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Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Lara Nixon beats the boys to win Drink Local Contest
Lara Nixon, who as runs Boxcar Bar, a freelance cocktail and education service, held her own against the competition at this year’s Drink Local Contest at the Palm Door to win the annual Eat Local Week and Tipsy Texan event with her drink, We’re In It For The Corn.
Judges included last year’s winner Bobby Heugel, (above, left) who owns Anvil Bar and Refuge in Houston, Tipsy Texan Joe Eifler (above, right), Louis XIII cognac brand ambassador Sten Lilja, Maker’s Mark distillery diplomat Adam Harris and me.
She beat out Jeff Boley of Paggi House, Bill Norris of Fino, Ben Craven of Perla’s and Garret Mikell of Takoba, an interior Mexican restaurant on East Seventh slated to open in January.
After alternate Nate Wales of La Condesa kicked things off with an apple-pie inspired cocktail rimmed with streusel, Boley got to work on El Escorpion, a cocktail sweetened with kaffir lime syrup (made from a kaffir lime tree at Paggi House) made with juice from grilled pineapples and Treaty Oak rum.
Ben Craven of Perla’s was up next with his cocktail, The Sportswriter, one of the most interesting concoctions of the night: A gastrique made from Alamosa red wine and Meyer lemon, mixed with clove and cardamom turbinado syrup and sloe gin, topped with a garnish of a golf tee wrapped in candied orange.
Lara’s corntastic cocktail, made with sweet corn infused Balcones Baby Blue Corn Whiskey and just three other spirits, was a little heavy on the booze for my palate, but my fellow judges couldn’t get enough of the amped-up whiskey and adorable garnish that looked like a miniature cob of corn.
Fino’s Bill Norris was the most enthusiastic contestant, burning Mezcal-soaked rosemary in a jar and getting the crowd to cheer him on as he shook his cocktail, Texas Campfire Flip, which was one of two drink recipes that called for an egg in the ingredients. (Fellow judge Joe Eifler told me that Norris, one of Austin’s most well-respected cocktail experts, has recently had to alter the way he shakes drinks because he was getting a repetitive stress injury in his shoulder.)
Garret Mikell, who will be behind the bar at Takoba when it opens next month, shook a Hemingway daiquiri-inspired drink called the Hemingway Finn that was both fizzy and easy to drink. He infused Treaty Oak rum with cedar berries, which added depth to the grapefruit and lime juice.
To get a feel for the event, check out this blog post by photographer Dustin Meyer, who has been shooting many of the Eat Local Week events. Meyer’s photographs really capture the fun vibe of the party.
Props to Edible Austin and the Tipsy Texans for putting on such a great event. David Alan will be posting recipes for the drinks on TipsyTexan.com soon.
Top photo by Dustin Meyer.
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The sweet allure of beekeeping
For many of the aspiring apiarists I talked to in writing today’s story about a backyard beekeeping class, a thriving garden was the primary goal of setting up a hive on their property.
Even for Konrad Bouffard, owner of Round Rock Honey (who also blogs about beekeeping here), a better garden was the main attraction when he first got into setting up hives and tending colonies of European honeybees.
In my family, honey has always been the draw.
My great uncle Lee Handy tended hives after decades working his tail end off at a restaurant in Branson, Mo., back when it was a one-stoplight town. He and my aunt Mary put in 15 hour days there until they sold the restaurant, and he eventually established enough hives to have a second career as a honey salesman. (A strapping man in these family photos, Lee grew into the scruffy kind of old man whom I was always too scared to ask why he only had 8 and 3/4 fingers.)
To call him a beekeeper alone wouldn’t suffice. There wasn’t nearly the market for honey that there is now, so he had to persuade a lot of people into buying his product in the first place. He sold it by the quart (a few dollars off if you brought your own jar) to people who followed the “Honey ahead” signs along the road leading to their country house.
Up until their deaths about a decade ago, they had a five gallon vat of honey in their kitchen that, with just a pull of a lever, would ooze the most beautiful golden honey. I can remember eating honey until I was sick in that kitchen. My dad, to this day, won’t drink coffee without honey because that’s the way his uncle taught him how to drink coffee.
I’d never thought about carrying on the tradition until donning a beekeeping suit for the first time for this story.
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