The Spirits #16: The Americano

~ Musical Café Drinks ~ Happy Ever After America ~ Tipper Gore Was a Friend of Mine ~ Farinata ~ Give Coolidge a shout of joy! ~

~ THE AMERICANO ~

35ml Italian vermouth
35ml Campari
Fizzy water

Fill a tall glass with ice and a slice of citrus. Open the designated bottles and upend them over the glass, such that that the Earth’s gravitational pull compells the liquids downwards. Once you have liberated approx. 35ml from each bottle, return them to their customary uprightness. Stir. Chuck in some fizzy water, stir again and that’s about it.

Some Americano pointers:

1) It’s basically equal parts Campari and red Vermouth topped up with water with a lemon slice, not really a cocktail so much as (per James Bond) a “musical café drink”, the sort of thing a gently perspiring Milanese waiter can knock up in about five seconds. I feel free-pouring the Campari and vermouth is entirely appropriate but if you’d prefer to measure, go ahead.

2) Despite its simplicity, there are two ways you can go wrong here. As with the Americano’s coffee-based namesake, it is extremely easy to ruin with too much water (naming no names EVERY CHAIN COFFEE OUTLET IN GREAT BRITAIN). Be sparing with that fizzy water and you will find it is very much the equal of the Negroni, much more uplifting too at this time of year.

3) The second potential screw-up is: not stirring enough. You will need a bit of ‘up and down’ stirring as well as the more habitual ‘round and round’ stirring here, otherwise the water will end up sitting on top of the alcohol. Not nice!

4) You will find the Americano formula highly adaptable. Try subbing out the Campari for another amaro like Fernet-Branca, Cynar, the French Suze or anything really; worth fooling around with different vermouths too.

5) Citrus-wise, I used lemon, but orange is good too (and commended by the great Alice Lascelles) and so are grapefruit and the on-season blood orange.

Some MUSIC. Aaaaaaaaaaaand welcome to the Pleasure Dome, please sit down.

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Well Sleepy Joe had done it,
The Democrat had won it,
With Mitch McConnell clucking all the while…

… And as the military sousaphones played out the last bars Lady Gaga’s classic 1956 hit This Land Is Your Land, President Biden punched the air and the world breathed a sigh of relief. Greed had been vanquished, untruth smited - and malevolence had got it in the family jewels. Amanda Gorman raised a sparkling red cocktail to the sky, calling for unity, togetherness and Americanos for all. All was well and all manner of thing would be well. The orange stains came right out in the wash.

Mike Pence expired of hypocrisy in the motorcade home. Kamala Harris ripped off the mask of the evil Q and what do you know? It turned out to have been Donald Trump Jr all along! “I can’t believe we fell for that shit!” hollered the 74 million and vowed to be a bit more discerning about things they read on the internet in the future. “Take him away, Scooby-Doo,” the VP commanded and the crime-fighting dog obliged.

As for Donald Snr - he was banned from the sport of golf forever. The feds eventually caught up with him a few months later as he was trying to launch a TV comeback, selling CBD-infused protein shakes on the Fox Shopping Channel, but even then, the memes felt a bit half-hearted. By the summer, barely anyone remembered who he was. It was as if we’d all woken up from a terrible dream. By this point, the AOC reforms had bedded in, equality was soaring, the environment was doing great and the very idea of racism had come to feel bizarre and archaic - like child labour, or the 2nd amendment.

“Why are you so happy?” some wise-guy on Twitter asked (when social media was still a thing). “It’s not like it’s your country.” But the effect on America’s allies was remarkable. Britain Trump gave a speech on the steps of Downing Street, unprecedented in modern political history, repudiating every one of his untruths, apologising unreservedly for his and his colleagues failings, and vowing to retrain en masse as dinner ladies. Kuenssberg, Peston et al, were stunned. “Surely he’s joking?” But he was sincere for the first time in his life - the effect weirdly moving. The Government of National Unity that followed took the radical move of lowering the voting age to six and it turned out to be a great idea. Soon after this, a novel strain of Coronavirus was discovered, more contagious than all the others, only this one had no ill-effects and actually made everyone who caught it much more patient and nice-smelling. The schools reopened and I was able to do more than three minutes of thinking at a time without being interrup…

What? Oh sorry, I have been on the Campari - and - oh… Well. It’s amazing what a tiny glimmer of hope can do. Makes a change from America, No! But funny thing about the Americano is that while it’s named after a certain country, it actually couldn’t be less American. It’s so Italian, so subtle, so light, so bittersweet and full of silliness and sprezzatura. Then again America was itself named after an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, which just goes to show… something or other.

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PLAYLIST

The theme for this week’s playlist is America from the Outside. All the songs are about/inspired by America, some more literally than others, but they are mostly by not-Americans (with the exceptions of Leonard Bernstein and Alynda Lee Segarr). It is harder to compile a list like this than it sounds as most songs that comply with the above criteria are horrendous. But there are many gems. I hope you like listening to them as much as I’ve enjoyed pulling them together.

CW: Opera
CW: Yeah I know Young Americans would be the more appropriate David Bowie song, but this one - from the same album - felt Right.

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FARINATA

You should always have something to eat at cocktail hour. An excellent thing to eat is farinata, a Genoese snack that you will not believe is made from little more than chickpea flour and water. It is gluten-free and vegan but you’d never know. This recipe is adapted minimally from Rachel Roddy, onto whomse excellence I have just cottoned.

150g chickpea flour (look for gram flour in the Indian bit of a supermarket)
450ml water
~75ml olive oil
Salt
Rosemary (optional, ideally stolen from a neighbour’s front garden)

Whisk (I initially wrote ‘whisky’) the chickpea flour and water in a bowl and leave for at least couple of hours, preferably more. It won’t look right. But it’s OK, I promise.
When you’re ready, preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Coat a baking tray in the olive oil (get it all the way up the sides). Rewhisk the chickpea flour and water, add some good salt and chopped rosemary if you like, and pour into the baking tray and lightly swizzle. It still won’t look right but it will still be OK.
Now bake for about 20 minutes until golden. Alchemy! The watery mess will turn into the nutty-umami-custardy-crispy Americano accompaniment par excellence. Leave for five minutes if you can bear it, then cut/scrape out the pan in squares or triangles and eat immediately.

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WHAT I’M READING

Sathnam Sanghera on British Amnesia over Empire (The Times)

Masha Gessen on the Russian opposition hero, Alexei Navalny (New Yorker)

Among the Insurrectionists. (New Yorker)

Brooklyn Bridge by Vladimir Mayakovsky (A poem)

Simon Jenkins on the Government’s weird aversion to helping people who actually need help. (The Guardian).

This was from a while back but I just read it and found it elegant and timely: Mia Levitin on loneliness / solitude during the pandemic (UnHerd).

And belatedly… Victoria Moore tells you everything you wanted to know about triple secs but were afraid to ask (and gives the Spirits a nice mention too!) (The Telegraph).

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SHOPPING LIST

Light rum (I mean white rum; same thing); sugar syrup; lime; and some green cardamom pods.