Three-Ingredient Cocktails for Easy Entertaining

Plus – make ahead fried chicken

Don’t Be Poopin’ on the Beach

Greetings from the cottage!

I’m up in the wilds of Lake Huron, a rural area I always assumed was northern Ontario – or at least central.

Our cottage is about 225 kilometres northwest of my home in Toronto – a 3-hour drive if the traffic gods bless me, which is rarely, and about 30 minutes from the white sands and turquoise waters of Sauble Beach. It turns out, with a quick google map search we’re still in southern Ontario. This province is huge.  

Headlines this summer include the Premier weighing in on reports of people pooping on the beach. Not our beach, luckily, but another Ontario, um, hotspot, Wasaga Beach, where apparently, it’s become en vogue to leave a token of your appreciation on the sandy shores of Georgian Bay. The, uh, eruption in Number Two’s in the sand, and the Premier’s handling of it, has caught the attention of Stephen Colbert, who couldn’t resist discussing the beach community’s current sanitation problem.

And Venice thought they had headaches with surfers in the canals.

While our cottage has all the comforts of home, it’s a far simpler home. Our kitchen is tiny, the oven door needs to be secured bungee cords, and it’s always a debate and a guess as to which burner is connected to which knob.

All of this means our cottage menu is a tightly curated collection of make-ahead dishes: the lemongrass chicken I told you about a few weeks ago (linked below if you missed it), saucy ribs that are smoked in the city and finished off on the cottage barbecue, and these fantastic – and fantastically simple – fried chicken sandwiches my sister started making years ago.

Because of our reduced capacity up here in the great, wide yonder, we must streamline our bar offerings: gin and tequila are the chosen few, for us. Luckily, we can make a few versions of delicious cocktails with these two spirits as a base; read on for ideas for quick, summer worthy drinks that require minimal ingredients and effort.

Three Ingredient, Low Effort Cocktails

With just a few simple swaps you can completely change the profile of a drink, while still using the same base. An absolute boon when you don’t have a full bar at your disposal.

Simple syrups are called that for a reason: simply dissolve sugar (or honey or agave) with the same amount of water over med-low heat. Don’t waste your money on the bottled stuff – simple syrup takes a few minutes and costs pennies.

Gin

• Gimlet: 2oz gin + 1oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup

• Streamlined Tom Collins: 2oz gin + topped lemon-flavoured soda (a traditional Tom Collins has four ingredients gin, simple syrup, lemon and soda water.)

• Bees Knees: 2oz gin + 1oz honey syrup + 1 oz lemon

Tequila

• Tommy’s Margarita: 2oz tequila + 1oz agave syrup + 1oz lime (a drink that gained popularity in the 90’s at LA eatery Tommy’s Mexican, this margarita riff does away with the orange flavoured liqueur for a lighter, tequila-forward, citrusy drink.)

• Paloma: 2oz tequila + ½ oz lime + 3-4oz grapefruit soda

• Mexican Mule: 2oz tequila + 1oz lime juice + 2-4oz ginger beer

Vodka

• Caesar (or Bloody Mary): 2oz vodka + 4oz Clamato or tomato juice + spices

• Moscow Mule: 2oz vodka + 4oz ginger beer + mint

• Seabreeze: 2oz vodka + 1oz cranberry juice + ½ oz grapefruit juice

Rum

• Daiquiri: 2oz rum + 1oz fruit juice (lime, strawberry, watermelon) + 1oz simple syrup

• Piña Colada: 2oz rum + 1oz pineapple juice + 2oz cream of coconut (such as Coco Lopez)

• Rum Punch: 2oz rum + 2oz orange juice + 2oz pineapple juice

Whisky

• Whisky Sour: 2oz whisky + 1oz lemon juice + simple syrup

• Mint Julep: 2oz whisky + 1oz simple syrup + mint

• Gold Rush: 2oz whisky + 1oz lemon juice + 1oz honey syrup

Pickle Brine Fried Chicken

My ethos at the best of times is to make as much as possible ahead. But especially at the cottage where we have a diminutive kitchen, and compact storage (how’s that for realtor speak?!) it’s really important we transport as much as possible as close to finished as possible.

My sister discovered this recipe a few years ago when we were taking a course on fermenting, preserving, and pickling. She had a glut of pickle brine and – waste not, want not – found a way to use it up with this fried chicken recipe.

While the wait time is long, it’s not arduous. You literally plunk your chicken thighs in the brine and then replunk them in the buttermilk. We normally leave them in the buttermilk for 24 hours, but they can stay in the buttermilk for a few days.

We brine and buttermilk at home, and then bring the chicken in their buttermilk bath to the cottage in a cooler.

Makes: 12 chicken thighs
Chef level: Moderate
Special equipment: A deep pot for frying, candy thermometer, (optional) wire rack, rimmed backing sheet

Ingredients:

• 12 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 4 oz per thigh)

• 1 litre buttermilk, or as needed

• 1 litre pickle brine, or as needed

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, or as needed

• 4 cups canola or vegetable oil, for frying

How to Make It:

1. Submerge chicken thighs in pickle brine and refrigerate for 24 hours.

2. Remove chicken from brine and submerge in buttermilk. Refrigerate for 24 hours, or up to 72 hours.

3. Fill a wide bowl with flour

4. Over medium heat (never high!) gently bring about 3 inches of oil to 375°F in a deep pot.

5. When the oil is ready, and working in batches so as not to over crowd the pot and bring down the temperature too much, remove chicken from the buttermilk, allowing excess to drip off, and coat in flour. Carefully add 3-4 thighs to the hot oil and fry until deep brown and the internal temperature is 165°F.

6. When the chicken is cooked through, remove from the oil and place on a paper towel lined plate. (Optional – place chicken on a wire rack set on a baking tray and place in a 200°F oven to stay warm.)

7. Repeat with the rest of the chicken.

8. Serve with hamburger buns and whatever toppings you like.

Wine Pairing

Fried chicken, like any fried food, loans itself to a wide and varied selection of wines, but at the end of the day you want to pair it with wines that have snappy acid, perhaps citrusy flavour, and enough weight to match with the density of the chicken.

Dry sparkling wine and Champagne is every sommelier’s favourite pick – not just because it’s a fantastic pairing, the mouth-watering acid of the fizz cuts through the fat of the fried batter – but it’s hipster and cool to downplay the luxe nature of bubbly with an everyman fried chicken.

If bubbles are not the vibe you want, Sauvignon Blanc, Unoaked Chardonnay, and Vinho Verde all make sense. Their bright, lemony flavour and sharp acidity works very much like sparkling, but without the… sparkles.

Red wine lovers, don’t fret. Fruit-forward Italian reds with red-cherry/cranberry tartness will pair nicely with the crispy chicken and dark thigh meat. Barbera d’Asti, Chianti, Dolcetto, and Sicilian Frappato are good options.

Revenge of The Pink Panther

As I’ve said, time slows at the cottage. Mornings playing a rule-less round of badminton or bocce ball, lazy afternoons at the beach, sunlit apéro with simple cocktails and easy snacks.

Last night we all gathered in living room, lit a fire, and found a DVD – yup, DVD – to watch. The movie selection here is eclectic. A mishmash of discs people have dropped off after they got rid of their DVD players years ago. I voted for Downtown Abbey and was promptly shot down. I tried again with French Kiss, the 1995 movie with Meg Ryan and Kevin Klein. The crowd was unmoved, but I feel like I could wear them down tonight.

My brother-in-law dug in his heels for the 1978 Return of The Pink Panther.

I haven’t laughed that hard, or that frequently at a movie in years! It’s wildly slapstick, not a genre that normally appeals to me, but the quick-witted and fast-paced dialogue hold its own in hilarity alongside the crazy physicality of the acting. And shockingly it’s held up over the decades: often I find old school humour, cutting edge for the day, ages to cringe-worthy tone-deafness in today’s language. Admittedly, there was one line, said so quickly you could miss it if still laughing from the last bit, that made my sister and I simultaneously turn to each other with raised eyebrows, but that was the only one. The rest was just good, laugh-out-loud, fun. And blessedly, it was a quick hit, running a tidy and mercifully succinct 90 minutes.

I’ll return on Saturday with another cottage dispatch. We’re working with a streamlined bar, so I’ve got some great hacks for stand-ins when you find yourself without a shaker or a stirrer or really, anything else. I can’t wait to share it with you.

I must run. I’m being called to the bocce ball court.

Xo – Erin

PS – speaking of uproarious fun, don’t forget I’m hosting a Tasting Tour of Argentina on Thursday, October 3, downtown Toronto. I’m trying to extend early bird ticket sales until September, but we’re really running low on inventory. I’ll try to hold off the bean counters, but I can’t promise my strength will hold. Get yours before the prices go up.

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