The
Sunday Times Magazine is running a feature "What I'm Drinking Now" by
the celebrated chef Mario Batali. It's a one-paragraph description of a
drink that is right for the moment (first day of Fall, Super Bowl weekend,
reverting to daylight savings time). Today's offering, "a Widow's
Kiss with a kick": In a mixing glass filled with ice cubes, stir 2
oz. Calvados, 1 oz. each of Chartreuse and Benedictine and 3 shakes of
Angostura bitters, then strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with an
orange twist.
I will not be making this anytime soon, as the only ingredients I
currently own would be the ice cubes and the martini glass, which I think I
could manage to chill. I don't even know what Chartreuse or Benedictine
is. I owned a bottle of Calvados once. I have owned, I think, two
bottles of Angostura bitters in my life. I've got to do better than that.
I would like a drink, but I have a cold, and so I leave the house for the
first time in four days and go for a slow walk up around the pond at the train
station. I take my camera, hoping for I might get one of the neighborhood
cardinals set off against snow, and because you just never know.
And you don't.
I find what someone who is not Mario Batali is
drinking now.
