The Chesapeake Ripper Cocktail

Welcome to Hannibal Week! Today we are having cocktails.

During the end of season 2 and the beginning of season 3, Hannibal describes his Memory Palace and how it allows him to be anywhere (or any time) regardless of where he is. It’s a lovely idea–tucking away feelings and thoughts and fact and figures in paintings and under staircases. A place to escape to when reality is a bit too much.

The Memory Palace is a real thing, btw.

Now, I do not have a Memory Palace but I do have a Vault of Smells (trademark pending).

I am sure that you do, too. We all have them. Those smells that immediately conjure up memories or emotions.

Mine include:

• Cool Water cologne
• gummy peppermint leaves
• Murphy’s Oil Soap
• Scotch
• Shiitake Mushrooms

Just to name a few.

The Shiitake mushrooms make me think of college because it was where I first tried them in a plate of pan-fried noodles at Lu Lu’s Noodles on South Craig in Pittsburgh.

Description from a 1999 Post Gazette Review (I was in college at the time):

Lu Lu’s pan-fried noodles are superb. The dish — and a pretty one it is — has shiitake mushrooms, Asian greens, bean sprouts and green onions in Lu Lu’s “special sauces” on top of crisp thin and pan-fried egg noodles. We highly recommend it…”Very good. Noodles are crispy but not burned. The dish has fresh Chinese green vegetables and barbecued pork.”The noodles are fried on both sides, Guan says, and are turned just when they are yellow and crisp. It’s a favorite around his native Shanghai, where it is called “yellow on two sides.”

They were delicious. I haven’t seen noodles like those since.

For a girl who had grown up in a small town, those big black mushrooms were so foreign to me. I was smitten. For me, just the scent of reconstituted shiitakes are heady–a mix of earth and wood.

I also remember going to visit my roommate’s family in Staten Island and her mom braising mushrooms overnight and then serving them chilled the next day (HERE is a good recipe if you are interested in trying them).

Shit. I really want some mushrooms now.

BTW, did I tell you that there isn’t any good Chinese food in Baltimore?

ANYHOO!

Let’s go to another inhabitant of my Vault of Smells–scotch.

The first time I was given a glass, the aroma transported me to Christmas as a small child. Weird, yes?

I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time, but it turns out that my parents would rub Johnny Walker on my gums when I was teething. How that got crossed with Christmas, I have no clue.

And that is why my favorite blended scotch is Johnny Walker Red.

Now onto the Hannibal-inspired cocktail from Feeding Hannibal by Janice Poon.

Step 1 is to make a shiitake-infused Scotch:

• 2 tbsp dried shiitake mushrooms
• 8 oz blended scotch.

Put mushrooms in a jar. Soak in Scotch for one hour. 

Even I can’t mess this up. LOL.

The result: ENTERTAININGLY WEIRD!

It smells like shiitakes but tastes like scotch. That is the best and only way for me to describe it.

I liked it.

Now onto using the mushroom scotch in a cocktail:

The Chesapeake Ripper

• 2 oz. shittake-infused scotch
• 1/2 oz Gonzales Byass Nectar Pedro Ximenez Dulce Sherry
• 3 dashes Fee Bros. Black Walnut Bitters
• 2 dashes Regans Orange Bitters No. 6
• scotch-infused cherries

shake. strain into glass with ice.

So of course I had to make subs—I used that dinky sherry that is the only sherry that you can find in Baltimore liquor stores. Also, I would not be able to pronounce that sherry to even ask for it at a fancier joint.

Orange bitters I was able to do, but not black walnut.

And there was no cherry because, although I am sure that a scotch-infused cherry would be delicious, it was nearly $20 to buy dried cherries and girlfriend isn’t working right now.

But behold, the completed cocktail!

How was it?

The cocktail was fine. It ended up tasting primarily of the sherry, which was a bit disappointing because the shiitake scotch was so good. But this was a fun drink to make. I loved the infusing!

So much so that I also soaked some shiitakes in scotch overnight.

 

It was as though overnight the scotch went from being mushroomy to being not mushroomy back to being mushroomy again. And unlike the first batch where it smelled like shiitake but tasted like scotch, here the two really melded to become one–both on the nose and the tongue.

I tried a bite of the soaked mushroom–just like the scotch, the two really just blended together.

This was a fascinating experiment. I now want to soak more things in booze.

Remember to come back tomorrow. Especially because tomorrow Hannibal Week collides with WIENER WEDNESDAY!!!