Catherine M. Allchin - Drink

Catherine M. Allchin

Freelance writer based in Seattle. Food, Travel, Science

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Bitter Much?

4/18/2017

The Seattle Times - WHO KNEW THAT Seattle is home to “Nirvana for amaro geeks?”

In the book “Amaro: The Spirited World of Bittersweet, Herbal Liqueurs, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas,” published last year, Brad Thomas Parsons names Barnacle in Ballard one of three places in the country for extensive inventories of bitter bottles as well as friendly help in demystifying the world of amaro.

Several years ago, most bars would carry nothing more than Campari and Fernet-Branca. But recently, with the trend toward bitter cocktails, more amaro from Italy has become available in the United States, and domestic producers have been popping up. Now it’s common to find an entire row of amari at your neighborhood bar or liquor store.

Move over hot chocolate, make way for sipping caramel

12/13/2016

The Seattle Times - IN WINTER, there’s something about caramel sauce that is totally fitting. So fitting, in fact, you just want to drink it.

Autumn Martin, the owner of Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery, explains how to make sipping caramel, a decadent winter treat. It starts with quality “true” caramel sauce. “Most caramel sauce available at grocery stores isn’t real caramel,” she says.

The sweet sauce most of us are familiar with typically is made by heating the sugar with other ingredients. However, the traditional technique is to caramelize the sugar by itself, essentially to begin to burn it, before other ingredients are added. Martin follows the old-school method.

Drink your dessert with orgeat

11/22/2016

The Seattle Times - THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, consider serving dessert cocktails made with orgeat. Or-what? Orgeat (pronounced or-zhat) is a French almond syrup, an essential ingredient in the Mai Tai as well as the classic Japanese Cocktail. Orge is French for barley, and orgeat originally referred to the age-old method of making barley water. Over time, aromatic almonds replaced barley, and orgeat found its way to the bar. Your best bet is to make it at home. Don’t bother with artificial commercial syrups. When orgeat is made well, it is killer — thick, nutty, sweet, luscious. Plenty of easy DIY orgeat recipes are available online, using blanched almonds, water, sugar and a touch of orange blossom or rose water.

I pursued a more flavorful and labor-intensive version, courtesy of Jesse Cyr, general manager at Rob Roy in Seattle. Rob Roy makes several drinks with orgeat, and the owners are opening a tiki-themed bar called Navy Strength.

It's rhubarb season: Time to make cocktail bitters

4/12/2016

The Seattle Times - NOTHING SAYS springtime like rhubarb.

When the tall red stalks are in season, I like to savor them in as many ways as possible: pickled, baked in pies, simmered into compote, soaked in a sweet syrup and infused into cocktail bitters.

Aromatic cocktail bitters are made by steeping a combination of bark, roots, herbs, spices or flowers in a neutral high-proof spirit. The highly concentrated elixir is added in dashes to brighten and balance drinks. A few drops can also transform seltzer water.

At their best, rhubarb bitters taste, of course, tart and grassy like rhubarb, but they also wow the palate with citrus and spice tones. I was searching for a DIY recipe that produced this trifecta of rhubarb, citrus and spice. Some best-selling rhubarb bitters are overly sweet and perfumed due to artificial flavors and glycerin. I was after purity.

Shrubs - tasty, healthy drinks made with vinegar - are making a comeback

8/18/2015

The Seattle Times - HAVE YOU COME across any great shrubs this summer? Not the small bushes, but the vinegar-fruit syrup that is, shall we say, cropping up in cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks alike. Who would drink vinegar? People have been doing it for thousands of years, even though it might seem like the latest trend in a glass.

To learn about shrubs, I turned to beverage rock star Anna Wallace. Wallace ran the bar at The Walrus and the Carpenter before starting Seattle Seltzer Co. This summer she introduced the beverage program at Chop Shop Café & Bar in the newly opened Chophouse Row on Capitol Hill.

Wallace began making shrubs and sodas several years ago.

“The tangy and sweet combination in a shrub lends a deeper flavor profile to drinks,” she says. “Drinking fermented fruit is good for you, whereas drinking commercial soda is not.”

The word shrub is said to come from the Arabic sharbah, which means “a drink.” Vinegar-based drinks have long been considered to possess medicinal properties and cooling effects. Before refrigeration, people also fermented fruits and vegetables to preserve them and used the resulting syrup in drinks.

Cocktails that capture the essence of summer

7/24/2015

The Seattle Times - “Summer afternoon . . . those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” – Henry James

SUMMER AFTERNOONS and evenings deserve beautiful drinks. Not just a cold refreshment, but a concoction that captures the essence of summer with vibrant colors, textures and smells. And, of course, a killer combination of flavors. The best drink is like a summer garden: fragrant, lush and dizzyingly wild. To step up the cocktail game this season, all you need are fresh ingredients and a wee bit of advance preparation.

Drinks are transformed by homemade syrups, fresh fruits and herbs. It takes just a few minutes to juice citrus, make a syrup or macerate herbs. These simple steps are what put the “craft” in craft cocktails. As with cooking, use the freshest, ripest ingredients possible.

Spirit + Bitter + Sweet = Negroni: You can make it many ways

2/27/2015

The Seattle Times - I HAD MY first Negroni in a lava cave in Kenya, mixed by an Italian and served by a Maasai warrior. All other cocktails pale by comparison.

A classic Italian libation, the Negroni is thought to have been developed by Count Camillo Negroni in Florence about 100 years ago. Made of equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, it is a compelling balance of sweetness and bitterness, simplicity and complexity. With the recent resurgence of bitter cocktails, the classic Negroni and its modern variations are taking off.

After returning from Africa, I bought Campari and Italian vermouth and began mixing Negronis at home. I was hooked. When I mentioned it to a friend, she said “A what?” Then she looked it up online and found the Negroni described as “a thinking man’s drink.” Hmm.

Old World absinthe and more from Pacific Distillery

10/31/2014

The Seattle Times - HOW DID one man from Everett manage to take double gold at the World Spirits Competition in 2011? It all started with his mother’s anise cookies.

Growing up in North Seattle, Marc Bernhard always loved the licorice-like flavor of his French-Canadian mother’s cookies. An appreciation for anise stayed with him, and as an adult he found himself searching for old bottles of absinthe, a potent liquor that was banned in this country for 95 years.

Make your own soda with fresh rhubarb-strawberry syrup

6/20/2014

The Seattle Times - MY FRIEND Kathryn is a pen pal of sorts. Instead of exchanging letters, we send bottles back and forth via our children’s cubbies at school. Our messages to each other are liquid — homemade, drinkable and full of unique flavor. I bring her a dark eyedropper bottle with pear bitters; she later leaves me a clear vessel of pumpkin syrup. These gifts of taste are no surprise to our boys. When he sees Kathryn with a new concoction, my 11-year-old asks, “Is that a tincture or a syrup?”

What a pair: matching the right wine to the right food

11/15/2013

The Seattle Times - WHO SAYS a wine list can’t be stellar without a Chateau Latour? Seattle’s thriving restaurant scene proves that great wine programs are built by owners and staff who know what guests want and how to offer wines to enhance their particular style of food. With smaller plates in vogue, the prospect of pairing can become especially challenging. Here we look at three places in the region that create exceptional food-and-wine experiences.

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