MxMo LXXII: Drink Your Vegetables—Low Country Celery

Guest blogger Matt L. Miller sends us an original recipe in response to this month’s Mixology Monday, the theme of which is Drink Your Vegetables. I, Rowen, have the pleasure of hosting this MxMo here at Fogged In Lounge, and invite participants to create a drink around one or more vegetable ingredients in any form. Matt responds with a celery-salted Holland gin Martini illustrated by his photo and description below.



Low Country Celery

• 2 oz genever gin (Genevieve)
• 1/2 oz dry vermouth (Dolin)
• 2 shakes celery salt

Stir vigorously over ice. Strain immediately into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with one spicy pickled green bean (Tillen Farm).

Strangely, Anchor Distilling has found it necessary to add the following warning label to Genevieve, their genever-style gin: WARNING: This is NOT a gin for making martinis! It is a “Genever” or “Schiedam” style gin, for old-fashioned cocktail recipe mixing. Or enjoy it on the rocks! Well, I suppose some people had complained. But I’m an iconoclast, so I decided to make a martini variation despite the warning, having run out of more orthodox recipes for genever. Strongly herbal, of course, but with a real backbone from the rye. It needed salt to go with the genever’s funkiness. And maybe something bitter to cut the genever’s sweetness. Celery salt? Perfect! Leafy vegetables were brought out by the salt, the Dolin vermouth added some more flowery herbal notes, and the celery completed the salad. Oh, and a spicy pickled bean for fun and distraction.
MATT L. MILLER

Bronxathon: Spuyten Duyvil

Place names in the New York area have always fascinated me. Take the Bronx: it’s got a definite article, a letter ‘x’ at the end, and might even be some kind of collective noun—a totally distinctive name. Not really knowing what to make of it, I imagined a bunch of Lenape and Dutch guys standing around smoking cigars and talking to each other in New York accents, agreeing that this was the Bronx, a word common to both cultures, whatever it means. Later, I found out it’s named after a Swedish settler who worked for the Dutch, Jonas Bronck, from whom we get “Bronck’s River” and so on. But I’m still not convinced.

Anyway, they were drinking Dutch gin (genever) once upon a time in old New York, so I came up with a Bronx Cocktail variation based on this interesting spirit, and gave it a classic Dutch place name from the Bronx, Spuyten Duyvil. It seems this might mean “Spinning Devil” or possibly several other things. As you can see, folk etymology is something of a New York pastime.

Special thanks for the suggestion of the name to the same guy who called me all perplexed about the Bronx Cocktail in the first place. I’d say I couldn’t have done it without him, but we have another two weeks of this Bronxathon madness still ahead. Spinning devil, indeed.



Spuyten Duyvil

• 1 1/2 oz genever (Genevieve)
• 1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Dolin Rouge)
• 1/2 oz dry vermouth (Dolin Dry)
• 1 oz blood orange juice
• 1 tsp Cointreau

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

This is really the most different of the Bronx Cocktails I’ve done so far on account of the genever-style gin. Although technically a Bronx since all the pieces are there, the family resemblance isn’t that close. I like it, though. It’s bright, assertive and refreshing. The Cointreau could come up a little if you want it sweeter.

Nineteenth Century

Having been brought up in a mystery cult of the Very Dry Martini, I was braced for a shock from my first sip of genever-style gin, but anything in the name of science. Even so, it was way weirder than I had expected. Really? Is that what it’s like? REALLY? Well, it’s, um, REALLY?

Then I had a few drinks it worked with, thanks to David Wondrich, and genever became part of the routine.

The maltiness of genever combined with lemon juice reminds me a little of the lemon-cacao of the Twentieth Century, a Depression-era cocktail named for a then state-of-the-art passenger train. Genever is a spirit that returns us, at least for a moment, to a slower, more contemplative pace.



Nineteenth Century

• 1 1/2 oz genever
• 1/2 oz Swedish punsch
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1/4 oz Cointreau
• 2-3 dashes Regans’ No. 6 orange bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE