Tequila Mockingbird Read online

  COARSE AND SEA SALT: The rough, grainy seasoning favored by foodies.

  COCONUT CREAM: A bottled, sweetened coconut product (a brand like Coco Reál Cream of Coconut) for tropical drinks.

  GRENADINE: A sweet red syrup that’s a snap to make, and loads better than the corporate high-fructose junk sold to bars.

  GRENADINE SYRUP

  Boil 2 cups bottled pomegranate juice (a brand like POM Wonderful) with 2 cups granulated sugar in a medium saucepan. Stir for 5 minutes, until it’s reduced to half the original volume, into a syrup. Bottle and keep in the fridge for months. Or days, if you party like us.

  HOT SAUCE: Available in any number of brands, all featuring a peppery kick.

  ORGEAT: A sweet syrup made from almonds, sugar, and orange.

  WASABI PASTE: A Japanese condiment—you’ve seen it next to sushi—that goes down hotter than Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

  WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE: Contains everything from anchovies to molasses, and adds a steak-sauce slurp to certain cocktails.

  THIRSTY YET? THESE DRINKS AREN’T GOING TO MAKE THEMSELVES.

  PART

  1

  DRINKS FOR DAMES

  “I like to have a martini,

  Two at the very most.

  After three I’m under the table,

  After four I’m under my host.”

  —Dorothy Parker

  Every night is ladies’ night in this section, but it ain’t all chick lit—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Yesteryear’s heroines may have been buttoned up to their Victorian eyeballs, but we’re rolling up our sleeves for a group of drinks as tart and tasty as the trailblazing leading ladies who inspired them. Featuring English feminists, demonic teens, and wicked nurses, the following recipes are worth a sinful sip. Books down and bottoms up!

  ONE FLEW OVER THE COSMO’S NEST

  ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1962)

  BY KEN KESEY

  Kesey’s groundbreaking novel, written while he was a student at Stanford, was drawn from his stint as a psych ward employee—when he wasn’t volunteering in LSD “trials” on the side. (The late fifties weren’t all Leave It to Beaver, gang.) Though narrated by a paranoid side-character, the hero of the story is McMurphy (Jack Nicholson in the firecracker film version), who leads his fellow mental patients in a rebellion against Nurse Ratched, a needle-wielding vixen who represents the tyranny of society—and seriously raises the question “Who’s the real crazy here?” Liberate your own hemmed-in ways with a Cosmo you’d be cuckoo to pass on.

  1½ ounces vodka

  1 ounce cranberry juice

  ½ ounce triple sec

  ½ ounce lime juice

  Combine the ingredients with ice in a shaker. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Code blue: it’s hard to stop at just one of these—especially if all the other voices in your head are parched, too.

  ETHAN POM

  ETHAN FROME (1911)

  BY EDITH WHARTON

  Talk about a tough winter: Edith Wharton packed this one full of snowstorms, adultery, and—anyone for sledding?—a full-on suicide mission, headfirst into a tree. We reckon that if tragic hero Ethan, tragic zero Zeena, and merry mistress Mattie had been alive during the self-help era, they could’ve worked out that love triangle in an old-fashioned, nationally televised quarrel. But don’t call us prudes—if they’d had a lick (or two) of our snowscape-inspired Ethan Pom slushy, who knows? They might have giggled their way into literature’s first thrupple.

  3 ounces Champagne

  3 ounces grenadine syrup (page 11)

  Pour the Champagne into a rocks glass and then pack with shaved or crushed ice. Drizzle the syrup on top. Now, go for a stroll through town with your most cherished partner-in-crime. (Just don’t let your boyfriend find out.)

  RYE AND PREJUDICE

  PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813)

  BY JANE AUSTEN

  Austen’s frothy nineteenth-century masterpiece, which brought the author little acclaim during her short lifetime (“Forty-one is the new dead,” sadly), follows a family’s efforts to marry off its five daughters, one of whom leads the narrative. Unfortunately, Elizabeth—famously played onscreen by Keira Knightley’s cheekbones—has a judgy streak that practically overshadows the love she has for Mr. Darcy, a stuck-up (but rich!) gentleman. Not to worry: there’s a delectable double wedding in the end. We match-make two strong personalities—spicy rye and zingy grapefruit—for an unexpected marriage that’ll get folks drinking, dancing, and dropping old judgments.

  3 ounces grapefruit juice

  1½ ounces rye whiskey

  Pour the ingredients over ice in a rocks glass, stirring like a complicated heart. We hold no prejudice against marrying up, ladies, but you don’t need a castle (or a king) to be a queen.

  LOVE IN THE TIME OF KAHLÚA

  LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (1985)

  BY GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  Never settle . . . even for a doctor . . . with a hot accent. Otherwise, you could go a half-century till you find the real thing. In Márquez’s version of romance, the zipper-straining desire of a trio of lovebirds is practically an illness, eating his characters from the inside out. Here, two teenagers fall in lust, but the girl chooses an MD to settle down with, leaving the boy to choose anything with two legs to settle the score. True adoration knows no calendar, and “fifty-one years, nine months and four days” later (but who’s counting?), the two are reunited again after Husband the First dies. Adored as a Colombian treasure, this book deserves a nod that’s as sweet as love and as spicy as lust.

  1 ounce light rum

  ½ ounce coffee liqueur (like Kahlúa)

  2 ounces light cream

  Ground cinnamon or nutmeg, to taste

  Combine the rum and coffee liqueur over ice in a rocks glass. Pour the cream on top and sprinkle a little spice. Now, drink to the heady brew of passion—even if the only foreign doctor in your life is on TV.

  BRAVE NEW SWIRLED

  BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932)

  BY ALDOUS HUXLEY

  Imagine a world dominated by antidepressants and governmental control over reproductive rights. (Oh. Wait.) Written in the thirties, Brave New World could’ve been copy-and-pasted from today’s headlines. Huxley penned a dystopian world in which embryos are preprogrammed for certain behaviors and needs, and technology is so revered that “Oh my Ford” is a commonplace utterance. While Huxley was an outspoken fan of psychedelic drugs, you can legally freeze your own brain with a swirly smoothie featuring a surprising aphrodisiac: watermelon. Hey, what you drink (and who you drink it with) ain’t nobody’s business but your own.

  1 ounce vodka

  1 cup seedless watermelon, chopped into coarse cubes

  ¼ ounce lemon juice

  ½ teaspoon granulated sugar

  ½ ounce melon liqueur

  Add the vodka, watermelon, lemon juice, sugar, and a handful of ice to a blender, running until smooth. Pour into a cocktail glass and float the liqueur on top. No matter your political leanings, one gulp of this and you’ll be more than brave enough to fight The Man.

  A COCKTAIL OF TWO CITIES

  A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859)

  BY CHARLES DICKENS

  For readers of All the Year Round, a weekly journal that Charles Dickens published himself, it took over thirty issues to tell a tale set between Paris and London during the French Revolution. Though the cities are the real stars, there’s a tragically romantic love story that plays out on their streets, starring a golden-haired beauty and the two men who are willing to die for her (talk about “the best of times”). Toast to sooty chivalry with our take on a famous drink that hails from “The New York Bar” in Paris: a Cocktail of Two Cities that requires nary a passport.

  1 sugar cube

  1 ounce gin

  ½ ounce lemon juice

  Champagne, to fill

  Place the sugar cube in a flute. Pour the gin and lemon juice into a shaker with ice, and shake
well. Strain into the flute. Fill to the top with Champagne. The result is revolutionary.

  THE COOLER PURPLE

  THE COLOR PURPLE (1982)

  BY ALICE WALKER

  This winner of both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer inspired a movie and a musical for its depiction of black southern life in the first half of the twentieth century. Alice Walker tells her novel in letters, first from a fourteen-year-old Celie, spilling her confusion to God, and later between a maturing Celie and her sister, whose correspondence from Africa highlights similar racial woes back home in Georgia. A modern classic, The Color Purple blooms bright for anyone willing to face its painful beauty. Cool off an oppressively warm night with a sweetly hued shot, pondering how far our world has come—and how much further we’ve got to go.

  ½ ounce blackberry liqueur

  ½ ounce peach schnapps

  ½ ounce light rum

  ½ ounce lemon juice

  Combine the ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a shot glass. Alternatively, double the recipe and invite your sister over. Nothing bonds as fast as booze.

  FRANGELICO AND ZOOEY

  FRANNY AND ZOOEY (1961)

  BY J. D. SALINGER

  A cat named Bloomberg, a dude named Zooey, and a girl who smokes in the tub: we spy hipsters! Originally appearing in two New Yorker installments as part of a larger series about the Glass family, J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey concerns a college coed who is so at wit’s end with campus poseurs and politics, she faints while at a restaurant with her boyfriend. He flees—hell, there’s a football game—and Franny’s left chanting a prayer, all by her kooky lonesome. With a religious wink to Frangelico, the nutty liqueur in a monk-shaped bottle, find your center by icing down those troubles over some decaf.

  2 ounces decaf espresso, chilled

  1 ounce hazelnut liqueur (like Frangelico)

  2 ounces light cream

  Put on a cardigan, a jazz album, and a frown. Then pour the espresso and liqueur over ice in a rocks glass, adding the cream on top. Not smiling yet? For the love of Brooklyn, be thankful you’ve got this much time—and this little responsibility—to feel so full of angst. It won’t last forever, baby!

  BLOODY CARRIE

  CARRIE (1974)

  BY STEPHEN KING

  Children can be so cruel. Sixteen-year-old Carrie White is already a social outcast when she adds every girl’s nightmare to the list: having her first period in a gym class shower. It gets messier from there, with scheming teens setting Carrie up to win prom queen, only to crown her not with a tiara, but—can’t get this at Walmart—with pig’s blood. Little do her fellow classmates know about Carrie’s secret telekinetic powers (it’s a Stephen King novel after all, his first to get published), and our heroine buttons the novel with a fair impression of Satan going through puberty. Spice up a legendary drink with ingredients even a schoolgirl has on hand—though there’s no way you’re serving this one virgin.

  5 ounces tomato juice

  2 ounces vodka

  ½ ounce lime juice

  ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

  ¼ teaspoon wasabi paste

  3 dashes hot sauce

  Salt and pepper, to taste

  Add the ingredients to a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass. Traditionalists would finish with a celery stalk, but if you’re a gal who likes to stir trouble instead of drinks, you’ll be too busy doubling the wasabi.

  HOWARDS BLEND

  HOWARDS END (1910)

  BY E. M. FORSTER

  Sad that the writer of “Only connect”—Howards End’s epigraph—had such a tortured time doing so himself. Edward Morgan (E. M.) Forster, the long-closeted novelist of the literary masterpieces A Room with a View and A Passage to India (the last book he’d write for fifty years, until his death), imagined three distinct families in Howards End, an English estate at the center of class tensions, inheritance resentments, and the rare death-by-falling-bookcase. Here, we blend the three distinct flavors of the vintage “Janet Howard” cocktail, for a posh but pronto drink. This’ll have you connecting in no time—with other people, God willing, not toppled furniture.

  2 ounces brandy

  ½ ounce orgeat syrup

  2 dashes Angostura bitters

  A perfect drink for the day you receive word your wealthiest relative has finally kicked the bucket passed on. Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into a cocktail glass—and gather the bravery to ask if you were left anything in the will.

  GIN EYRE

  JANE EYRE (1847)

  BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË

  You know what’s too tragic to be funny? A feminist survivor story published under a male pseudonym. With Charlotte Brontë writing as Currer Bell, Jane Eyre (think: Gloria Steinem in a bonnet) is the retrospective of an abused orphan-child turned bored teacher-girl turned lovesick governess-lady. Unfortunately, her groom already has a wife—Brontë didn’t give the heroine any breaks—and Jane sets off on a soul-quest, refusing subsequent marriage proposals and eventually landing the man, the baby, and the happy home. Brontë wasn’t so lucky; she died while pregnant, less than ten years after Jane debuted to acclaim. Raise a glass of English gin to a legendary lady, worthy of a sweeter finish than befell her.

  8 sprigs fresh mint, washed

  2 ounces English gin

  1 ounce lemon juice

  1½ teaspoons granulated sugar

  2 dashes orange bitters

  Add the ingredients to a shaker with ice, with bonus points if you tear the mint leaves first. Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass. Now nurse that drink like a good nanny.

  PARADISE SAUCED

  PARADISE LOST (1667)

  BY JOHN MILTON

  An apple a day may keep the dentist away, but the Devil’s no doctor. Paradise Lost, Milton’s seventeenth-century blank verse poem (don’t hold your breath for Dr. Seuss rhymes), was one of the first examples of Christian literature to paint Adam, Eve, and even your old friend Satan in gray strokes—it’s less good vs. evil than complicated vs. conflicted. Remarkably, Milton didn’t just write a twelve-part book, he spoke it: the author was blind, so he had to dictate the entire text to some kind of angel. Toast Milton’s Godlike effort with a recipe that features a sinful apple at its core. It’ll be worth the price tomorrow morning.

  Sugar, for cocktail rim (page 7)

  1½ ounces vodka

  1 ounce sour apple schnapps

  ½ ounce lime juice

  ½ teaspoon granulated sugar

  Rim a chilled cocktail glass in sugar and set aside. Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into the glass. You don’t need a man to enjoy life’s splendors, but prepare to pucker up after a sip of this sour sauce.

  THE JOY OF SEX ON THE BEACH

  THE JOY OF SEX (1972)

  BY ALEX COMFORT

  Keep a legend around long enough and it eventually comes (ahem) back into style. Such is the case with The Joy of Sex, a cheeky (literally) seventies how-to guide that was modeled after cookbooks, subbing out ears of corn with ears of people. The original pencil drawings—featuring shaggy-haired, mustached men exchanging coital maneuvers with what appeared to be a grown-up Marcia Brady—have in recent years been expanded upon, fully fleshed out, and updated with all new terms (now introducing: STDs!). Bottom line? This book took the science out of sex and injected it with feel-great fun. Here, we offer our own position on the standby cocktail. Have a ball—and do sip safe.

  2 ounces pineapple juice

  1 ounce vodka

  1 ounce peach schnapps

  1 (12-ounce) can lemon-lime soda

  Combine the pineapple juice, vodka, and schnapps in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain over fresh ice in a highball glass. Fill to the top with the lemon-lime soda. Alternatively? Combine the ingredients, freeze in an ice cube tray, and then add a hot partner to the mix.

  A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S BEAM

  A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’
S DREAM (CIRCA 1600)

  BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Take two parts Ren Faire and one part Greek mythology, add a liberal dash of forest-dwelling nymphs, and you’ve got Shakespeare’s whimsical meditation on love and lunacy. An amateur might toast this oft-produced play with two melatonin and a gulp of cough syrup, but Lord, only a foolish mortal would try that—this is a dream, not a blackout. You’ll want to stay upright, if drowsily so, for a light, vegetation-heavy drink that will keep you skimming all five acts before a proper fairy-blessed slumber. You might just wake up in love.

  8 sprigs fresh mint, washed

  ½ ounce lime juice

  2 teaspoons granulated sugar

  2 ounces bourbon (like Jim Beam)

  1 (12-ounce) can club soda

  Muddle the mint, lime juice, and sugar in a highball glass. Add ice and bourbon, and fill to the top with the club soda. Sip to your imagination’s content—stopping only if your shadow begins to speak.

  THE POSTMAN ALWAYS BRINGS ICE

  THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1934)

  BY JAMES M. CAIN