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Anthony: Welcome to the Art of the Drink my name is Anthony Caporale and we are working again with our drink art girl Carolyn. How are you doing this week?
Carolyn: I am great, how are you doing?
Anthony: Good, good now we are going to do an extremely classic drink, this is going to be part of our art of the drink classic cocktail series. This is a drink that I have been wanting to do for a long time and I have actually several requests for it, it is called the SideCar and it is one of the classic martini family drinks.
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As I always I will go ahead and set my glassware and I will build this drink in the tin. Big scoop of ice in the tin, everybody knows this by now and the base for this drink is cognac. You know what cognac is?
Carolyn: Sort of.
Anthony: Okay, well I am going to tell you.
Carolyn: Great.
Anthony: Cognac is actually a type of brandy and brandy is distilled liquor made from grapes. You can make distilled liquors from pretty much anything that has any kind of a sugar content in it, if you make it from grapes it is called brandy, if you make it from a Gabi cactus for example it is called tequila, if you make it from malted barley it is called scotch. We are going to use brandy and the thing that sets cognac aside from regular brandies is that cognac is actually produced in the cognac region of France. There are certain things that you have to do to in order to call it cognac, you have to age it at least two years in French of barrels and has to be certain type of grape and things like that but it is generally considered to be a little bit higher level of brandy. Now, you can make this drink with regular brandy but I recommend that you go ahead and splurge because it is the main ingredient in the drink and there is not a lot else in the drink. We are going to use two ounces of cognac in this. Next ingredient is triple sect and triple sect is an orange liqueur, which means it is low alcohol content, barely sweet and flavored and the flavor in triple sect is orange. I will use about a half ounce of triple sect and now lemon juice. Some folks will use sour mix which is a bar mixer that is made from lemon, limes and some sugars and stuff like that it is packaged involved. I like to use fresh lemons for this so I will go ahead and get my cutting board. People have seen me do this before I juice a lemon I always kind of roll the lemon on the bar and lean on it and what that does is break up all the pulp and starts to get the juice moving around the lemon, you end up getting significantly more juice out of the lemon believe it or not.
Carolyn: Good to know.
Anthony: Yes and I will just cut it in half and I will take this and squeeze it right all over you, right into the tin. Do not worry too much about seeds or anything going in there because this is going to be strained and the strainer will catch most of those so go ahead and get as much of that lemon juice in there and you want the juice of just about one half of a good size lemon. All right, all set and now we shake and whenever I shake a drink, I want one hand on the bottom of the tin and one hand on top of the glass and I am really going to shake it. I will shake it until the frosts forms on the tin.
Carolyn: That is a lot of shaking.
Anthony: It is a lot shaking and this chill the drink and this aerates the drink it introduces air bubble into the drink, which allows your nose to get involved when you drink. A little bit of trivia. Your tongue can only really taste four flavors, sweet, sour, salt and bitter so everything else that you have ever tasted is you really smelled and by introducing air into the drink. That as you are drinking it those little bubbles pop, and the gasses inside the bubble which have all the flavor of the drink go up into your nasal passage and go to your nose. You can now taste a lot more of the drink when you aerate it so that is one of the other reasons why I am a big fan of shaking drinks. And to garnish this drink I am going to do what is called a twist and again viewers have seen me do this quite a bit. Good fresh lemon. You cannot do with an old lemon and you get a twister and what I am going to do is I am going to twist it over the drink because I have made probably a hundred thousand of this but if you are just getting started in making twists do not worry about so much doing it over the drink. Just try and get a good nice twist but I am going to do it over the drink and you can kind of see as I am doing that you get all of the essential oils of the lemon go right on top of the drink. Coat that drink so you get a lot more flavor that way, as well and then I take the twist and I fold it in half with the yellow side out. The white side in and I rub it on the rim and also that introduces the flavor as well of the lemon into the drink and then why it is called the twist is you go ahead and give it a little twist. Release even more essential oils, drop it in, half in, half out of the drink and I glossed over that very quickly because viewers have heard me say it a million times but that is really important and that is our classic SideCar. Want to give it a shot?
Carolyn: Absolutely.
Anthony: Outstanding. Each week our art of the drink video podcast price package will consist of a Makers Mark apron, a copy of my Art of the Drink volume one bar essential DVD and a limited edition version of That Special Touch a Makers Mark cookbook not available in stores.
What are we going to do first?
Carolyn: Ice.
Anthony: Set our glassware.
Carolyn: Right.
Anthony: Right.
Carolyn: That is what I said.
Anthony: Right, that is what I heard, good, exactly now shaker tin full of ice.
Carolyn: Okay.
Anthony: All right, and we want two ounces of brandy, cognac in this case.
Carolyn: Right.
Anthony: Very nice, and a half ounce of triple sect, good job.
Carolyn: Thank you.
Anthony: Now we are going to do the lemon thing.
Carolyn: Okay.
Anthony: Nice work.
Carolyn: Thanks, I bake cookies.
Anthony: Good to know.
Carolyn: You make this look really easy you know, oh no broken lemon.
Anthony: That is my job and now we are going to shake.
Carolyn: For an eternity?
Anthony: Yes, one hand on top one hand on the bottom, yes just like that and good, nice work.
Carolyn: Thank you. I do not think there is not enough frost to stop right?
Anthony: It should push your finger off the tin, you should actually feel it forming and kind of pushing your fingers off the tin.
Carolyn: Okay.
Anthony: Now removing is a whole other thing, twisting never works. What you want to do is the tin is always leaning or the glass is leaning one way in the tin and in this case it is leaning towards us so you want to go to a 45 degree angle to that, take the heel of your hand and take your fingers and just like that.
Carolyn: Oh, of course. Thank you.
Anthony: And the strainer, this is actually kind of a neat little thing and people see me use this a lot but I have never really actually explained it. The strainer fits on top of that and it has four prongs to keep it from going into the glass and your finger goes right behind that tab and what you should be able to do is control the amount of liquid coming out of the strainer by moving the strainer back and forth. You want to keep it pretty much open but if you start to get chunks of ice and stuff going in then you close that back down.
Carolyn: Great.
Anthony: All right. Nice pour, good work, look at that, going to do a twist?
Carolyn: Yes.
Anthony: Let us do it. So for right now do not worry about doing it over the drink. I just want you to get a good twist and I want you to go ahead and set the twister into the fruit and then twist the fruit, not the twister and you know you are doing it right if it gets all over your face and you want to go once all the way around. This is great because you can see, it is was like 4th of July right coming up. Look at that and in theory you want all this to go in the drink, which is getting there eventually but it is better if it goes there directly and now the yellow side out. White is bitter, yellow is sweet right and then rub and again you turn the glass and not the tw
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