Classic Cocktails

     
WHISKY

Manhattan 

1/3 sweet Vermouth
2/3 American blended Whisky
1 spray Angostura bitter
2-3 ice cubes
1 cocktail cherry
orange peel.

Vermouth, whisky, angostura and ice into the mix-glass. Stir carefully with the bar-spoon so you do not "spoil" the spirits and "muddle" the drink. Put 1 cocktail cherry in the cocktail glass. Put the strainer over the mix-glass, pour into the cocktail glass. Press the orange peel over the glass with the outer side turned to the glass. The oil from the peel will lay upon the surface of the drink, giving a characteristic aroma (do not put the peel into the drink)

Rob Roy

1/4 sweet Vermouth
3/4 Scotch Whisky
6-8 ice cubes
1 orange peel

Vermouth and whisky into the mix-glass and then ice cubes Stir carefully  Strain and pour into a cocktail glass. Press the orange peel over the glass and put it into the drink

Rusty Nail

1/2 Scotch Whisky
1/2 Drambuie
2 ice cubes

Whisky and Drambuie into an old fashion glass Then ice cubes. Stir lightly.

Irish Handshake

1/2 Whisky
1/4 green Chartreuse
!/4 cream
 shake with ice







GIN

Dry Martini

3/4 gin
1/4 dry vermouth

The "original" Martini was introduced as Martinez ab. 1860. It started with 1/2 gin and 1/2 dry vermouth. The name was changed to Martini in 1890. now with 2/3 gin and 1/3 vermouth.  The change went on and the drink became more and more dry.
Each Martini fan has his own opinion about the method. Some use only a spray of vermouth,others just rub the vermouth cork on the glass. The drink is therefore by experts considered to be too raw if it is only mixed, but if it is shaked quickly with ice the Martini gets a more gentle taste and at the same time the drink is cooled in a perfect way. And there is  no need for ice cubes which would make the drink thinner.
 

Gin Fizz 

1/3 lemon juice
2/3 gin
1 spoon icing sugar
3-4 ice cubes
club soda

lemon juice, gin an sugar into the mix-glass. Stir well until the sugar is dissolved. Put ice cubes in. Shake well.. Strain through the strainer and pour into a medium size glass. Rinse off the shaker with a little club soda which is put into the glass.

Pink Lady (or Cover Club)
1/6 lemon juice
5/6 gin
1 teaspoon grenadine
1 egg-white
a little cream
3-4 ice cubes.

Lemon juice, gin, grenadine, egg-white, cream and ice cubes into the mix-glass. Shake well and strain it. Serve in a cocktail glass. 

Singapore Sling

2 ice cubes
1/8 cherry heering
1/8 lemon juice
3/4 gin
water


Ice cubes, cherry heering, lemon juice and gin into a medium size glass. Fill up with cold water and stir.
Singapore sling is said to origin from Raffles Hotel in Singapore, and some claim that the original drink besides the mentioned ingredients also include a few drops Benedictine and brandy, 1 orange slice and a little fresh mint
Some recipes say club soda instead of the cold water Then it is called Singapore rickey and not
Singapore sling.


Tom Collins

1/4 lemon juice
3/4 gin
1 1/2 tesaspoon icing sugar
2 ice cubes
club soda
1 orange slice
1 cocktail cherry

Lemon juice, gin and sugar in a whiskyglass , stir with the bar spoon until sugar is dissolved. Put in ice cubes and fill the glass up with club soda. Decorate evt. with an orange slice  and/or a cocktail cherry.
Rum is often used instead of gin and then the drink is  called Rum Collins. But bourbon, brandy, scotch whisky or vodka might also be used instead of gin. With bourbon or blended whisky the drink is called John Collins.





VODKA

Black Russian

1/4 kahlua
3/4 vodka
2-3 ice cubes.

Kahlua and vodka into the mix-glass and then ice cubes. Stir lightly. Strain and pour in a coctail glass.




          
Bloody Mary
8-10 ice cubes
2 teaspoon lemon juice
2 teaspoon tomato juice 
3/7 (evt 1/3) vodka
4/7  (evt. 2/3) vodka
2 drops Worcestershire sauce
2 drops Tabasco
fresh grounded pepper
a little celery salt

Ice cubes into the mix-glass, then lemon juice, tomato juice, vodka, worcestershire sauce and Tabasco. A little fresh grounded pepper, evt. a little celery salt upon the top.
If Bloody Mary is served on the rocks it is done as above and poured into a glass with 2-3 ice cubes.






RUM



Cuba Libre

juice from 1/4 lemon
1/3 rum
3-4 ice cubes
2/3 coca cola
a lemon slice

lemon juice, rum and ice cubes into a tall glass. Fill with coca cola, stir and decorate with 1/2 lemon slice.

Daiquiri

1/ 4 lemon juice
1 teaspoon icing sugar
1 teaspoon Cointreau or Triple sec
3/4 white rum
3-4 ice cubes
evt. a little egg.white.

Lemon juice and sugar into the mix-glass and stir with the bar-spoon until the sugar is dissolved. Add the Cointreau or Triple sec, rum and ice. Shake well, and pour through the strainer into the cocktail glass.
In order to make the Daiquire still more foamy,try to add a little egg-white before you shake.

Mai-Tai

Juice from 1/2 lemon
1/6 apricot brandy
1/6 curacao
2/3 dark Jamaica rum
3-4 ice cubes
1 cut of fresh pineapple.

Lemon juice, apricot brandy, curacao, rum and ice cubes into the mix-glass. Shake well, strain and pour into the cocktail glass. Decorate with a cut of frech pineapple





TEQUILA

Margarita I

1 lemon slice
a little coarse salt
1/5 lemon juice
4/5 tequila
1 1/2 teaspoon icing sugar
3-4 ice cubes


Rub the inside of the edge of a cooled cocktail glass with lemon slice. Put salt on a plate and dip the glass in it so a thin layer of salt is on the glass edge. Lemon juice and sugar into the mix-glass and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add tequila and ice cubes, shake well, strain it into the salt-edged cocktail glas.




Margarita II

1 lemon slice
a little coarse salt
1/5 lemon juice
3/5 tequila
1 /5 Triple Sec
3-4 ice cubes.

Same procedure as Margarita I.





COGNAC 

Sidecar

1/3 cointreau or Triple sec
2/3 cognac
1 spoonful lemon juice
3-4 ice cubes

Cointreau or Triple sec, cognac, lemon juice and ice cubes into the mix-glass. Shake well and strain through the strainer into the cocktail glas.






Stinger
3/4 cognac
1/4 creme de menthe
3-4 ice cubes

Cognac, the white creme de menthe and the ice cubes into the mix-glass. Shake well and strain it into the cocktail glass.







CHAMPAGNE 

Champagne cocktail 

6 measure icecold champagne
1 orange peel
1 teaspoon cognac

The icecold champagne into a champagne glass. Wring the orange peel above the glass and put it in. Pour slowly the cognac in so it is floating on the champagne.

Black Velvet

1/2 cold guiness stout
1/2 cold champagne

Traditional way : Hold cold stout in one hand and cold champagne in the other. Pour into a tall cold glass at the same time. A more simple way is to first pour stout in an then fill the glass very slowly with champagne. Do not stir but drink at once before the bubbles die and the good taste disappears.   






WINE

Kirr

2 ice cubes
5/6 dry white wine
1/6 creme de cassis
1 lemon peel

Put ice cubes, white wine and creme de cassis in a large wine glass. Wring the lemon peel over the glass and put it in. Stir lightly.





Source: Vin og spiritus/Alverdens kogekunst/ 1968 -1970

Old Customs in January

A ploughed field in January, photo: gb

January 1., New Year's Day :
It's a Helligdag (holiday) in Denmark and the other Nordic countries and an official flag day. New Year's Day was earlier called the Eighth Day of Christmas, but it was not always considered the first day of the year. Before Christianity came to Denmark it was probably Winter Solstice on 21/22 December which was considered the first day of the year. When Christianity gradually was accepted  the 25th december, the birth of Christ was the first day of the year for centuries. Not until the reform of the calendar in 1700 it seems that the first day of the New Year was commonly considered to be January 1. And still is!

Old Customs:
When the people in the farm woke up on New Year's morning they must not do anything at all before they had eaten something. After this the farmer went outside shooting the new year welcome like he had done the night before - if he had a gun! Then the household had a good and very solid breakfast. Later they all went to church, where they 'sacrificed' (mostly money) to the vicar and the parish clerk. The rest of the day people had a pleasant time with quiet pursuits.

New Year was always one of the big feasts and mærkedage (red-letter days) of the year. As early as around year 1000 (Canute the Great) it was decided that the eighth Day of Christmas had to be fixed  skiftedag' ( a notice day and a day on which servants used to change jobs). But most important were probably the omens from where the farmer read signs about the harvest of the year to come. The harvest was the most important thing of all. In the old society it was crucial, that there was food enough for the household, or else they had to starve in the next winter.

In the ancient societies they lived "from hand to mouth". Most omens had to do with the weather and the harvest situation. Up till the middle of the 1800s more than 90 % of the Danish population was living in the country and was completely dependent on the yields and the significance of the climate.

Superstition and omens for New Year's Day:
Like the weather is on this day, so it will be on Midsummer's Day.
On New Year's morning the farmer looked at the sky, for if the sky was red before sunrise the coming year would be marked with war, plague and bad weather in general.
Another omen said that if the sun on New Year's Day is shining as long as it takes to saddle a horse, then it will be a fertile year.
If you swept well indoors on New Year's Day, you would bring good weather to the harvest in the New Year.

Russian Christmas in Copenhagen and Russia

A large area in the amusement park "Tivoli" in Copenhagen is laid out for a Russian Christmas with a version of the Vasilij cathedral and striped onion domes. When they visit the cathedral people are brought through Russian landscapes  - and animated pixies and angel choirs are singing Russian Christmas songs.

Russian Christmas in Tivoli

Russian church, Copenhagen, foto: gb

The Russian Christmas is different from Christmas in the West. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on 6. January, and the actual Russian Christmas celebrations are held together with the New Years' celebrations. A Danish woman, Connie Meyer, who  has lived in Russia since 1992, tells to a Danish newspaper that Christmas eve begins with an evening service 22.30 on 6.th of January and goes on all night. This midnight mass is held in every Russian church. The Russian Orthodox Church follows the old Julian calendar, but to most Russians this Orthodox Christmas is not their cup of tea, although 3/4 of the population describe themselves Orthodox Christians.

Moscow Red Square with Christmas tree

During the Soviet years Christmas was replaced by a winter feast, which culminated on New Year's Eve. This night was the night of  the decorated Christmast tree, the presents and the dancing and singing. The freedom of religion, which Perestrojka and finally the collaps of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought with them, has succeeded in reviving Christmas, but not in making it a dominating feast. It is still New Year's Eve, which is celebrated, and the Christmas tree is decorated on 31. December, not 6th of January. The New Year's Eve in Russia is a mix of Christmas, New Year and carnival. The young people go out and fire off fireworks after the evening meal, and Russia's answer to Santa Claus, Father Frost and his helper, Snegurotjka (Snow Maiden) give out presents during an abundance of Christmas celebrations.

Father Frost arrives in a Troika.

Father Frost and his helper origin from an ancient myth . Father Frost is like Santa Claus a friendly old soul, the Russian name is Ded Moroz (=Father Frost) - and the girl Snegurotjka, who's with him, is not Snow White from Pushkin's poem and Grimm's fairy tale, but the Snow Maiden from a famous Russian folk tale about two elderly people who ardently wanted a child. Their prayers were answered. A lump of snow, which the man in despair clenches in his fists, suddenly comes to life as a beautiful adult girl. She's living with them through winter, but when the young people of the village go to spring feast, she sneaks out to take part in the fun. This includes that the girls have to lift their skirts and jump across a fire, which is a wellknown fertility ritual - and she wants to do like the others. She jumps across the fire, and she melts like ice, she disappears. This folk tale is much more complicated and beautiful than I have told here. It's described in lots of connections.

Snow Maiden, ballet

The Russian Christmas and New Year's celebrations also include some  dressing up, like carnival, more or less colourful and more or less refined. It also includes dances like ring dance and other Russian folk dances. In some places children and youngsters dress up and go out singing. The old custom was that the house they visited put good food and other good things in their sack, and they sang songs of praise for them, but if people were stingy they sang libellous songs. After the tour they gathered in a cottage and went on feasting sharing what they had in their sacks.

Another custom connected to Christmas and New Year's Eve was to tell fortune. It was very popular, and it is still used in some places - it was especially common among young girls. The girls went to a foretell-meeting without making the sign of the cross by the door as they used to, they walked aside the usual paths to the meeting-place, they turned the sacred pictures to the wall and covered them in a cloth, and they told fortune in places, which had no connection to any gods or any ikons, places like the bath house, which was always placed isolated down by the water, the river or the lake. One way in which to foretell was in a plate with a little water, in which was melted wax or stearic - and then they took omens from the emerging patterns. The girls was usually guided by an experienced woman, preferably a widow, who helped them interpreting the omens.

It seems that those meetings also included a pawn-omen. The girls delivered an object, like a ring or earring, to the leader, who - following some rituals -  put them in a bowl with water and covered it while stirring. Then they sang some special omen songs. After each song an object was chosen, and the owner was connected to the song. The songs were not what they seemed to be. If they sang a song about the rich suitor, then it meant early death, it they sang about the rutting tomcat, then it meant early marriage etc.
 

Pewter hand mirror

A mirror was a usual object in foretelling, and the custom is described in "Eugenie Onegin" by the Russian poet Pushkin. He tells about Tatjana who "lifts her mirror to the moon, but in the dark mirror glitters only the sad moon". She had hoped to see an image of her suitor. Under her pillow she has a girl's mirror. The mirror is an important part of the old folk tales like the troll mirrors. And Tatjana begins to dream -  and her dream is a strange and creepy description of a reversed wedding. Under her pillow Tatjana has probably placed a bridge, a mostick - she has bound some straws in a little bunch, and she has said a long string of words which tells her suitor to help her to cross the bridge. The bridge has an important double role in Russian folklore. It's a symbol of both wedding and death.

It's difficult to know how much and in how many places customs like these are still performed, but like in other countries some old customs have survived - often in other shapes. I think the folk tale about the Snow Maiden is absolutely  beautiful. The Snow Maiden is seen in lots of versions, in various folk tales and in poetry  - she's a part of both classical and modern music - and in ballets and operas by Tshaikowsky and Prokofieff, but here is a short moment from a ballet, the Snow Maiden with music by the Russian composer Vladimir Podgoretsky.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Happy New Year!
Various Customs Around New Year

The New Year is celebrated worldwide with great fun and fervor, it's a perfect time to think of the year ahead and forget the past and at the same time remember to enjoy the celebrations with family and friends. New year is a time for new hopes, festivities and indulgences. The exact date of New Year was not known until the Romans gave the date for the New Year celebrations to be January 1st. It depends on the time zone of the country for the exact time of the New Years Eve.

The regional traditions and customs like taking part in the New Year parade, dancing, singing, enjoying fire works and indulging in parties are all a part of the New Year celebrations worldwide. Gifts are exchanged and people wear gorgeous clothes to make the New Year celebration worldwide more complete. New year is the time to visit families and friends and enjoy eating delicious mouthwatering recipes. Making New Years resolutions on New Year is a custom that is observed worldwide. This custom dates back to the early Babylonians.


Various New Year Customs
Medieval Feast of Fools
In Medieval Britain, January 1. was the Feast of Fools, also celebrated in Paris from about 1198-1438, a day of licensed jesting – a kind of religious April Fool's Day. It was a crazy day on which low clerical officials could swap places with the higher ones, a mock pope was elected and churchmen parodied religious rituals - for just one day. It harkens back to the feast of Saturnalia in ancient Rome, for several days from December 17. when a Lord of Misrule was appointed to rule temporarily for Saturn. It was also known in Latin by various names, including festum fatuorum, festum stultorum and festum hypodiaconorum and was like various other celebrations, such as the Feast of Asses, and the Feast of the Boy Bishop.

Although the festivities often became anti-ecclesiastical, anti-clerical and even blasphemous, for centuries, the Church allowed the people to revel on this day. In 1440, theologians in Paris argued, in defence of the Feast of Fools, that even a wine vat would burst if the bung-hole were not opened occasionally to let out the air. However, there were often objections raised: In Paris in 1199, Bishop Eudes de Sully imposed regulations to ensure that the abuses committed in the celebration of the January 1 Feast of Fools at Notre-Dame didn’t happen again, and perhaps they didn’t for a time. The Bishop of Lincoln, England, was another who condemned the feast mercilessly. The celebration of the Feast of Fools was eventually outlawed in 1555.

Britain
When Scots and northern English people welcome a first-footer (the first person into their home after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day), they hope it is a fair-haired man for luck. He must enter by the front door and leave by the back, symbolising the old and new years.
The people of Yorkshire and northern England have among their many old customs the tradition of guising on New Year’s Eve. Guising is a centuries-old practice of going from door to door singing songs - trick or treating at Halloween derives from guising. The Welsh open the back door before midnight on New Year’s Eve to let the Old Year out, then they lock it. At the last stroke of midnight on the clock they open the front door to welcome the New Year.
Ancient Britain gives us many well and sacred spring customs. The first water drawn from a well on January 1 is supposed to bring fortune and happiness, and is called the Cream of the Well. It is customary to leave petals floating on the water. The wells at Wark, in Northumberland, UK, are supposed to have magical powers on New Year’s Day. In Wales, drawing fresh spring water as a New Year’s Day custom might have survived at the town of Tenby as late as the 1950s.

Continental
Polish tradition is for vagabond players to put on street pantomimes on New Year’s Day. Gypsies, too, are on the streets, fortune telling. A century ago the Sicilians on New Year’s Day ate lascagne cacate, or “crappy noodles”, a kind of lasagne. To eat any other sort of pasta today was considered bad luck. Their saying went “Whoever eats macaroni today will have a bad year”. People of Madrid, Spain, have an interesting old New Year’s custom: at the stroke of midnight each person eats twelve grapes. The cinemas will even stop running a movie at midnight to allow the patrons to eat their grapes.

Asia
As in many parts of the world, in Japan the New Year is brought in with noise. Here, temple bells sound, ringing out the old year. Then the joyano-kane, or nightwatch bell, rings in the new with precisely 108 chimes. This, according to Buddhist tradition, helps free mankind from the 108 “earthly desires”. A good idea has swift feet - the chiming of bells rings in the New Year in Japan and England as well as in Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Romania. As in many parts of the world, in Thailand the New Year is brought in with the tolling of bells – temple bells. People say "Kwam Suk Pee Mai!", meaning Happy New Year! Today Thai children will exchange presents with family and friends, and the general populace will present Buddhist monks a thanks offering of rice and other food.

Russia
The Russians don’t have Santa Claus, even though Saint Nicholas is patron of Moscow. They have Grandfather Frost (D’yed Moroz) at New Year, with his comely and daintily named assistant, Snegourka the Snow Maiden. They bring presents to children on this day. The people of the former Yugoslavia have their Deda Mraz. Like Santa, he brings presents to the children. He arrives a week before Christmas and asks what gifts they would like, delivering them on January 1. The Russian have New Year trees instead of Christmas trees, with more than 50,000 decorated trees erected in Moscow public places and 700,000 in private homes of Moscovites.

photo: gb