Posts Tagged ‘Jenn’

At Home with Jenn : Homemade Syrups

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Jenn Sharon

The art of mixology to me is about three things:

1) Creativity. The creative process in cocktail making is key. You’ve got to be willing to try a few bad experimental drinks before you land on a great one. Start with a foundation spirit (let’s say gin), and build from there. Ask questions of your perfect cocktail– what flavors to YOU think compliment gin? What flavors do YOU like in general? Do you want gin to be the pronounced flavor in your drink? If not, what do you want the pronounced flavor to be?

2) Ingredients. These can include juices, bitters, fruits, syrups and even spices, but of course your main ingredient in the cocktail is alcohol. Having several different ingredients on hand makes experimenting with cocktails fun.

3) Accuracy. A heavy hand may be awesome at a house party, but it can ruin a drink. I’m not saying your drink must be to the exact milliliter of the recipe, just to be mindful of your measurements.

Today I’m going to talk about ingredients. Well, one kind of ingredient—syrups. It is pretty often when I’m writing for Art in Bars that I’ll want to include a syrup I’ve made but then I have to tell myself “Jenn, you are the only person that has a ginger pineapple syrup, so you can not put it in the recipe.” So, I am going to teach you readers how to make simple flavored syrup. (more…)

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At home with Jenn – Fake-Out!

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Jenn Sharon

Brrrrr!! Winter is here for real. Snow is on the ground, coats and boots are by the front door and winter’s icy hold has turned our thoughts to the playful blooming days of spring.

Oh and of course our cocktails are hot! Spiked hot chocolates and rum covered teas dominate our winter palettes.

But what if the heat in your apartment is on, and you are settled in for the night or maybe you just don’t feel like a warmed libation? Just take everything you were going to put in your hot drink and make it classic and cool. For instance the Fake-Out!:

You’ll need—apple juice, cloves, lemon juice, powdered cinnamon, whiskey, brandy, allspice and honey.

The Fakeout

The Fakeout

In a cocktail shaker add:

2oz brandy
1oz whiskey
3oz apple juice
Splash of lemon juice
_ ounce honey
3 or 4 whole cloves
1 or 2 crushed allspice
Pinch of powdered cinnamon

Shake it up and pour it out. All the tasty qualities you’d find in a warmed apple cider, without the heat. The brandy is spicy itself so that helps to bring out the other spices, and the lemon juice and honey help to meld all of the different tastes together.

I think you’ll find this drink to be a delicious manipulation on the traditional drink. Plus your tea kettle will get a night off! Garnish with a cinnamon rim or a slice of apple. Stay bubbly Philadelphia!

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An Ode to Beer

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

By Jenn Sharon

Ok readers. I like beer now. Before this fall I wasn’t really into beer for two reasons:

1) When I was a young lass first learning how and what to drink, I didn’t slam brews with the cool kids. I drank whiskey or bourbon. Usually just on the rocks. I somehow knew even then that whiskey would give me more hollers for my dollar. And at 21, I didn’t have a lot of dollars. Maybe it was the inner geek in me, but a $4 beer at 4.6% ABV and at 16 oz versus $6 of Jack Daniels at 40% ABV and at around five or six ounces would equal out to be about 15% ABV for me. In other words, I would have had to drink 3 lagers to equal the same amount of a buzz, and that wasn’t good for my wallet! Because of this I believe I just didn’t get into beer.

2) Just like with wine I feel there is a good amount of snobbery associated with beer. Looking at it, swirling it around, smelling it and talking about it in the context of regions and countries; going to bars with 10 page beer lists and so on. Very much the opposite of the working class coming home from work and grabbing a cold one perception I’ve carried with me all of these years. I mean, can you imagine the Roseanne character Dan Conner trying to order a beer from say, the Abbaye?

Beer, Something Jenn now likes

Beer, Something Jenn now likes

But then a funny thing happened at a wedding I attended last fall. The bar was wine and beer only; red and white wine and 3 different kinds of beers. Since it was too hot for wine I chose the beer available with the highest alcohol content. That beer was Lancaster Milk Stout and from the first couple of sips I fell in love. I thought that this beer had been brewed for me and me alone. Not hoppy, dark and creamy with a rich, sweet taste. I loved it so much that after congratulating the bride I started asking where she found the beer and where I could get it (Sorry Calen!)

After that I was on a mission to find and drink anything that called itself a milk stout and that broke off into cream stouts and oatmeal milk stouts and so on and while some have been better than others I think this is the niche of beer for me.

But then I realized something – maybe it’s ok if some people are beer snobs, or dorks, or whatever. And without people like that digging up ancient recipes and caring what region of hop or grain goes into a beer there wouldn’t be the creative craftsmanship that brought Lancaster Milk Stout to me. So you live and you learn, and sometimes as a reward you get a delicious beer!

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Shhh – Secret Bars

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Philadelphia has no shortage of restaurants or bars or gastro pubs or any sort of new hybrid of all of these things that may come out as this article is being written. Places in this town will open and close before I even realized it was there. (Seriously, what is the name of the latest restaurant on 12th and Locust?) Drinks will be either expensive or cheap, and food will be some sort of fusion of every culture that has ever existed with an American spin. Oh, the restaurant industry.

But sometimes though you can find a hole in the wall restaurant that serves beer or cocktails; an unexpected gem in the culinary journey of life. The food in these secret bars is usually more authentic and the drinks are inexpensive. For instance Chinatown is steeping with secret bars. You can get some of the best food of your life and get $2.00 beers or $4.00 cocktails. Mah Lai Wah’s, Joy Sin Lau’s, Sang Kee’s Peking Duck house are all places I love and love to get my drink on.

Another place that you may already be familiar with is Midtown Diner. Now I know that they have closed most of their locations but I believe there is still one on 11th and Sansom. The food is reasonable and they will bring with beer right to the table, you don’t have to sit at the counter. 12oz steak for $10.00 and a $3.00 miller high life, yes please!

In West Philly you have the Salt and Pepper on 47th and Chester right up the street from Clark Park. This take out joint will serve you some of the finest hotplate specials you can imagine –seafood+fries, chicken fingers+mac and cheese plus breakfast sandwiches, and although the beers there are carryout, there are tables inside and out where you can sit and eat. And the beer selection is out of this world. It’s no Foodery so you probably can’t even get a beer above $4.00. The food is good and the beer selection is great.

The newest place for me that I’ve found is actually a few blocks from me. Thang Long a neighborhood Vietnamese place on Sergeant and Kensington has fantastic giant bowls of soup and you can buy a half a chicken meal for $6.50 (P.S. – they get the chickens very fresh next door, at the chicken butcher). And of course super cheap beers to go with your meal.

So! It’s not fancy but these places get the job done. Better food than you can get in a bar and cheaper drinks than you can get in a restaurant, a win/win for me. Do you readers have a favorite secret bar? Let me know why it’s special—oldoldwoodenship@yahoo.com
Jenn Sharon

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Memory Lane – The Griffin and the Skank buses

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Once upon a time there was a bar in Old City called The Griffin. This bar had high pressed tin ceilings and beautiful copper walls, a long bar area and wooden booths for extra seating. It also was the home of the D.J. stylings of Lunch Money Productions on Thursday nights way back in 2006. The drink specials were great (Editors note – $5 pint cocktails if I remember. And I’m fairly sure I don’t remember.) and the company even better. But if I had to choose one memory of my time at this bar it would have to be the onslaught of Skank Buses!

The Skank Buses are those strange school buses that appear in Olde City and Northern Liberties at night. They are filled with (hopefully) 20-something college students from outside the city that are unloaded on Philadelphia corners to run the streets and into bars. The half block corner by The Griffin near 3rd and Market was a popular dumping point for these buses. Young men and women would get off of the bus and head right into the trashier old city bars (you know the ones).  We called them the Skank Buses because the ladies always dressed inappropriately for the weather and sometimes in costume, yet these college students were a force of numbers once they got off of the bus.

Sometimes, instead of going to the usual bars, some of them would stray from the pack and come directly into The Griffin. They would come in stumbling, falling, drunk and looking for more shots and a bathroom. Although most times these local students were something to be laughed at, occasionally things weren’t as funny – when you look out of the window and see a girl crying on the curb of Bank St. Or one other time when the bus parked outside of the Griffin and all of the kids got off . . . except one. This time ambulances were called for someone. I guess they partied way too hard ON the bus .

Even though this isn’t a memory of actual hijinks inside of the bar from me or people I know or knew, I don’t think my Thursday nights at The Griffin would’ve been the same without those crazy buses!

Jenn Sharon

(Editors note: You didn’t even mention the omnipresent vomiting! Or when the skanks would invade for like a 10 minute dance party before abandoning the joint. Or the fact that The Griffin closed due to a mysterious fire *cough*insurance scam*cough* or the weird secret passage to the bar next door. Good memories though.)

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At Home with Jenn – The Bubble Factory

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Ever since I saw Three Olives “Bubble” flavored vodka I have been obsessed! I needed to try it, even though I was pretty sure I already knew what it was going to be. It is packaged in a frosted bottle with pink top and pink circles in the back, so I figured it would taste like bubble gum. But why; why was there a need to create bubble gum flavored vodka? I see from the branding they are marketing to young women (perhaps that’s why it caught my eye) but do young women really like that taste of bubble gum? Enough to commit it to alcohol? One slightly clever choice by Three Olives is in the actual name; Bubble, not Bubble Gum, giving the impression that the flavor might be more sophisticated. I’m thinking if you put bubble gum on the label people won’t buy it. Anyway, I bought it. It’s a novelty and I know that.

So what do you do with a novelty alcohol? A cocktail that’s doomed from the beginning? I was having a little trouble getting started, and I was making drinks that were kind of gross. Nothing blended with this Bubble vodka, so I checked out the Three Olives website for ideas. I knew from the “suggestions” on the webpage that Three Olives never had any intention or forethought for what a Bubble cocktail was going to be. They had two drinks listed: one was to mix it with Red Bull and the other was to mix it with Sprite. Shenanigans, Three Olives! I’m calling shenanigans — those are not cocktails! Anyway, after several failed attempts at creating a drinkable drink using Bubble vodka, this is what I’ve made—The Bubble Factory

The ingredients - if you dare

The ingredients - if you dare

In a cocktail shaker combine:

2oz Three Olives Bubble vodka
2oz amaretto
1oz crème de cacao
Splash sweet vermouth*
1oz lemon juice
Teaspoon of sugar or simple syrup

Shake well, then add to serving glass and finally top off with Champagne or Sparkling wine. The amaretto and sweet vermouth give this drink gives this tipple a dark amber color.

But I have to be honest with you, I wouldn’t even bother making this drink (an ‘At Home With Jenn’ first) or ever buying Three Olives Bubble vodka. The cuteness factor ends as soon as you open the package. However, if you already have a bottle you need to get ride of, and want to make slightly palatable,  try this recipe out.

*it has been suggested to me that this drink may not need the sweet vermouth. I thought it sealed the flavors together a little more, but please feel free to play around.

Jenn Sharon

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Drink Me – Tequila and Tonic

Monday, January 11th, 2010

TnT - not much to look at, but should be a well staple

TnT - not much to look at, but should be a well staple

Tequila and tonic. Ok, I know this drink sounds crazy. Or maybe you think it sounds delicious. However you vote I think you should give this drink a try. The tequila and tonic is exactly what it sounds like; tequila, tonic, and a squeeze of lemon or lime. Even though this drink has an interesting nickname, TnT, this acronym is wildly misleading as a description to the actual taste [Editors note - I think though for the effect it is apt. Especially if you have a few at a happy hour.]

The flavor is sweet with a little bitterness at the end. The citrus flavor blends nicely with the tequila taste, and all together you have a smooth, lightly tart, flavorful cocktail. The sugary quinine and acidic limes will also cover up any unpleasant taste from let’s just say a “lower quality” tequila. So of course on the opposite end of the alcohol spectrum I wouldn’t recommend that you use your $55 bottle of 100% blue agave tequila for this cocktail.

If you get this drink at your favorite local bar, you may get some strange looks from your friends and maybe even the bartender — but this mix should qualify for any happy hour well drink special, and much is more original and delicious than Jack and Coke or Cranberry Vodka.  So whether you try it at your local pub or in your kitchen give this concoction a shot you’ll be glad you did!

Jenn Sharon

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At Home with Jenn – The Mariner

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Sweet drinks are everywhere – pineapple this and appletini that – you can pretty much guarantee that by splashing some fruit juice or sweetened mix into your plain alcohol you’re on your way to a decent cocktail. But what’s up with the savory mixtures; cocktails that include vegetables, spices, peppers, or juices from the sea? There just aren’t enough of them in my opinion. Here is a wonderfully zesty alkaline revelation on a dirty martini, The Mariner.

You’ll need: gin or vodka (I suggest gin), dry vermouth, pepper vodka, clam juice, olive juice, 4 whole peppercorn, Tabasco; chipotle if you have it, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and sugar

The Mariner

The Mariner

In your cocktail shaker filled with ice add:

4 oz gin
Dash dry vermouth
1/2 oz pepper vodka
1 oz clam juice
1 oz olive juice
4 freshly crushed peppercorns
2 dashes Tabasco (or Chipotle)
2 dashes Worcestershire
Splash lemon juice
Half a pinch of sugar
Shake for 30 seconds, pour into martini glass, garnish with olive.

Do you see what I did here? I pretty much combined a traditional dirty martini recipe and a Bloody Mary recipe (without the tomato) to create a savory spin on a mixed drink. Play around with this recipe! Maybe you’ll like more clam juice, or use white or pink peppercorn instead of black peppercorn. This is the kind of drink you can make to truly customize to your taste. Spicy vs. salty. Tangy vs. boozy, and so on. Happy mixing!

Jenn Sharon

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Memory Lane – Mom’s and Second Chances

Monday, December 21st, 2009

What's that out the window?

What's that out the window?

With the holidays around the corner, and I think nearly all of us really do take this time to reflect and appreciate good times and good friends. So in the context of ArtinBars this is a tale of two bars and one bartender that I am thankful for.

The story begins way back in July 2000. It was my birthday; and a bunch of my friends from Tower Records where I worked came out to Tattooed Mom’s to help me celebrate. We were there most of the night. Enjoying the music and drinks and birthday vibes! As the night was wrapping up we got the check of course, and everyone threw money at the person holding the check, he counted it a few times and laid it neatly in the center of the table then waved the server (the lady that wore the sunglasses all the time) over to grab it.

After that, I left. I think everyone else did too. I spent the next 15 early morning post-birthday minutes walking with my friend Brian to my Center City apartment.

Probably about a month later, August 2000, a few coworkers and I went to Tattooed Mom’s after work. We all ordered drinks, and my friend Brian and I didn’t get drinks and the other 2 people at the table did. Minutes upon minutes passed, still no drinks. We looked around . . . it wasn’t busy and our server, the same server from my birthday was nowhere to be found. Finally the server came over with a check for the two drinks, slammed it down on the table and told us to leave. The four of us looked at each other with shock! We asked why, and she started pointing at me and Brian. She explained to us that we were part of the group that stiffed her a few weeks ago. That ‘we’ racked up a large bill and didn’t pay any of it and that we were no longer welcome at Tattooed Mom’s. Brian and I were stunned. On that birthday night there were about 10 people at our table. Of course I didn’t pay for any of my drinks (but who does on their birthday?) others covered that. Plus Brian and I were one of the first to leave and there was money on the table when we were saying our goodbyes and leaving.

Dum Dums

Dum Dums

I felt terrible. Someone stole the money from the table, and stiffed the poor server. Now she was mad, I couldn’t come back to Tattooed Mom’s and none of this was my fault.

Fast forward to 2004: I’m now working mornings in Old City which leaves my afternoons free to hang out at my new favorite spot: Sugar Mom’s. After several Wednesday afternoons there, I built a friendly rapport with the Wednesday bartender; Josh. One day Josh is telling my friend and I about an event at Tattooed Mom’s that we should attend. I sighed. I decided to be straight with Josh. I told him the whole story, and why I’m not allowed at Tattooed Mom’s. Josh told me that he has worked at both of the Mom’s for years, that I am a great patron, and to stop by Tattooed Mom’s the next time he was working there and everything would be fine. I almost cried! But I didn’t. I did however count the days until the day we agreed upon. On that day I nervously walked from work to 5th and South, walked in, sat down and was greeted with a smile and a beer. I’ve never had a problem there again.

I am thankful that I was given a second chance at one of my favorite bars in Philadelphia and thankful to bartender Josh, who gave me that chance.

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At Home with Jenn – The Lit Candle

Monday, December 7th, 2009
The Lit Candle - a winter warmer

The Lit Candle - a winter warmer

It’s almost winter. Winter is truly a magical time; it somehow makes people forget about the whole icy quarter. Every year we get sucked in to shininess and sparkles of the beginning of the season, with its promise of presents and parties. People gather together to eat large meals and drink creamy cocktails, all the while forgetting the second gelid slice of winter — the post January portion; complete with dirty city snow, super short days, and weeks at a time with bone chilling temperatures that no amount of layers can stop. This year, I’m going to start praying for spring now. Until then, I’ve created a warmed libation that will melt your frigid heart after you’ve fallen in the snow. It’s a buttery rum toddy, and take note that the almond extract brings all the spices together, smoothing them to create a decadent winter cocktail.

What you’ll need for “The Lit Candle”
Rum, Brandy, Triple sec, Butterscotch schnapps, Apple cider, orange juice, cinnamon stick, orange slice, clove, butter and almond extract.

In a saucepan warm:
4 cups of Apple cider
1 cup of Orange juice
Cinnamon stick
Orange slice
3-4 cloves (more or less to your taste)
1 teaspoon butter

Combine ingredients and simmer on low to medium low in the saucepan for 10 minutes. Stir gently. Do not boil. After the ten minutes add:

4oz rum
4oz brandy
2oz butterscotch schnapps
1oz triple sec
5-6 drops of almond extract

Continue to simmer and stir for about 2 more minutes. This ensures all the flavors combine. Pour into glasses and enjoy! Place an orange slice on the side or drop an entire cinnamon stick into the glass. This recipe serves 4.

Stay bubbly Philadelphia!!

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