The Hemingway Cookbook
Page 19
1 SERVING
2 tablespoons honey
Juice of 2 lemons
Sprig of mint
2 ice cubes
Bacardí White rum
Place the honey, lemon juice, and mint sprig in a tall glass. Stir, pressing the mint against the side of the glass to release the oils. Add the ice and rum. Stir and serve.
Hemingway Daiquirí, Papa Doble, Wild Daiquirí, Daiquirí Special
The following recipe is based upon the Daiquirí recipe from El Floridita that Hemingway drinks with A. E. Hotchner in his book Papa Hemingway.
1 SERVING
2½ jiggers Bacardi or Havana Club rum (1 jigger = 1½ ounces)
Juice of 2 limes
Juice of ½ grapefruit
6 drops of maraschino (cherry brandy)
Fill a blender one-quarter full of ice, preferably shaved or cracked. Add the rum, lime juice, grape-fruit juice, and maraschino.
Blend on high until the mixture turns cloudy and light-colored, “like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots.”20
Serve immediately in large, conical goblets.
Deusico (Turkish Coffee)
In the late summer of 1922, Asia Minor was smoldering, ready to ignite yet again in the final, tragic chapter of the Greco-Turkish War. Hemingway to went Constantinople as a correspondent for the Toronto Star, to cover the Greek expulsion from Thrace. He witnessed their forced exodus from the city, an experience he would draw upon when he described the Italian retreat from Caporetto in A Farewell to Arms. He took in the entire spectacle, resting his imagination on certain things he found most intriguing. As he wrote about Constantinople, he described the food, eventually focusing on a drink that he must have deeply respected, if for nothing other than its brute, unrelenting potency:
Turks sit in front of the little coffee houses in the narrow blind-alley streets at all hours, puffing on their bubble-bubble pipes and drinking deusico, the tremendously poisonous, stomach rotting drink that has a greater kick than absinthe.21
Duesico, or Turkish coffee, refers to a method of grinding and preparation rather than a type of bean. You may either grind the coffee yourself, which involves pulverizing dark beans (such as arabica or Viennese) to a very fine powder and adding a pinch of cardamom. Or, you may purchase the coffee already ground. Be certain to note that there is cardamom in the mix. The coffee is prepared in a small, long-handled pot called a jezve, which you may find in finer cookware stores or Turkish markets. It may also be made in a small saucepan.
1 SERVING
1 tablespoon Turkish coffee
2 teaspoons sugar
4 tablespoons water
Mix the coffee, sugar, and water together in a jezve. Place the jezve over low heat and bring it to a boil three times, removing it from the heat each time before the foam runs over. After the third boil, rap the jezve sharply on the side to settle the grounds (you may also add a small splash of water to obtain the same effect). Pour the coffee slowly into a demitasse.
Hemingway with Perico Chicote, Mary, and friends at Chicotes in Madrid, Spain.
Gimlet
The overt tension between Francis Macomber and his wife throughout the story about his “Short Happy Life” on safari in Africa begins at the very start of the story, over lunchtime cock-tails with their white hunter, Robert Wilson:
It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.
“Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?” Macomber asked.
“I’ll have a gimlet,” Robert Wilson told him.
“I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber’s wife said.
“I suppose it’s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed. “Tell him to make three gimlets.”
The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind that blew through the trees that shaded the tents.22
While Raymond Chandler’s legendary detective Philip Marlowe insisted that the only way to make a gimlet was with equal parts vodka and Rose’s (lime juice), the gimlet of the Macombers’ day was still a gin drink.
1 SERVING
1 ounce gin
1 ounce Rose’s lime juice
Fill an old-fashioned glass halfway with ice. Add the gin and lime juice and stir.
Gin and Tonic
Chicote’s on the Gran Via in Madrid “was a very cheerful place, and because really cheerful people are usually the bravest, and the bravest get killed quickest, a big part of Chicote’s old customers are now dead.”23 Perico Chicote opened his bar in 1931. It was a favorite hangout of Hemingway’s during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. When he began writing “The Denunciation,” a story of old friends and new betrayals, in Paris in the spring of 1938, he brought the narrator Henry Emmunds to Chicote’s to escape the shelling on the Gran Via. Once inside, a waiter tells him of the presence of Luis Delgado, a fascist spy. Before he denounced Delgado to the counterespionage bureau, he recalled gambling with him in San Sebastián over gin and tonics, the same drink he is drinking at Chicote’s:
“What about a gin and tonic? That’s a marvelous drink you know.”
So we had a gin and tonic and I felt very badly to have broken him and I felt awfully good to have won the money, and a gin and tonic never tasted better to me in all my life. There is no use to lie about these things or pretend you do not enjoy winning; but this boy Luis Delgado was a very pretty gambler.24
The true Hemingway gin and tonic uses Schweppes Indian tonic water, which they served at Chicote’s, and Gordon’s gin, Hemingway’s favorite. (He once wrote that Gordon’s gin could “fortify, mollify and cauterize practically all internal and external injuries.”25) The measure of gin and the lemon are included in honor of Gregorio Fuentes, who served gin and tonics of these proportions aboard the Pilar.
The Ernest Hemingway Gin and Tonic
1 SERVING
2 fingers Gordon’s gin
Schweppes Indian tonic water
Lemon wedge
Pour the gin into a tall glass over ice. Fill the glass with tonic water. Add the lemon wedge and stir.
Glühwein
The German word glühwein translates literally as “glowing wine.” It is a hot, spiced wine drink that served Frederic and Catherine well during the cold nights in Switzerland in the middle of January:
There was an inn in the trees at the Bains de l’Alliaz where the woodcutters stopped to drink, and we sat inside and warmed by the stove and drank hot red wine with spices and lemon in it. They called it gliihwein and it was a good thing to warm you and to celebrate with. . . . It was a fine country and every time that we went out it was fun.26
¼ cup black tea (made by steeping 1 tea bag per ½ cup boiling water)
2-3 slices of lemon with peel (use orange for a less bitter version)
3 teaspoons sugar
1-2 dried juniper berries
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
1¾ cups red wine
Heat all ingredients in a saucepan over low heat until very warm. Strain through a sieve into warmed tumblers or drink with teeth clenched.
Grappa
In A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry has a peculiar relationship with grappa, a harsh Italian brandy distilled from grape husks, the residue that remains when the grapes have been pressed and relieved of their juice. He never seems to want it, and yet he drinks it throughout the novel, with often dramatic consequences. During a layover, en route from the field hospital to the Red Cross Hospital in Milan, Frederic pays a young boy to get him some cognac. All the boy can find is grappa. Henry shares the bottle with the man invalided next to him, and they both suffer from what Hemingway called “gastric remorse.”
Grappa could never be accused of being smooth. It hits like a roundhouse right and sears life phosphorus. In Across the River and into the Trees, Colonel Cantwel
l reminisces about his war days with a friend and former comrade:
“I drank grappa and could not even feel the taste.”
“We must have been tough then,” the Colonel said.27
Highball (Highbalito con Agua Mineral)
In his book Straight Up or on the Rocks, William Grimes calls the highball “about the laziest cock-tail in existence.”28 Although originally a whiskey or gin drink, the highball now refers to any liquor on the rocks with soda. Compared with the high art of the Daiquirí, the highball is simple pedestrian fare:
The Floridita was open now and he bought the two papers that were out, Crisol and Alerta, and took them to the bar with him. He took his seat on a tall bar stool at the extreme left of the bar. His back was against the wall toward the street and his left was covered by the wall behind the bar. He ordered a double frozen daiquiri with no sugar from Pedrico, who smiled his smile which was almost like the rictus on a dead man who has died from a suddenly broken back, and yet was a true and legitimate smile. . . .
Pedrico set out a bottle of Victoria Vat, a glass with large chunks of ice in it, and a bottle of Canada Dry soda in front of Ignacio Natera Revello and he made a highball hurriedly and then turned toward Thomas Hudson, looking at him through his green-tinted, hornrimmed glasses and feigning to have just seen him.29
Highball
1 SERVING
2 ounces Victoria Vat, or whiskey
Canada Dry soda water (Honest Lil, the old prostitute from El Floridita, orders her highbalito with mineral water)
Pour the whiskey over ice in a highball glass. Fill the glass with soda and stir.
Izzarra
In Bayonne, France, after the madness of the Fiesta, Jake Barnes enjoys the pleasure of eating and drinking alone. Afterward, “the waiter recommended a Basque liqueur called Izzarra. He brought in the bottle and poured a liqueur-glass full. He said Izzarra was made of the flowers of the Pyrenees … It looked like hair-oil and smelled like Italian strega. I told him to take the flowers of the Pyrenees away.”30
It is interesting that the French waiter should offer Jake Izzarra, the Basque version of Chartreuse, which is made right there in Bayonne. Perhaps it is an indication of how persistent the specter of Spain will be for Jake. He shakes it off, though, rejecting the Izzarra in favor of the veritable French marc (see page 189). There are two types of Izzarra, green and yellow. We could presume that Jake (and Ernest) sampled the green, as it is the more highly alcoholic of the two.
Jack Rose
At five o’ clock I was in the Hotel Crillon, waiting for Brett. She was not there, so I sat down and wrote some letters. They were not very good letters but I hoped their being on Crillon stationary would help them. Brett did not turn up, so about quarter to six I went down to the bar and had a Jack Rose with George the barman.31
The Hotel Crillon in Paris is one of the great and grand hotels. In the early days, Hemingway could scarcely afford to drink there. He would, no doubt, employ the free stationary to keep up appearances.
1 SERVING
1½ ounces applejack brandy
Juice of ½ lime
½ ounce grenadine
Combine the brandy, lime juice, and grenadine in a shaker filled with ice. Shake, and strain into a cock-tail glass.
Kirsch
Kirsch is a brandy distilled from cherries, including the stones, which impart an almond flavor. This was a favorite of Hemingway’s, which he drank frequently during the Paris years. He kept a bottle in his rented writing room in Paris, drinking it to keep warm during damp Parisian winters. When the Hemingways escaped from Paris to Austria in the wintertime, Ernest’s taste for kirsch followed. As he immersed himself in the rugged mountain environs and let his black beard thicken, he delighted in hearing the residents refer to him as the “black, kirsch-drinking Christ.”32
Kümmel
Kümmel was on the roll call of Hemingway’s “army of dead men,” the empty liquor bottles that littered his bedside armoire at the hospital in Milan. In A Farewell to Arms, the little bear-shaped bottle stands out amongst its fallen brethren:
One day while I was in bed with jaundice Miss Van Campen came in the room, opened the door into the armoire and saw the empty bottles there. . . . The bear-shaped bottle enraged her particularly. She held it up, the bear was sitting up on his haunches with his paws up, there was a cork in his glass head and a few sticky crystals at the bottom. I laughed.
“It is kümmel,” I said. “The best kümmel comes in those bear shaped bottles. It comes from Russia.33
Kümmel is a sweet, clear liqueur distilled from grain alcohol. Its flavor comes from caraway seeds. As in Frederic Henry’s case, sugar is some times allowed to crystallize in the bottle. This type of kümmel is known as Kümmel Crystallize. Although invented in either Germany or Holland, the best kümmel does, in fact, come from Russia. (See Zabaglione, page 22.)
In Austria, the “black kirsch-drinking Christ” gives his son John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, affectionately called Bumby, a skiing lesson.
Marc
Marc is a powerful brandy distilled from grape pomace, essentially the French counterpart of grappa. With the help of Krebs Friend, with whom Ernest worked in Chicago and who eventually married an heiress and became benefactor to Ford Madox Ford’s transatlantic review in Paris, we may understand the dubious allure of marc. In 1923, Hemingway wrote of Friend’s boar-hunting trip in a little town in the Côte d’Or:
Krebs was wakened before daylight. The boar hunters were assembled at the café. They were waiting for him. He arrived half asleep. Inside the café were about twenty men. Bicycles were stacked outside. Hunting the boar was nothing to be undertaken on an empty stomach. They must have a small drink of some sort. Something to warm the stomach.
Krebs suggested coffee. What a joke. What a supreme and delightful joker the American. Coffee. Imagine it. Coffee before going off to hunt the sanglier. What a thing. Drôle enough, eh?
Marc. Marc was the stuff. No one ever started after the wild boar without first a little marc. Patron, the marc. The marc was produced. Now marc, pronounced mar as in marvelous, is one of the three most powerful drinks known. As an early morning potion it can give vodka, douzico, absinthe, grappa, and other famous stomach destroyers two furlongs and beat them as far as Zev beat Papyrus. It is the great specialty of Burgundy and the Côte d’Or and three drops of it on the tongue of a canary will send him out in a grim, deadly, silent search for eagles.34
The Montgomery (Hemingway’s Martini)
HARRY’S RAR, VENICE
“Waiter,” the Colonel called; then asked, “Do you want a dry Martini, too?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’d love one.”
“Two very dry Martinis,” the Colonel said. “Montgomerys. Fifteen to one.”35
Like James Bond with his Vesper, Hemingway, too, had his special martini called the Montgomery. Named after the World War II British General, Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, General of the British Eighth Army, who would not attack unless he outnumbered the enemy 15 to 1, Hemingway’s martini contains that same proportion of gin to vermouth. The Montgomery is a house special at Harry’s Bar in Venice, where they make their Montgomerys 10 to 1. For this recipe, we’ll use Hemingway’s favorite ingredients: Gordon’s gin and Noilly Prat vermouth.36
1 SERVING
3 ounces Gordon’s gin
1 teaspoon plus a few drops Noilly Prat vermouth
1 olive
Pour the gin and vermouth into an ice-filled shaker. Shake, then strain into a martini glass. Place the filled glass in the freezer until ready to serve. Garnish with the olive.
Option #1: To make a Super Montgomery, garnish with a garlic olive (see page 95).
Option #2: Multiply the recipe by 73, as Hemingway did after liberating the Ritz Hotel in Paris from the Nazis with a thirsty band of FFI (Forces Françaises l’Intérieur) on August 25, 1944.
Rum Punch
In The Sun Also Rises, Jake and Bill spend a cold, blustery n
ight in the Hostal Burguete in the Spanish Pyrenees before trout fishing. While Jake negotiates with the woman who owns the inn, Bill plays the piano to keep warm:
“How about a hot rum punch?” he said. “This isn’t going to keep me warm permanently.”
I went and told the woman what a rum punch was and how to make it. In a few minutes a girl brought a stone pitcher, steaming, into the room. Bill came over from the piano and we drank the hot punch and listened to the wind.
“There isn’t too much rum in that.”
I went over to the cupboard and brought the rum bottle and poured a half-tumblerful into the pitcher.
“Direct action,” said Bill. “It beats legislation.”37
1 SERVING
1¾ cups dark rum
¾ cup sugar
1½ teaspoons ground cloves
6 teaspoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter
3 cups boiling water
Combine all ingredients except ½ cup rum in a medium saucepan and heat over medium-high heat until hot. Transfer the punch to a ceramic pitcher. Taste to verify insufficient volume of rum. Add remaining rum. Serve immediately.
Tomini or Green Isaak’s Special
Hemingway’s passion for romantic descriptions of the Daiquiri in Islands in the Stream overflowed Constante’s blender to include other favorites as well. Several times throughout the novel, Thomas Hudson truly enjoys a sort of embellished Tom Collins, made with coconut water and bitters:
Thomas Hudson took a sip of the ice-cold drink that tasted of the fresh green lime juice mixed with the tasteless coconut water that was still so much more full-bodied than any charged water, strong with the real Gordon’s gin that made it alive to his tongue and rewarding to swallow, and all of it tautened by the bitters that gave it color. It tastes as good as a drawing sail feels, he thought. It is a hell of a good drink.38