The Spirits #88: The Pecan Pie Old Fashioned
~ Erm ~ Savage People ~ The Secret of Happiness ~ Let's Put Our Heads Together ~
~ THE PECAN PIE OLD FASHIONED ~
60ml pecan-infused bourbon (see below)
10ml maple syrup
Dash Angostura bitters
You know how to make an Old Fashioned by now, surely? Oh for God’s sake. Stir everything in the glass with lots ice. Be patient. Garnish with orange peel.
1) I emailed out the recipe for pecan-infused bourbon the other day; all you need to do is leave a handful of toasted pecans to infuse in a cup of bourbon for a few days (although see point 2). By all means use basic bourbon (or rye) if that’s all you have. And if you happen to have Fee Brothers’ Black Walnut bitters, that will work a treat too.
2) Erm. Speaking of which: did you actually make the pecan bourbon? And how was it? If no good, I can only apologise. I followed the method I’d found in at least nine online recipes, only mine was bitter and sinister in a way I can’t account for. I’ve never known an infusion like this to fail. It could have been that the bourbon reacted with the metal on the lid of the jar? It could have been that the jar was unclean. Or maybe I should have soaked the pecans beforehand - which might have muted the bitterness of the skins? I’m not sure! My advice is never trust online recipes. Here is the one from Death & Co, if you want precision.
3) American readers will still, I trust, appreciate the nod in the direction of the festival of Thanksgiving this coming Thursday. As a special one-off, I shall translate the specs into American too: so that’s 2oz bourbon, a hundredweight of maple syrup, one third of a cup of rutabaga, a bushel of scallions, and a quart of mayonnaise. Broil it all up in a skillet, garnish with a quail feather and call it Macaroni.
🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
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Ah yes, Thanksgiving. My first experience of this celebration came when a half-American friend invited me to one with her parents in London, around the time that the Wars on Terror were at their height. Her father was a Yale man, incredibly cultured, incredibly solemn (“Let us bow our heads…”), and his politics made Dick Cheney look like a member of the "wokerati. He was keen to impress on us youngsters that whatever stories we had heard about the native Americans sharing their turkeys with the European settlers ere liberal myths. “The Indians were a savage people,” I distinctly remember him saying. And there was me thinking that was something a bit weird in the settlers celebrating an act of generosity from a people they subsequently exterminated. Still, the sweet potatoes w/ marshmallow were divine.
I have been to many subsequent Thanksgivings and - sincerely now - there is a lot to be said for it. It is good, I think, to have a gathering of loved ones not centred on the compulsory distribution of presents. And that bit where you go round the table saying what you’re grateful for? Kind of nice. Gratitude is a worthy practise. I once asked the Buddhist Monk, Haemin Sunim for the surest way he knew to increase happiness - and he said, write down everything you’re grateful for. “If you’re actively looking for blessings, you notice them more.”
Research would appear to back him up. “In short,” write the authors of this study into the genetic component of gratitude that I found while perusing Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience the other day, “positive emotion of gratitude provides fuel for upward spirals of mutual responsiveness between dyad members, thereby promoting the quality of the relationship over time.” So there you go.
This week I am grateful for: unspoiled bourbon; nuts of all kinds; the way my two year old has come to use “choo choo” as a verb (as in: “I want to choo choo Henry! I want to choo choo Thomas!” etc); Louis Armstrong; Sigourney Weaver; a return to health; Olia Hercules’s borsch recipe; blue skies in November; the Brio company; friendship; and having a means to share my thoughts that isn’t Twitter.
I’m not missing the aforementioned social media platform. I am, perhaps, a little less alert to the scandal du second; and I said “who’s that again?” when a friend mentioned Sam Bankman-Fried in conversation the other day. (I also wonder if I haven’t developed a compensatory addiction the methedone of online chess). But I am enjoying going direct to source on things: to read the Autumn Statement, for example, rather than everyone’s opinions on the Autumn Statement. I’ve also read a number of Substacks too (see ‘What I’m Reading’ below). So: thank you, Elon Musk?
PLAYLIST
Readers of long-standing will recall that I once did a playlist called The USA from Without: songs about America by non-American artists (in fact, it’s the first one on the ongoing list, so, quite easy to find). So here is The USA from Within, featuring Lou Reed, Outkast, Nina Simone, Nat King Cole, Gillian Welch, and my favourite ever song by REM - who really set the vibe this week.
THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download/’like’ it and return to it each week in your Spotify to find a suite of new songs. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the massive ongoing archive of past playlists.
CABINET POSTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
🌿Green Chartreuse
🍒 Maraschino
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🌷Cynar
🏝️ Falernum
🌵 Mezcal
🐂 Sherry
WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING
I wrote this long-ish read on Burnout ‘22 at the tail-end of Omicron and now it’s out. It’s actually one of my favourite pieces I’ve written this year. (Men’s Health)
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
As a sometime Duolingo addict (I have Italian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, German, Swahili, Spanish and Portuguese on the go…), I enjoyed this account of its allure by Morwenna Ferrier. (Guardian)
I am a fan of Hattie Crisell’s Substack. This week she writes in defence of takign yourself seriously. “If you’ve spent any time on dating apps in the UK, which unfortunately I have, you’ll know that lots of people are apparently looking for someone who ‘doesn’t take themselves too seriously’. I find this completely baffling.” (In Writing)
She also refers back to this evergreen Oliver Burkeman piece, Everyone Is Totally Winging It All the Time (Guardian)
Brandon Taylor writes, for my money, the best literary Substack. This piece on the evolution of 21st century character is good. (Sweater Weather)
Oh and here’s Patricia Lockwood on George Saunders (LRB)
SHOPPING LIST
White rum, gin, grenadine, lime, Angostura.
🇨🇺
Worked brilliantly for me, four days soaking. A very pleasing cloudy old fashioned.
Yup, made the walnut bourbon and it was vile I’m afraid.