EMBURY COCKTAILS: Wedding Double Bill: Pimm's Cup And Salt 'N' Pepa

October 01, 2009

Wedding Double Bill: Pimm's Cup And Salt 'N' Pepa

When my little brother Josh was planning his wedding up in Cape Neddick, Maine, I was called upon to come up with some spectacular drink for the occasion. Despite my repeated assertion that I'm not actually a bartender but merely a reporter on the ingenuity of others, as the day approached it was clear that it was still assumed that I would craft something special. So I cast my mind back to some of the better drinks I'd had in the last few months and came up with the Pimm's Cup from 15 Romolo in San Fransisco and the Salt 'n' Pepa from Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon.

Homemade ginger syrup was the secret ingredient that pushed 15 Romolo's Pimm's Cup into the running, and it's coupled with the spirit bumper of your choice--my choice was gin, Beefeater, and lots of it. The original recipe below:

15 ROMOLO PIMM'S CUP

1 oz Pimms No. 1

1 oz base liquor (this means anything though generally we recommend gin since pimms is gin based)
1 oz fresh lemon juice

1/2 oz ginger syrup

Dash Angostura bitters

Muddle 6-8 slices of cucumber

Add 8-10 pieces a fresh mint (no need to muddle these otherwise it becomes bitter
Add all ingredients to mixing glass with muddled cucumber and mint. shake over ice.
Strain tall and top with soda water. garnish with a cucumber slice and a mint sprig.

I simply upped the proportions significantly: 4 bottles of Pimm's no. 1, for starters. Pimm's Cups lend themselves to being punched-up. The ginger syrup was made by Chris from Key West's Bad Boy Burritos--equal parts sugar and water and a big piece of ginger sliced into thin strips all thrown into a saucepan, raised to a boil then simmered for about an hour, or until midway between liquid and syrup. To wedding-ify it, I added red grapes, strawberries, fresh mint from the garden at the house where the wedding took place, and some Maine blueberries. We filled up a giant glass punchbowl with 4 bottles of Pimm's, a lot of Beefeater, a splash of Hendrick's and two bottles of club soda. Slices of cucumbers, lemons, limes and orange made the glass bowl look quite festive. I'd brought some Fee Bros. rhubarb bitters and threw a few healthy dashes in there, just for fun, and a few more dashes of promo-only Beefeater 24 bitters. Two glasses were customized for the bride and the groom, with the full complement of fruit and a little extra soda water. New sister in law Bonnie claimed it was the best drink she'd ever had, but then she may have been biased--she was a little excited because she's just gotten married.

As the wedding guests sipped on Pimm's Cups we turned our attention to the next course, the Salt 'n' Pepa. The drink had first blipped on my radar at a late-night cocktail session in the Silverlake Hills in Los Angeles. My friends had been to The Varnish the night before and asked for something with Hendrick's and citrus and were given a Salt And Pepper: gin, grapefruit, lime, Peychauds and simple syrup. We tried to replicate it, subbing, by necessity, Angostura (hard to find Peychaud's at 2 a.m in L.A.) and adding basil which was interesting, and called it "A Salt With A Deadly Pepa" after the important first Salt 'n' Pepa album. It tasted great that night, but we never quite got the ratio right when we tried it again for a daytime barbeque--sometimes those late night inspirations don't translate to the daylight hours.

As it turned out, it was in fact that female rap act who'd inspired the original cocktail. Later in the summer I ordered one from Jeffrey Morgenthaler at Clyde Common in Portland and was handed the best iteration I'd had so far. I learned then that it had been invented by former bar manager Kevin Ludwig (who has since moved onto open the insane cocktail laboratory on the other side of the Willamette River that is Beaker & Flask) and it was originally called the Salt 'n Pepa. Kevin's recipe had evolved over time at Clyde Common but this was the gist:

SALT 'N' PEPA

2 oz gin (none specified, they just used well gin)

1 oz grapefruit

3-8 dashes Peychaud's bitters

some lemon or lime

a bunch of simple syrup

Upon reviewing what we did in LA I realized we had erred in two ways, using too little gin, and Angostura bitters-Peychaud's distinct flavor is needed to offset the astrignent grapefruit. For the wedding, we added muddled cucumber just to make it a bit more approachable, and some chiffonaded basil (thanks to Scott Beattie for the chiffonade tip). Follow the original proportions (we wound up with a gallon of gin and the juice of 3o grapefruits, all in a big tin punchbow) and watch them line up for more. Then just wait for the Soul Train line to start up. J.R.