday at the Greek Island of Rhodes.  The story opens as follows

“Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water.  He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels, and a large panama hat protected his head.”

It makes me laugh a little bit to imagine the fastidious Poirot sitting on sand.  I feel that he would absolutely loathe it.  Almost as much as we can tell he hates rubbing sun tan oil on someone, which happens in the very next paragraph!  So much for enjoying his break!

The Poirot episode of Triangle at Rhodes, has him seated on a chair which seems far more his style!

Staying at the same hotel ias Poirot s the very glamourous Valentine Chantry and her fifth husband, a naval Commander who is described as a brute and somewhat apelike.

Valentine Chantry

Newly arrived at the hotel are the very handsome but not too bright Douglas Gold and his frumpy wife Marjorie. And with that, all aspects of the triangle are in place!

We have

  • An illicit affair
  • A marriage on the rocks
  • Poirot warning Marjorie Gold to leave the island.  Do not pass go, do not collect £200.  Just go.  Now!
  • Valentine Chantry killed by poison in her pink gin
  • A packet of poison found in a husband’s pocket

The case seems pretty clear cut.  But of course it isn’t because this is an Agatha Christie story so, things of course are not entirely as they seem!  It’s up to Poirot to see the innocent spared and the guilty punished.

Gin and Gingerbeer2

Triangle at Rhodes- The Covers

I could only find one cover for Triangle At Rhodes.

Very beautiful – it makes me want to go to Rhodes!

But while digging about the internet, I was also able to find this from the Strand Magazine version of the story!  Isn’t it glorious?

As we are not spending too much time on the covers, I thought we might look at some of the fashion.  The women are beautifully dressed.

And whoever thought we would see Poirot in shades!

Triangle at Rhodes Fashion 2

 

The Recipe

Print

Gin And Ginger Beer – Triangle at Rhodes

Print Recipe

Spice up your life with this mix of gin, ginger beer and lime.  A lovely refreshing cocktail.

Ingredients

Scale
  • 30ml London Dry Gin
  • 10ml lime juice
  • Ginger beer
  • Ice cubes
  • Mint leaves, lime slices and crystallised ginger to serve

Instructions

  • Mix the gin and lime juice together and pour into your glass.
  • Add the ice cubes and top with the ginger beer.  Stir.
  • Garish with lime slices, mint leaves and a piece of crystallised ginger.

Gin and Ginger Beer3

 

“Tony, darling it was too divine, ” cried Valentine as she dropped into a chair by his side.  “The most marvellous idea of Mrs Gold’s.  You all ought to have come!”

Her husband said:  “What about a drink?”

He looked inquiringly at the others.

“Pink gin for me darling,” said Valentine

“Gin and ginger beer, ” said Pamela

– Agatha Christie, Triangle at Rhodes

Other Food & Drinks Mentioned in Triangle at Rhodes

 

November’s read will be the titular story from the Murder in The Mews collection.  The setting is Guy Fawkes niight so get ready for fireworks and murder!

Happy reading!

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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.

Damn The Weather1

 

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.

Damn The Weather 2

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!

Sittaford covers collage

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.

Damn the Weather 3

 

Other Food Mentioned in The Sittaford Mystery

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!

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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?

Seamist 1

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.

Seamist 2

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?

Seamist 3

Seamist 4

The Recipe

Print

The Red Signal Cocktail

Seamist 2
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

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!

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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!

Inflatable Flamingo 12

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.

 

Inflatable Flamingo 2

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 3

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!

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