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Philly Homegrown – 12.22.11

Posted by:Intern on December 22nd, 2011

Philly Homegrown Holiday Drink Round-Up

With the holiday shopping season upon us, we thought it might be helpful to give a few suggestions on where you could stop, take a break and actually enjoy some holiday spirit(s). Below is a list of some of our favorite haunts and festive drinks, with a slight locavore bent, of course!

Philly Homegrown’s Holiday Drink Round-Up

Amuse at the Le Meridian Hotel has an incredible bar and serves up well crafted drinks, we suggest the With Love, a champagne cocktail with passion fruit and ginger liqueur. Amuse also has a divine, seasonal menu that’s not to be missed.

C19 is a locavore’s dream. Chef Andrea Luca Rossi is known for working directly with local farmers and artisanal producers to create his focused Venetian menu, which, luckily for us, also includes cocktails. We love their Strawberry Lemon Verbena cocktail made with Hendrick’s gin. The strawberry puree, made from berry’s grown near Philadelphia this past summer and frozen at the peak of freshness, is a ray of sunshine in the dark winter.

One of Queen Village’s newest spots, Kennett Restaurant, has developed a quick following. Enjoy one of their many small plates, like the Parsnips with Parmesan, alongside the one of their beer-based cocktails. We enjoy For the Locals made with Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale, Bluecoat Gin, marjoram syrup and a hit of fresh lemon.

Dressed in your holiday best and feel like going a bit upscale? Head directly to the Rittenhouse Hotel, ogle their beautiful holiday decorations, seat yourself at La Croix and gaze upon festive Rittenhouse Square. Enjoy a Philadelphia French Martini made with Bluecoat Gin, Lillet Blanc and orange.

University City’s MidAtlantic Restaurant is Chef Daniel Stern’s homage to the traditional dishes of the Philadelphia region. We love sitting by their outdoor fireplace and sipping some Schuylkill Fish House Punch, made of brandy, Jamaican rum, peaches and lemon. Rumor has it that this drink dates back to Philadelphia’s early days and was sipped during the Schuylkill Fish House’s Christmas party.

Berwyn’s Nectar is the perfect place to unwind and enjoy a expertly crafted cocktail. Our favorite seasonal choice is the Apple Cider Martini, a bourbon based drink with sparkling apple cider, caramel and a hint of cinnamon.

Aside from being filled with small independent businesses, Old City is also a great place to grab a drink. We head straight to Farmicia and place our trust in the hands of bartender, Edward Jones. We love his Rhuby Marmalade, crafted with locally produced Rhuby liquor, Lillet and orange marmalade.

After Farmacia, we suggest you pop over to Positano Coast to enjoy one of their many organic cocktails. Try the Italian With An Accent which includes a fennel infused dry gin, aloe syrup, egg white and fresh lime.

At Center City’s Franklin Mortgage Investment Company it’s hard to go wrong. Their artisnal cocktails are varied and change often. We enjoy the Fairmount Park Swizzle a gin-based cocktail with Cardamoro, John D Taylor’s Velvet Falernum, fresh lemon and lime juice and a house-made ginger syrup. Be careful with cocktails here, they are not for beginners!

Washington Square’s Talula’s Garden is a bastion of locally sourced dishes and cocktails. We love their wine-based drinks like The Winemaker a spiced autumn sangria with brandy, apples and berries. If wine isn’t your thing, opt for The Forager, a wild sage martini with gin, egg white, orange and sage.

Audrey Claire Taichman’s Twenty Manning Grill, is a neighborhood favorite that boasts one of Philadelphia’s best bars (according to Philadelphia Magazine). Coffee lovers will enjoy the Cafe Canela, a warming drink with hot coffee, locally produced Snap liquor, Siembra Azul Blanco and Licor 43.

Newcomer Vedge is a modern “vegetable” restaurant by Philadelphia Chefs Richard Landau & Kate Jacoby, formerly of Horizons. The bar is an absolute delight and includes innovative cocktails like the Apple Cide Car with Lairds Bonded Apple Brandy, cointreau, apple, maple and smoked cinnamon. The entire cocktail menu is worth a try, but we suggest at least a few trips to work your way through them all!

Aside from offering one of the largest Israeli wine lists outside of Israel, Zahav pours creative and interesting cocktails to accompany it’s modern Israeli fare. We can’t help but order the Jerusalem Cocktail, a sparkling wine, lychee and pomegranate drink that is all at once sweet, tart and refreshing.

Cheers, Philadelphia and Happy Holidays!


http://food.visitphilly.com/philly-homegrown-holiday-drink-round-up/, 12.22.11

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Idsgn.org – 12.11.11

Posted by:Intern on December 11th, 2011

The twelve days of design: 2011 holiday gift guide

It’s that time of the year again, and we’re back with twelve must-have design gifts for the holidays.

8 Crafted Cocktails

Oh snap! This hand-crafted organic gingersnap liqueur from Art in the Age is our drink of choice this season. With ingredients like molasses, cloves, brown sugar, cinannamon, ginger, and nutmeg, it’s like drinking liquid Christmas.

$30 from Hi-Time

Contest: Win this stuff!

In the spirit of the season, we are giving away a selection of our favorite holiday picks to one lucky reader!

To enter, use the comments below to share one item on your wish list this year. We’ll randomly pick one winner and announce it here on December 16th.

Cheers and happy holidays from idsgn!

http://idsgn.org/posts/the-twelve-days-of-design-2011-holiday-gift-guide/, 12.11.11

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Serious Eats – 12.9.11

Posted by:Intern on December 9th, 2011

DIY vs. Buy: Should I Make My Own Ginger Liqueur?

Ginger liqueur offers an exciting blend of sweet and spicy flavors. It can turn a basic drink into an intricately layered cocktail experience. Sure, you can use ginger liqueur all year (it’s great with sparkling wine, especially when muddled with peaches in the summer) but this potion especially calls to us in winter, when it’s just the thing to spice up our drinks.

What’s Available to Buy?

Domaine de Canton is the most common ginger liqueur on the market. The ginger kick in Canton is balanced with vanilla, honey, and Cognac—it’s elegant, but a bit sweet. Snap is a bolder ginger liqueur featuring nutmeg, cinnamon, and Rooibos tea in its mix of spices. It reminds me of a hearty gingerbread. Both cost about $30 a bottle—though I think Domaine de Canton is a more flexible cocktail ingredient. The King’s Ginger is a slightly more expensive high-proof ginger liqueur with an intense bite—smooth but barely sweet.

Stirrings also offers a less complex ginger liqueur for half the price. Though it has lovely flavor, I find that it doesn’t add any more dimension to mixed drinks than a well-made ginger simple syrup would.

Why DIY?

As easy as it is to buy a bottle of Canton, my recipe for DIY ginger liqueur takes only 20 minutes of work, and tastes just as delicious and refined. The steeping time is very short, so this is a perfect homemade holiday gift. (Hear that, procrastinators?)

It’s also fun to play with different flavor combinations in small batches. Add some cinnamon, star anise, and cardamom for an earthier liqueur that’s a good match for ciders and warm holiday drinks. A little lemon zest and lemongrass will give you a bright, Asian-inspired flavor. The beauty of homemade liqueur is unleashing your creativity to make something you won’t see on the shelf at some liquor store.

Use It!

Your homemade liqueur is perfect for jazzing up all sorts of cocktails. The simple Tom Collins suddenly tastes exotic with a bit of ginger, but you can also get more complicated than that. Add a little to a hot toddy on a cold night. And yes, it’s good in eggnog, or shaken up with rosemary and pears.

Ginger pairs well with so many flavors—think about food recipes that you like that include ginger, and then use those flavors in a cocktail. Carrots, oranges, lemons, apples, pumpkin, green tea—these things are natural partners for ginger and could be the basis for a great new drink. If you give your liqueur as a gift, you can include some hand-written recipe cards featuring your favorite ginger liqueur cocktails. That is, if you can bear to part with some of it.

 

http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/12/diy-vs-buy-how-to-make-ginger-liqueur-domaine-de-canton.html, 12.9.11

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AITA Cider Project Part I: Hard Cider in America

Posted by:admin on October 11th, 2011

Since we first tried it last fall, 0ne of our favorite seasonal mixers with Art in the Age SNAP is apple cider! The sweet cider is the perfect compliment to SNAP’s warm spices, and is delicious served both hot and cold.

This year we’ve decided to kick up our SNAP + apple combo to the next level, with a batch of our own homemade hard cider!

We picked a few bushels of apples at Linvilla Orchards, just a short drive from Center City Philadelphia, and can’t wait to press them with help from our friends at Bartram’s Garden! John Bartram was not only America’s foremost 18th century botanist, but he was also a talented stone carver. His apple press, which dates to 1731, is carved into the bedrock next to the river, that a visitor in 1787 termed “singular.”

 

 

The press consists of a carved circular groove, about 25 feet in circumference where the apples were placed. In the center of the massive rock is a hole for a post or mast. A large stone wheel (or two wheels) would attach to the post and ride in the circular track crushing the apples. Either horse or manpower would turn the wheel. There is an escape hole in the bottom of the track that enables the juice to drain into a basin carved into the stone. Although the original press is no longer functioning, Bartram’s Garden now owns a modern press, which they often use to educational lectures and workshops.

We thought before we began the process of pressing our cider, it would be appropriate to give a brief history of cider consumption in America.

 

History of Cider in America

Early English settlers introduced cider to America by bringing with them seeds for cultivating cider apples. During the colonial period, grains did not thrive well and were costly to import. On the other hand, apple orchards were plentiful, making apples cheap and easily obtainable. Making hard cider was a way to preserve the apple crop, and was even used as currency. As a result, hard cider quickly became one of America’s most popular beverages.

The Founding Fathers were even known to enjoy a glass or two of hard cider. Even John Adams began each day with a draft of hard cider!

 

 

Consumption of cider increased steadily during the eighteenth century, due in part to the efforts of the legendary Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), who planted many apple trees throughout the Midwest.

However, a series of events led to cider’s fall in popularity. The introduction of German beer with its faster fermentation process quickly made beer popular. German immigrants were able to set up large breweries for producing great quantities of beer, while the production of apple cider was still limited to small farms. The religiously based Temperance movement then caused many church-going farmers to give up cider. Some even went as far as to chop down their apple trees. When Prohibition became law, the market for apple cider was pretty much destroyed.

Today the tide has turned, with traditional cider making experiencing a major resurgence, both commercial and home-brewed.

 

Stay tuned for the next exciting steps in our homemade cider experiment!

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Today is National Punch Day!

Posted by:admin on September 20th, 2011

Punch may not have originated in America, but like pizza and military dominance, we’ve embraced it as our own. The original punch recipes came from India, went to Britain, and eventually came up through the Caribbean on its way to the land of the free.

The word “punch” has debatable origins, but our favorite comes from the Hindustani word “panch,” meaning “five.” Therefore, all proper punches must have five ingredients: one sour, two sweet, three strong, four weak, and finally some spices to round out the mixture.

The first punch recipes were nothing like the mixture of cheap liquor and Kool-Aid you got at your high school reunion. Punch was created as a complex cocktail, favored in the 18th century by Europe’s elite. Punch parties are something of legend, with some accounts telling of punch bowls large enough for boats to paddle about in. The ingredients included 80 casks of brandy, 20,000 limes, and 1,300 pounds of sugar!

Check out this AITA favorite, SNAP Haymaker’s Punch, prepared in the video below by the Reverend Michael Allen.

Art in The Age SNAP: Recipe – Haymakers Punch from Art In The Age on Vimeo.

In the spirit of national punch day, call together an impromptu party of your closest friends, pick up some SNAP, and celebrate with Haymaker’s Punch!

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Custom AITA Letterpress Coasters by Rise and Shine

Posted by:Dan on August 30th, 2011

 
Our friends Ryan and Leslie at Rise and Shine recently finished printing a batch of our signature AITA letterpress coasters!
 

 
Printing coasters is a labor of love at Rise and Shine. They use a 1920′s Chandler and Price Platen press, which requires meticulous setup and concentration in order to achieve the perfect balance of ink coverage and print impression.
 

 
These fine examples for Art in the Age make it clear that coasters are for more than just protecting your table.

If you ever find yourself in Alexandria, Louisiana, stop by Rise and Shine and take a tour of the shop!
 

Printing at Rise and Shine Letterpress from Rise and Shine on Vimeo.

 

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