MANGIA: NYC's Dolce Gelateria Debuts Spaghetti Gelato

Move over cronut, there's a new dessert about to take over Manhattan: spaghetti  gelato. At  Dolce Gelateria, a small scoop shop in the West Village, dinner is being   served as dessert in the form of spaghetti. Instead of pasta, owner Salvatore Potestio  uses a potato ricer to squeeze vanilla gelato so it comes out in springy tendrils, just like  the Italian dish grandma used to make. A homemade mixed-berry syrup of strawberries,  raspberries, and blueberries subs in for marinara sauce, and a chocolate gelato "meatball"  punctuates the sweet treat. The result is a deceiving dessert that will make you do a   double take.          I skipped breakfast and lunch today and visited the gelateria to watch Potestio  whip up a pile  of "pasta." As he presses a scoop of the shop's homemade vanilla  gelato, he explains that the dessert was made popular in 1960s Germany and he's the  first place in New York City to serve it. Today marks its debut.            "It's fun to make," he says. "So far people are really enjoying it."

Vintage Liquor Ads

I've had a fascination with liquor ads since middle school. Let me rephrase that: I've had a fascination with Absolut vodka ads since middle school. I can still remember afternoons spent at my friend's house flipping through stacks of her dad's old New Yorkers in search of the ads. I caught on quickly that Absolut had a lot of advertising dollars to spend in the '90s and would regularly advertise on the back cover of major magazines like Saveur, The New Yorker, and Savoy. (Anyone in the publishing biz knows that the back cover is an expensive piece of real estate.) I kept each of my found ads in its own plastic sleeve and hid them away in a binder in my closet. I don't know who the art director was, but I was obsessed with his or her creativity. I followed websites that painstakingly recorded the whereabouts of every single ad and which magazine it ran in. Now that the statute of limitations has run out, I can freely say that I would go to the public library with a razor blade and slice the ads from circulating magazines (God I feel better finally getting that off my chest). Looking back I'm glad I never got caught, but took glee in the adrenaline rush of it all. I forgot about my collection until today, a lazy Saturday afternoon. In searching for ads on ebay, I stumbled upon a slew of other, older liquor ads that date back long before my time. Until I can dig up my binder of Absolut ads (I'm pretty sure it's buried in my storage locker) and scan them to share with you all, here are a few ads on ebay that caught my eye:

1937 National Distillers Products Corporation (source: ebay)

1934 Myers Rum (source: ebay)

1939 Martini & Rossi (source: ebay)

1981 Southern Comfort (source: ebay)

1966 Ronrico Rum (source: ebay)

1967 Jose Cuervo (source: ebay)

1945 Dewars (source: ebay)

1974 Pernod (source: ebay)

1994 Absolut (source: ebay)

A quick note on this last one: This may look like a photo, but it's really a painting. It was designed by artist Yrjo Edelmann. A misspelled version ran without the second "n." It's incredibly rare and if you have an original, you're one lucky mofo. I'm still looking.

Cocktail of the Week: Lakeside Lemonade @ Landmarc

Introducing the Liquor-ish blog's newest rubric: Cocktail of the Week! Every week I will post a favorite quaff of mine that I experienced while eating and drinking my way through NYC and other points in my travels. The first installment is the Lakeside Lemonade at Landmarc (10 Columbus Circle), created by David Lombardo, the restaurant's wine and beverage director. As you'll see, the recipe is pretty straight forward and includes only two ingredients:

Fresh lemonade
44 Degree North Huckleberry Vodka

After ordering two or three (truth be told, I don't remember, I lost count!), I grabbed my phone and began searching for a liquor store in NYC that sold huckleberry vodka. As some of you may know, I became obsessed with huckleberries during a ski trip to Wyoming earier this year and brought back everything huckleberry I could find (tea, honey, preserves, taffy, etc.). I remember seeing huckleberry vodka at a Jackson Hole liquor store, and have been kicking myself every since for not buying a bottle. Amazingly, Columbus Circle Wines & Spirits, a liquor store on the opposite side of Columbus Circle from Landmarc, carries 44 Degree North, so I dragged my drinking companions over there to buy a bottle so I could re-create this delicious tipple at home. I mixed it up a bit by muddling a handful of frozen blueberries to give it a nice purple color. Cheers!

Blood Orange Margaritas

If you read my first post, which was a how-to on making cinnamon-infused tequila, consider this part two of that post.

The cinnamon-infused tequila I made is great on its own on the rocks, but it's even better when whipped up into a margarita. And not just any margarita, a blood orange margarita. There's a specialty grocery store a few blocks down from me, and is where I typically go whenever I need an obscure ingredient. Luckily the store had a nice selection of plump specimens to choose from.

A little background on this citrus fruit: The blood orange is a variety of orange distinguished by its crimson, blood-toned flesh. Blood oranges originated from China and today are prominent in Italy. They're also grown in the United States (Texas and California). It's said that the maroon-ish color is due to a mutation that happened during the 17th century. The fruit gets its hue from anthocyanin, a pigment found in fruits like strawberries and cherries. But don't let their sinister name be a turnoff, they're just as sweet as the other oranges at the market. Besides, it's what's on the inside that counts, right?

 See how nice and "bloody" the flesh is? Bram Stoker would be proud.

Here's the recipe:

Blood Orange Margaritas
1/2 cup blood orange juice
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
3 tablespoons triple sec or cointreau, or more to taste
7 tablespoons cinnamon-infused tequila
Lime or blood orange slices for garnish

Mix. Fill two glasses with ice and divide between them. Garnish. Cheers!

How to Make Cinnamon-infused Tequila

There's a Mexican restaurant called Lobo down the street from my apartment in Brooklyn that infuses its own tequilas. My favorite is its cinnamon-infused tequila, which the barkeeps store in glass jugs behind the bar. I wanted to try replicating Lobo's recipe in my kitchen, so I bought a bottle of Espolon tequila, which is high quality but not overly expensive. I transferred the tequila into a glass jug and threw in 10 cinnamon sticks.

I used the fattest, curliest cinnamon sticks I could find, as they're more flavorful and aromatic than the typical ones you'll found at the grocery store.

Immediately after adding the handful of cinnamon sticks to the Espolon, the tequila started to darken. After four days, the tequila had taken on a beautiful amber color, but its scent was still largely tequila, with little cinnamon essence.

By day 10, the tequila had darkened significantly and the scent of cinnamon was starting to overtake the smell of tequila.

I opted to wait a few more days before decanting it back into its original Espolon bottle. By day 14, the smell of tequila was hardly recognizable, and the cinnamon was the dominant scent. I used a strainer to filter out any broken cinnamon stick bits.

I poured out a single finger's worth as a taste test--SUCCESS! It was good for sipping, but I knew it would be even better in a blood orange margarita.

Stay tuned for my next post on how to make cinnamon-infused blood orange margaritas!