Classic Cocktails: Sidecar
Anthony and Carlyn continue the AOTD Classic Cocktails Series and show you how to make a cognac martini!
Step 1: Meet Anthonny and Carlyn:
Welcome to Art of the Drink. My name is Anthony Caporale. And we are working again with our drink art girl Carlyn. How are you doing this week? I’m great. Good. How are you? Good, good. We are going to do an extremely classic drink. This is going to be part of the Art of the Drink Classic Cocktail Series. This is a drink that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and I’ve actually gotten several requests for it. It’s called a Side car and it is one of the classic Martini family drinks.
Step 2: Set glassware:
As always I’m going to go ahead and set my glassware and I’m going to build this drink in the tin. Big scoop of ice in the tin. Everybody knows this by now. And the base for this drink is cognac. You know what cognac is? Sort of. OK well I’m going to tell you. Cognac is actually a type of brandy and brandy is a distilled liquor made from grapes. You can make distilled liquors from pretty much anything that has any kind of a sugar content in it. If you make it from grapes, it’s called brandy. If you make it from agave cactus for example it’s called tequila. If you make it from malted barley it’s called scotch. So we’re going to use brandy. Now the thing that sets cognac aside from regular brandies is that cognac is actually produced in the cognac region of France, and there are certain things you have to do in order to call it cognac. You have to age it at least two years in French oak barrels, it has to be a certain type of grape and things like that, but it’s generally considered to be a little bit higher level of brandy. Now you can make this drink with regular brandy, but I recommend that you go ahead and splurge because it is the main ingredient in the drink and there’s not a lot else in the drink.
Step 3: Triple sec and cognac:
Alright so, we’re going to use 2 ounces of cognac in this. Next ingredient is Triple Sec and Triple Sec is an orange liqueur which means it is low alcohol content, fairly sweet, and flavoured, and the flavour in Triple Sec is oranges. Alright so I’m going to use about a half ounce of Triple Sec and now lemon juice. Some folks will use sour mix which is a bar mixer that’s made from lemons, limes, and some sugar and stuff like that, it’s packaged in bulk. I like to use fresh lemons for this. So, I’m going to go ahead and get my cutting board. People have seen me do this, before I juice a lemon I’m always going to roll the lemon on the bar and lean on it and what that does is break up all of the pulp and starts to get the juice moving around in the lemon and you end up getting significantly more juice out of the lemon believe it or not. Good to know.
Step 4: Lemons:
Yeah, I’m just going to cut it in half and I’m going to take this squeeze it, right all over you. Right into the tin, alright and don’t worry too much about seeds or anything going in there because this is going to be strained and the strainer will catch most of those. Alright so go ahead and get as much of that lemon juice in there and you want the juice of just about one half of a good sized lemon. Alright all set and now we shake and whenever I shake a drink I want one hand on the bottom of the tin, one hand on top of the glass and I’m really going to shake it. I’m going shake it until the frost forms on the tin. That’s a lot of shaking. It’s a lot of shaking.
Step 5: Chill and aerate drink:
OK and this chills the drink and it aerates the drink. It introduces air bubbles into the drink which allows your nose to get involved when you drink. Just a little bit of trivia, your tongue can only really taste four flavours right, sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. So every thing else that you’ve ever tasted, you’ve really smelled and by introducing air into the drink, that as you’re drinking it, those little bubbles pop and the gases inside the bubbles, which have all the flavour of the drink, go up into your nasal passage and go through your nose and you can now, you taste a lot more when you aerate it so that’s one of the other reasons why I’m a big fan of shaking drinks.
Step 6: Adding garnish:
And to garnish this drink, I’m going to do what’s called a twist and again viewers have seen me do this quite a bit. Good fresh lemon, can’t do it with an old lemon, and you get a twister, and what I am going to do is, I’m going to twist it over the drink. OK because I have made probably a hundred thousand of these, but if you’re just getting started making twists don’t worry about so much doing it over the drink. Just try and get a good, nice twist. Alright but I’m going to do it over the drink and you can kind of see that as I’m doing that you get all of the essential oils of the lemon go right on top of the drink and coat the drink so you get a lot more flavour that way as well, and then I take the twist and I fold it in half with the yellow side out, the white side in, and I rub it on the rim and also, that introduces the flavour as well, of the lemon into the drink. And then, why it is called the twist is, you go ahead and give it a little twist to release even more essential oils. Drop it in, half in - half out of the drink. And I glossed over that very quickly because viewers have heard me say it a million times but that’s really important. And that is our classic Side car. Want to give it a shot? Absolutely. Outstanding. Each week our Art of the Drink video podcast prize package will consist of a Maker’s Mark apron, a copy of my Art of the Drink: Volume 1 Bar Essentials DVD, and a limited edition of That Special Touch, a Maker’s Mark cook book, not available in stores.
Step 7: Now you try:
Ok so what are we going to do first? Ice? Set our glassware. That’s what I said. That’s what I heard. Good exactly. Now shaker tin full of ice. OK. Alright. And we want two ounces of brandy. Cognac in this case. Very nice. And a half ounce of Triple Sec. Right. Good job. Thank you. And now we’re going to do the lemon thing. OK. Nice work. Thanks. I bake cookies. Good. Good to know. Good. You make this look really easy, you know. Oh no. Broken lemon. That’s my job. And now we’re going to shake. For an eternity. Yes. One hand on the top, one hand on the bottom. Like this? Yes, just like that and good nice work. Thank you. I don’t suppose that’s enough frost to stop, right? It should push your fingers off the tin. You should actually feel it forming and kind of pushing your fingers off of the tin. OK. OK now removing is a whole other thing. Twisting never works. What you want to do is, the tin is always leaning, or the glass is always leaning one way in the tin and in this case it’s leaning towards us. So you want to go at a 45 degree angle, to take the heel of your hand and then take your fingers and just like that. Oh. Of course. Of course. Go ahead. Thank you.
Step 8: The strainer:
And the strainer, this is actually kind of a neat little thing and people have seen me use it a lot but I’ve never really actually explained it. The strainer fits on top of the glass and it’s got four prongs to keep it from going into the glass and your finger goes right behind that tab and what you should be able to do is control the amount of liquid coming out of the strainer by moving the strainer back and forth. OK so you want to keep it pretty much open but if you start to get chunks of ice and stuff going in then you close it back down. Great. Alright nice pour good work look at that. Thank you.
Step 9: Thanks for watching:
Ready to do a twist? Yeah. Lets do it. So for right now don’t worry about doing it over the drink, I just want you to get a good twist and I want you to go ahead and set the twister into the fruit and then twist the fruit not the twister. And you know you’re doing it right if it gets all over your face. And you want to go once all the way around. And this is great because you can see, it’s like fourth of July. Right. Coming up. Only lemon flavoured. Look at that. Right, now in theory we want all of this to go in the drink which it’s getting there eventually but it’s better if it goes there directly. And now. Yellow side out, white is bitter, yellow is sweet. Right and then rub it and again, you turn the glass and not the twist. Like this? Yes, and just go back and forth with this finger. There you go and twist the glass, once around. Good and then give it a little pig tail and a light twist. If you twist it, if you pull too hard it’s going to break. Alright a light twist right over the drink. Good and then drop it half in and half out. Like that? Right and then drop it half in and half out. See that was all the way out. Into the ice. OK sorry. Right half in half out. It a fine line. Right and there’s a trick to that too. If you take the twist and look at it and you take two thirds of the twist over the glass and one third over the out side it’s always going to be perfect. All these secrets you keep. See that’s why people watch. Ready to give these a try? Absolutely. Classic Sidecar. Salud!
