The Bon Vivant’s Companion

I’ve been working on this blog post since March.  Not because it’s so special, but because life happened, and then death did.

Originally, my plan was to write about the St. Francis Hotel’s newly opened Clock Bar and their best selling cocktail, the Persephone — a new drink done in a classic style by mixologist Marcovaldo Dionysos (who, unless he’s using a nom de plume, was clearly born to be a bartender.)

The Clock Bar, run by Chef Michael Mina, features world-class bar snacks and a cocktail menu that thinks it’s 1935.  But it’s not 1935.  It’s not even March any more, and this blog post has lingered unwritten long enough…

I’m a sucker for all things mythological and the Persephone, a cocktail made with Charbay vodka, homemade grenadine, and pomegranate juice, struck me as clever (and made me wonder why more libations aren’t named after Olympians…the Hephaestus anyone?)

Persephone, the goddess of spring, and daughter of Demeter (harvest) and Zeus (everything) was a hottie, devil-may-care kind of Olympian until Hades fell for her, dragged her to the underworld, and made her his queen.

Demeter, unable to find her daughter, rendered the earth barren while Persephone was missing.  Needing live people to worship him, and seeing no upside to mass starvation, Zeus stepped in and forced Hades to release his new bride.  Persephone was returned to her mother, but having eaten several seeds from an underworld pomegranate, she was tied to Hades forever.

(Travel advisory – skip the roadside snacks in hell.)

In a rare compromise, the gods decided to share, and Persephone spent the rest of her days splitting time between her mom’s house and her husband’s kingdom.

Mythology meets modern mixology. That was the concept.  That’s what I planned on talking about back in March, but as I said, life happened, and then, ironically, death did.

Shortly after I got home, and busy, and sick, my cousin Jamie died.  She was more than the word cousin implies, she was my little sister, my friend.  Jamie died suddenly, and young, and without much explanation.  Reeling is what I’ve been up to since it happened. In general, mornings have not been seen, work has not been done, and blogs have gone unwritten.

In dealing with the loss of Jamie, and my aunt’s grief, the myth of Persephone has taken on a whole new meaning.  I understand it better.  I know first hand that, if she could, my aunt would make it snow every day until someone gave her Jamie back.

So as the weeks have passed, and the fog has lifted, I’ve decided to revisit the Persephone.  After doing research, and discovering that there isn’t a definitive version of this cocktail (all apologies to Mr. Dionysos) I decided to come up with my own.

Because it’s summer now, I turned to gin as my base spirit.  I added homemade grenadine, pomegranate juice, and a little muddled mint.

Turns out, mint is a sacred plant closely tied to Persephone.  As the story goes, Hades cheated on Persephone with a nymph named Menthe.  When she found out, Persephone trampled on Menthe until she became a sprig of mint.

Maybe I find retribution funny, but I get a kick out of that story.  I think Jamie would too.

Here’s the recipe:
The Persephone
1 ½ oz Plymouth Gin
1 oz Pomegranate Juice
¾ Homemade Grenadine (I chose a recipe created by Jeff Hollinger, owner of Absinthe and author of “Art of the Bar”)
¼ Fresh lime Juice
3 or 4 pieces of mint
Fever Tree Bitter Lemon to taste
Mint for garnish
Put 3 or 4 pieces of mint in a Boston shaker, cover with Grenadine, and muddle ingredients until completely mixed.  Add gin, pomegranate juice, and ice, and shake until chilled.
Pour entire contents of shaker into a rocks glass.  Garnish with mint.

Jamie

Welcome to the Companion’s first, great big train wreck of a cooking post.  I wanted to blog about cooking with wine and ended up in mortal combat with a pot roast.  The pot roast won.  Not because I’m a bad cook, not because it didn’t taste good, but because I was unprepared to document my interaction with said roast.

Cocktails are simpler.  You need a handful of ingredients, ice, and at least one good picture, and then — cocktail time.

Food posts require a little more thought and, apparently, prep work and planning.  They need set up shots, sautéing shots, notes, and endless explanation.  Even for a humble freaking pot roast, a recipe I decided to try while watching Ina Garten’s Food Network show, The Barefoot Contessa.

It was in a segment called “Comfort food and Company.”  In thirty minutes the Contessa whipped up a pot roast while while a supporting cast of fabulous (pronounced faaabulous) design friends ran around the Hamptons gathering flowers for her table.

“I hope the guys remember peonies are my favorite.”

“Oh (huge inhale) Ina’s going to love these.”

“I wish you could smell this as the juicy bits reduce.  Now add 15 sticks of butter.  Delicious.”

Visions of East Coast dinner parties danced in my head as I headed off to the farmer’s market.  Unfortunately, wielding a camera in the meat department makes me feel less waspy and a little:

-Crazy
-Like a Spy
-Like a tourist who had never seen a steak.

(I also find responding to “May I help you?” with “I’m taking pictures for my blog.” Does nothing to ratchet down my “crazy in-public” feeling.)

Here is my picture of the meat counter at the Farmer’s Market on Third Street in Los Angeles, the best butcher in LA:

Once I started cooking, it was clear my roast was not living up to Ms. Garten’s televised effort and I, personally, was nowhere near as pleasant.

Stupid things threw me off my game.  I couldn’t get the Cuisinart (that I’ve owned for 12 years) to shut properly, and when I did, pulverized the vegetables.  I almost hacked a finger off crushing garlic, added too much chicken stock, and counteracted by adding more wine than the recipe called for.  (Which was a bummer, because drinking the wine was the thing I was most looking forward too.)  Overall, the TV personality I channeled was more Muppet Swedish Chef than Barefoot Contessa.

Exhibit A:

Here’s what I learned during my cooking-with-wine-TV-inspired-pot-roast-experiment:

-Cooking while very hungry is stupid.  I got grouchy fast and had to make myself a peanut butter sandwich to keep from passing out while I cooked dinner.

-2005 is a great, possibly epic year for Bordeaux.  A perfect wine for this dish.  Full bodied, and rich, it definitely added depth to the meat as it slow cooked.  You can find a quality Bordeaux for under $20.  Get something nice.  You should only cook with wine you would drink.

-Remembering to take pictures every five minutes is trickier than it sounds, so put the damn camera somewhere you can see it.

-Writing a cooking blog takes skill, or at the very least, organization.

The food blogs I read make it look so easy.  Here are a couple of very good ones:

Married With Dinner:  A husband a wife trying to eat locally in San Francisco.  You get stories of their travels, great food, and an occasional cocktail recipe made with fresh ingredients.  The photography is great on this site as well.

The Gluten Free Goddess:  I do not have a problem with gluten, but once a year my boyfriend and I go on a health kick. I stumbled across this site looking for recipes that were a tad healthier than the pizza with extra cheese that had become a staple.  The Goddess’ recipes are inspiring, and the photography is beautiful.

The French Laundry at Home:  Carol Blymire cooked every recipe in the French Laundry Cookbook.  I discovered this blog while white-knucking it through Thomas Keller’s recipe for Salad of Haricots Verts, Tomato Tartare, and Chive Oil.  I needed help plating the salad (before destroying $200 worth of salad ingredients).  Basically, I wanted a second opinion.  Carol was there with tips, photos, and an entire entry dedicated to the recipe I was attempting.  Besides being informative, her site was so damn serene.  She even listed the music she cooked to. For the haricots verts recipe it was, perhaps ironically, Salt-N-Peppa.

Carol has now moved on to the Alinea cookbook, and that site is worth checking out as well.

While schlubbing my way through my “Contessa Company” pot roast I did not listen to music.  I should have.  It would have covered the sound of me swearing like a longshoreman.

Looking to repeat my zen experience?  Follow this link for the Contessa’s Company Pot Roast recipe.  I will admit that the final dish, even after the errors and misfires, was very, very tasty.