Posts tagged Drinks
Mulled Wine, or How to Survive Winter

I am not a winter person. Even though I have spent most of my life in cold cities (Boston, New York, Beijing), I always dread their endless winters. Some people from northern climes can wax poetic about snow, fire places, and ski season. Me, I conjure up flu season, ugly long underwear, and bitter winds that lash across my face. No offense, Winter, but I would love to avoid you altogether by skipping to the tropics. Or hibernating until spring.

Until science finds a way for humans to sleep for 4 months, I am finding solace in the next best thing. Alcohol. More specifically, hot alcohol.

Mulled wine, also called Glühwein in Germany and Glögg in the Nordic countries, is simply wine heated up with spices and sugar. It's an especially good drink to make if you live in a country devoid of good wine, like China. Domestic brands are mostly undrinkable, and any imported wines are either bottom-of-the-barrel gunk (literally?) or bottles 3 or 4 times the cost overseas. (How I miss Trader Joe's wine shops.) With mulled wine, you can buy the cheapest wine that is still drinkable, and allow the spices and sugar to take charge.

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RecipesDiana KuanDrinks, Recipes Comments
Thai Lemongrass and Ginger Iced Tea

Last week I helped out at a Thai cooking class at The Hutong taught by my friend Sandra of Savour Asia. As we sat down to a meal of mango salad, pork laap, and red curry chicken, I realized how much I missed having lemongrass as a kitchen staple. In New York I could easily take the train to Chinatown whenever I wanted to cook with lemongrass. In Beijing, Sanyuanli market has several stalls selling the aromatic stalky grass, but is such a trek from my apartment that it doesn't enter my cooking consciousness at a moment's notice.

After scooping the last of my laap mu into my mouth, I decided I must must must get lemongrass that day and make iced tea. Lemongrass and ginger iced tea is my drink of choice with Thai food if I want something lighter than iced tea with condensed milk. A somewhat long trip to Sanyuanli later, I had four stalks of fresh lemongrass to take guilty whiffs of and inspire bleary yearnings for a trip to Thailand this winter.

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RecipesDiana KuanDrinks, Recipes, Thai Comments
Kashmiri Chai

There are many things about the US that I started missing immediately after arrival in China: unrestricted internet, entertaining TV, concept of "personal space", the use of bleach and other disinfectants in public restrooms, just to name a few.

Then there are the foodstuffs that, after months of searching, I came to realize are simply impossible to find. Chinese beers may cost pennies, but anything with actual hops are 3 times the Stateside price. Vegetables are insanely cheap, but good luck finding a decent box of cereal for less than $8. Markets have massive bins of Sichuan peppercorn and any dried seafood you'd desire, but I can't find cardamom anywhere in the city.

Therefore, friends and loved ones who go abroad are essential to a worldly cook's sanity.  When Jacob returned from his last trip to Hungary, he toted back not only foie gras (hugs!!!), truffles (hugs!!!), and a plethora of Eastern European liquor (drunken hugs!!!), but also whole cardamom and cloves. It's amazing how much those two spices can automatically freshen up your kitchen cabinets. And it was fitting we would take turns making tons and tons of chai.

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RecipesDiana KuanDrinks, Indian, Recipes, Tea Comments
Mango Mojito

With my computer's hard drive still in malfunction state, and months of work on the verge of being lost forever, I decided to make myself feel better with a mojito. Beer has the reputation of being a drink to drown your sorrows in, maybe in a dim bar with sad, sad music in the background. A mojito is a little sunnier, a "hey, cheer up!" kind of drink.

Incidentally, I just watched Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, about Dorothy Parker and writers of the Algonquin Round Table. Aside from the nice flapper dresses and jazz that always plays in the backdrop of everyday life, I am in love with the twenties because people didn't think anything of having a drink in the afternoon. Even with Prohibition in full swing. If you must spend your afternoon slaving away in front of a typewriter, you might as well have a cocktail to ease tension and writer's block.

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RecipesDiana KuanCocktails, Drinks, Recipes Comments