COCKTAIL FOR THE HOME STAYER
If you are confined to your home - whether forced or not - but you still want that feeling of peace sophisticated man about town experience, then a cocktail is the shortest path to success. Normally on a sunny summer evening you would drop by bar The Vault in the Amsterdam Waldorf hotel, Bricks Hooch & Brew in The Hague, Mr. Mofongo in Groningen or Botanero in Rotterdam; great addresses to enjoy you favorite cocktail while the sun slowly sinks behind the horizon. But in times of corona, there is no other option than to fall back on your own home bar. The atmosphere of a smoky cocktail bar is difficult to match, but the taste of a good cocktail is completely in your own hands.
The most important ingredient of a home bar is easy to guess: drink . But which tools do you need? You probably already have most of the necessities at home without knowing it, such as a cutting board , a knife , a spoon and a peeler . The serious cocktail shaker has a real bar knife for cutting fruit. He also has a peeler from the Joseph Joseph brand to generate a nice zest (peel) for your Old Fashioned, but if I'm honest: a potato peeler and the peeler you use to peel cucumbers will also do. What should you purchase? The basis of every cocktail bar consists of a shaker. Choose the user-friendly one Boston Shaker , which is a mixing glass with a steel lid, called a tin. There are much more expensive designer shakers on the market, but a Boston Shaker costing a few tens of euros is more than fine. Be sure to choose one with a strainer, the sieve. Get one too jigger On. That is the measuring cup with which you measure the amount of drink. Most jiggers consist of two calyxes, like an hourglass. One side has a capacity of 30 milliliters, the other side 45 milliliters. And yes, you could just use your mother's home-garden measuring cup, but such a jigger speeds up the cocktail process enormously, and it works a lot more precisely.
The right glassware is essential to actually experiencing a cocktail as if you have just ordered it in a trendy hotel bar. Nothing as sad as a nice cocktail in an orange glass. That's a bit like pouring kerosene into a Moped. In any case, make sure you have a tumbler, a highball and a martini glass in the cupboard. You can find those glasses here and there for rock-bottom prices, but I wouldn't save on the glassware. Not even on the ice, by the way. At the liquor store you will find ice cubes that melt slowly, which is nice, because you don't want your gin and tonic to water down quickly. There are shapes for large ice cubes, both square and round. The larger the ice block, the slower it melts. And what do you make next? For a sunny, warm day, there's nothing as fresh as one Tom Collins . It's also just about the easiest cocktail to make. As follows: pour 60 milliliters of gin , 30 milliliters of lemon juice and two tablespoons of white granulated sugar in a highball glass. Stir well (especially the sugar must dissolve), aim one stack of ice cubes add it and you're done. Salute!
Arno Kantelberg is editor-in-chief of Esquire .
As the style pastor of the Netherlands, he guides men through the minefield of good taste.
Every other week he writes a style column for OGER as a guest editor on The OGER Journal.
