Linking the Normandy
November 29th, 2008
Outlining is a skill I had not anticipated needing as much as I do in law school. The most interesting/disheartening thing about it, is that I have found a point, where the outline is between 30-50% done where I just don’t want to look at it. It is like staring at the sun. I work at it for a bit, and have to step away, then after a while, it becomes more natural, and I can deal with it.
This distraction leads to more posts. I’d like to think they will last…but I’m not going to kid myself.
As I have a few tabs open, I thought I’d close one.
A while back Mark Bittman of the NY Times posted a video about mixing drinks. The gist of the video was that anyone can do it at home (good) and that a margarita was basically anything you damn well wanted to call a margarita (bad). I felt for every bartender who might now have customers arguing that the proper way to make a drink was the way they made up at home. I wrote to Mr. Bittman, and was perhaps a little indelicate, rude even. There was no swearing of course, but I was quite exasperated and it came across in my letter. He was quite kind about returning my email, which left me duly chastened, but still convinced of the rightness of my point.
So I want to point out this cocktail making video for a drink called the Normandy. It looks like a good solid drink, it’s done in the simple minimalist fashion that I think would be Bittman approved, and it isn’t going to make a bartender curse you under their breath. It also has a couple of nice tricks that you can pick up from it.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:47 am
So how do you feel about vodka martinis?
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Well, technically they’re a different drink. Back in the day, they were called a Kangaroo. I can see why no one wants to be caught dead ordering that in a bar though. My big problem would be that too many people are really just looking for cold vodka, and make a point of saying there is too much vermouth.
If you call it a vodka martini when you order it, and you want vermouth, vodka, and maybe an olive or a little bitters to ornament the flavors? That’s totally fine by me. The issue that caused my rant was saying that tequila and the juice of half a lime was a margarita. You need the sweetener. It’s a sour. Variations are possible, but you can bend a thing so far that it breaks.