Nigella Lawson: From hamster to domestic goddess

By J.M. HIRSCH (AP)

NEW YORK — In my defense, I was sipping on an empty stomach. And I was with Nigella Lawson, a beautiful woman who has made a career of bringing out the steamy side of cooking.

We were at the posh Soho House, sitting in overstuffed easy chairs and chatting about her new book, “Nigella Christmas.” At least for a few minutes. “There is something very comforting about making a festival out of something that relies on cold and darkness,” she said.

“People are always told you can have a stress-free holiday. You can’t,” she added. “Cooking and family. You bring the two things together and it’s incendiary.”

Yet, she firmly believes it’s possible to bring joy if not to the world, at least to your friends and family. That is, after all, the point of her book. “People are predisposed to have a great time,” she said. “You almost have to go out of your way to have a horrible time.”

At that point, things got a bit fuzzy.

We were sipping a cocktail she recently was swooning over and had asked the bartender to recreate, a sort of vodka gimlet made with elderberry liqueur and served straight up in a martini glass. It was sweet, strong and beautiful.

The discussion rambled pleasantly from our kids to ghosts of Christmas past, including her stint playing the all-important hamster in her school’s nativity play as a child. We never did get back to her book, which left me with not much to write.

So I decided to recreate her vodka elderberry gimlet and use that in lieu of a story. And I worked hard at it. First, because elderberry liqueur is hard to find. Second, because the drink I kept making looked nothing like what we drank together.

But it was tasty. To be sure, I e-mailed her the recipe. She was polite about my stupidity.

“Well, ours was just two parts vodka to one part elderflower (not elderberry) cordial,” she wrote. “But your version sounds good: I just think that 3 ounces of vodka is quite a lot; a usual shot is 1 ounce, and I think I wouldn’t go above 2 ounces!”

Doh! Elderflower liqueur is a subtly floral, pale drink. Elderberry most often shows up as a syrup used in cough medicine.

Fearing vodka on the brain may have tainted other memories of the conversation, I checked that she hadn’t really said she’d been the nativity elephant.

“While I said that I was the hamster — you know that crucial part of the nativity story — I rather think my sister and I were chipmunks. Yes, chipmunks,” she said.

It felt good to know I wasn’t the only one whose brain was mush. And so I offer both cocktails.

___

THE NIGELLA

Start to finish: 5 minutes

Servings: 1

2 ounces vodka

1 ounce elderflower liqueur

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine all ingredients. Cover and shake, then strain into a cocktail glass.

(Recipe provided by Nigella Lawson)

___

THE NIGELLA (TAKE TWO)

Start to finish: 5 minutes

Servings: 1

3 ounces vodka

1/2 ounce elderberry extract (be sure to use one that contains no other flavorings)

1/4 ounce lemon juice

2 ounces ginger ale or ginger beer (the former has a more mild ginger taste)

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine all ingredients. Cover and shake, then strain into a cocktail glass.

(Recipe inspired by Nigella Lawson)

More Moonshine: Catdaddy

Sometimes you get a product from the Liquor Fairy that you just can’t quite figure out. Back when I got a bottle of Piedmont Distillers’ Midnight Moon moonshine, they also sent me a bottle of their major moonshine-based product: Catdaddy. The kitty is one such hard to figure out product.
Often, these oddball bottles get shoved to the back of the shelf for weeks or even months, and never get written about, I’m ashamed to say. Others are either just bad, boring, or are beyond my comprehension. And they also don’t get written about because your life and mine are both too short for bad, boring, or incomprehensible boozeblogging.

And yet,
you continue to post?

Shut up.
I’ve had this bottle of Catdaddy for a while now, but it hasn’t gotten shoved aside. It’s been sitting there beside my bar, staring at me. I haven’t stored it because it has a fascinating taste, but I also haven’t written about it, because I’ve had the dickens of a time coming up with a good recipe or two to make it shine as well as I somehow knew it had to. I’m not alone. The president of Piedmont, and Catdaddy’s pop, Joe Michalek seems to feel roughly the same way I do. (Only of course ore strongly) He told me, Defining Catdaddy as a spirit is just as hard as describing its taste…. At this point, we haven’t tried to define it. Rather, we’re letting people who love Catdaddy guide the way.
From the written description of Catdaddy, I was expecting something along the lines of a gin-like liquor—a bathtub gin companion to the moonshine of Midnight Moon. But Catdaddy has a definite sweetness that makes it more of a liqueur than a liquor. But it is full-proof and aromatic, so I’ve kind of lumped it into more the Chartreuse or Benedictine category of liqueurs, rather than the Kahlua or Tuaca style. After tasting it a bit to begin with, the closest ingredient it feels like is Cointreau, as it also possesses a definite orangey, herbal quality.
As to what’s actually in Catdaddy, Joe is not particularly eager to burden me or you with the particulars, but here is what he told me:

Catdaddy’s flavor is often surprising to people. It can taste a little different to each palate. Some people say that they taste nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon or citrus. While I can’t (wont-ed.) tell you what is in Catdaddy, I can say that it’s none of the flavors listed above. Catdaddy’s flavor was serendipitous. The short version of the story is that we were working on a traditional moonshine recipe for apple pie. Well, we never found an apple pie recipe we liked (yet), but did discover the one-of-a-kind recipe for Catdaddy.

At any rate, I decided to riff off of Cointreau uses for my explorations. My first shot (of course) was in a Pegu. Sadly, this simply does not work well at all. Something clashed. Badly. A little while later, I tried replacing the triple sec in a Margarita with Catdaddy (More on my Summer of Margaritas later on this blog. Stay Tuned!). This confirmed for me what I was already suspecting. Catdaddy don’t like limes.
I stumbled around further, always keeping at it because I love the smell of Catdaddy so much, and because it is just so freaking cool looking in that XXX-embossed bottle. My first real winner came out of left field, and I don’t know why I tried it at all. But it is good, thank you very much.

I was playing around with another Liquor Fairy offering, Kahula Coffee Cream, and pondering the mysteries of the White Russian. As I did so, the Catdaddy bottle started eying me again from the side of the counter, and I grabbed it too. The result is a lot more interesting than a basic White Russian, and I quite like it. You could use Catdaddy in a traditional White Russian in place of the vodka, but it just isn’t as good. I named this little concoction the Belomyolnya (Bellow-Me-OL-Ni-Ah), which roughly means “White Lighning” in Russian.
But I’m not usually a cream-based drink guy. I kept wanting to find a mix in my favorite school of cocktails, the Sours, that I could use Catdaddy for before I did this post. I finally have, and it just works great. Limes may not like Catdaddy, but lemons do just fine. And when I finally hit on the fact that the mainstream liquor Catdaddy goes best with is cognac, my work was done. The Gospel of Brandy makes for a great vehicle.

For some of the other uses for Catdaddy which have been proffered by those more and less qualified than me, check out the recipes page at the Catdaddy website.
Cheers, Y’all!

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.

Money Drinks: Cosmopolitan