The Spirits #31: The French Pearl

~ Ersatz-Absinthe ~ Gateway Drugs ~ Rien n'arrive plus ~ Have another one ~

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~ THE FRENCH PEARL ~

Five or six mint leaves
40ml gin
10ml absinthe or pastis
15ml lime juice
10ml golden sugar syrup

Smack the mint about a bit until it releases its secrets. Drop it into the shaker along with the citrus and sugar and muddle. Now add the alcohol and half a tray of ice cubes. Shake while whistling La Javanaise by Serge Gainsbourg. Now fine strain into a coupe that you had the foresight to chill beforehand. Garnish with a mint posy.

Three small pointers:

1) The original recipe - this is a ‘France by way of New York’ cocktail by the way - is 60ml gin / 5ml Pernod / 20ml lime / 20ml sugar + mint. But I found it (in the manner of many American recipes) just a touch too sweet and not quite aromatic enough. So I have translated it to my favoured 50:15:10 sour formula. See what you think.

2) I planted some spearmint in a pot earlier this year and I’m so glad I did - it’s approximately 4x better than anything you can get from a supermarket. Do the same! Your Juleps will thank you.

3) If by some strange miracle you have no absinthe but you do have another herbal liqueur, e.g. Chartreuse (green or yellow), crème de menthe, génépi, farigoule de thym, Becherovka, etc, by all means give that a whirl.

SALUT! Quelque MUSIQUE… il est bien le temps pour LES ESPRITS.

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You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations for a cabinet here - and this here is the full archive of weekly specials. Do please share the Spirits with anyone who might like it - and feel free to tag me with your creations on Instagram or Twitter. Also scroll to the bottom for what to get in for next week! 👇

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A BRIEF POST, I’m afraid, as I’ve been floored by illness for most of the week (though mercifully rallying in time for the weekend, thank you!) If I were someone else’s boss as opposed to my own, I would have given them the week off - but I couldn’t bear to leave your Fridays uncocktailed. So here is this week’s drink. It’s a good one.

It’s the French Pearl, invented by Audrey Saunders at her NYC bar Pegu Club in 2006. As soon as I saw the recipe (on Alice Lascelle’s Instagram, around this time last year, as it happens) I simply had to make it - and as soon as I had made it, I declared: “That is my new favourite cocktail!” I am prone to declaring this quite frequently - cocktails have that effect on me - but actually the French Pearl has remained a fixture in my top drawer ever since. It is simple and logical and also about the most sophisticated iteration of the sour formula you can make with ordinary ingredients. It’s palate-cleansing and appetite-whetting at once, redolent of secret gardens and forbidden lawns and the bite in the breeze on a bright May morning. It’s exactly what you should be drinking at this time of year.

It is also a gateway drug to all those anise-forward drinks of which the continentals are so fond: pastis, absinthe, ouzo, raki, etc. I have found myself steadily upping the absinthe quantities in all manner of other drinks too. The original actually calls for Pernod as opposed to absinthe but, FUN FACT, Henri-Louis Pernod actually started out making absinthe. After absinthe was banned in France in 1915, the family company simply lowered the proof and called it ‘Pernod’ in order to get around the ban. I have been reading a lot of George Simenon’s Maigret novels recently and characters are often ordering “ersatz-absinthe” - which we can assume to be Pernod, or perhaps Ricard pastis (which also caught on post-French absinthe ban). There is a long and mildly diverting history to all this, culminating in Pernod and Ricard joining forces to become an anise-behemoth in the 1970s… but suffice to say that you can use pastis/Pernod/absinthe more or less interchangeably in cocktails, the main difference being absinthe is stronger.

Anyway: I never used to like any of this stuff. Had some baaaaad anise experiences in my youth (ouzo in Athens… sambuca in Peterborough). And yet, I increasingly find anything on the anise flavour spectrum - licorice, tarragon, fennel, star anise, etc too - to be extremely pleasing. I wonder if this is a sign of age - just as you learn to like blue cheese and anchovies and start to find, say, Jelly Babies a bit gross… so you will eventually find yourself nursing an ersatz-absinthe frappé outside a small canal-side bar in the Marne departement while being questioned by a member of the Paris police about the body that turned up in the lock the night before. Yes, careful with that stuff.

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PLAYLIST

I enjoyed last week’s calypso-fest, so I figured, let’s stick with the national theme. So we are All-French this week. Quite simply a very rapidly put-together list of some French songs I like. Profitez-ens!

PLEASE NOTE! THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. Well, not automatically, I do it by hand, but my point is, follow the list and you will find musical refreshment. If you want to retrive an old list/song, here is an ongoing archive compiling all past songs.

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WHAT I’M READING

I enjoyed my old N4 neighbour Benjamin Ramm’s piece on the golden age of French TV (BBC Culture).

I’ve a feeling I shared this once before but John Lanchester on George Simenon and the Maigret novels is worth sharing again - these books have given me a lot of pleasure this last year. (LRB).

“For an Englishman, anything that allows him to earn a pound is legitimate. These are unfair competitors. This is their culture and we need to bear it in mind in our business dealings with them” - comment underneath an article on the Jersey fishing nonsense (Le Nouvel Observateur)

I spoke to a bunch of chefs about the plant-based future of fine dining (The Times).

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SHOPPING LIST

Gin, orange liqueur, French vermouth (bonus points for Lillet Blanc), lemon, absinthe.

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