Le Pamplemousse!

As you can imagine, I read a lot of food magazines. I get lots of recipe ideas and I love reading about new products and gadgets. One of my favorites is Bon Appetit. I read it from cover to cover. In the new issue, they give out the Bon Appetit Awards and have featured a Hot 10 consisting of "people, companies, and products setting new standards of culinary excellence in food, drinks, travel, and design." It's a great list and you can check it out here.

I bring this list up because one of our favorite liqueurs is featured on it!

Here's the glowing praise Bon Appetit gives this lovely concoction:

St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur (Robert Cooper, creator), for giving innovative artisanal "flower power" to the home bar. Our hearts leapt at the sight of the bottle alone—individually numbered and faceted with alluring Art Deco lines—but it's the straw-colored liqueur with a bouquet oflychee and pear that made us forget the remainder of the liquor cabinet's contents. Created by Robert Cooper, a third-generation distiller, St-Germain is as freshly floral as only a liqueur made from handpicked wild elderflower blossoms can be. And while this artisanal elixir has us longing for crisp afternoons at a bistro in Paris, a bottle at home means one needn't bother with a barkeep to shake up a drink that tastes as rare as the first days of spring.

If you are unfamiliar with St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur I urge you to pick up a bottle or, at the very least, hit a bar and ask for a cocktail with it. The St-Germain website has a great recipe page (and the site's design is sublime). Go here to see that.

Here's my favorite use, however. It's a perfect drink that we've adapted from one featured on the menu at Marseille in midtown NYC. It's delicious if not just a tad, well, gay. It's got pink grapefruit and elderflower in it, hello!

Le Pamplemousse

3 parts chilled vodka
(we use Ketel One but for extra fruitiness use Absolut Ruby Red)
1 part St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur
2 parts fresh squeezed pink grapefruit juice
splash of Campari

shake in martini shaker with ice, strain and serve up, with a salted rim

Possible Atomic Slushy Palace?

My commute from my home in Westchester to my job in Manhattan ranges from 41 minutes to just over an hour, depending on what train I manage to hop on. Sometimes it sucks, I have to admit. But often the ride home is kinda cool. I get to unwind by watching the Hudson River go by. I can still work on my Blackberry if necessary. I can read or write or text with friends. Oh and often I get to enjoy one of these:

They're ice cold, aren't very pricey and they sell them all over the train station. Now, I used to purchase my bright blue beauty at a little mini-deli in Grand Central Terminal. I used to pass it everyday. The fella that worked there was very nice and, because he knew everyone was trying to both buy something and make their train, he was very speedy at his job. Ring! Change! Bag! Gone! It was awesome. Sigh. I'm sad to say, that mini-deli is no more.... BUT... this is:

I have no idea what The Beverage Bar will be. It may be the same deli/store just updated and rebranded... but I hope it's much more. When I first saw that the deli had closed and this "coming soon" message, I immediately pictured one of the potent slushy storefronts that line Bourbon Street in New Orleans. I pictured triple stacked Slurpee-type dispensers with amazing flavors like banana daiquiri, strawberry margarita, and hurricane. Now, if what I've conjured up in my mind is true then I'm going to have to take a different route through Grand Central. Even though the large hurricane one I had at my fraternity's formal in Nawlins many years ago made me projectile vomit bright red crawfish etouffee all over my rented tuxedo shoes, I still love those things.

Actually, let's just hope it's not an atomic slushy palace and that it's just a place to buy a quick beer or wine spritzer on your way home. I think that would be best.