tonight’s mad men cocktail

I won’t spend a lot of time debriefing the Season 5 Premiere of Mad Men except to say that I felt a lot better about my result on the Mad Men Personality Test (you’ll remember that I ended up being Roger Sterling) after listening to his one-liners during the episode.  Beyond that, I’ll leave it to the Culture Desk at the New Yorker for this good debrief.  Also check out the New York Review of Books essay on how everyone who loves Mad Men is a shallow idiot (good GOD).

Now on to the drinks!

The mooching continues this week with the Jock and I taking a spot on my friend Lisa’s couch for tonight’s episode of Mad Men.  In gratitude for my shameless (and sometimes aggressive) mooching, I will be setting up the travelling cocktail bar for another classic cocktail that would have been consumed in the times of Mad Men.  Tonight it will be:  the Moscow Mule!

The Mix – The Moscow Mule  (Source)

• 1/2 oz lime juice
• 2 oz of your favourite vodka
• 4-6 oz ginger beer

Squeeze lime juice into a Collins glass (or Moscow Mule mug) and drop in the  spent shell. Add 2 or 3 ice cubes, then pour in the vodka and fill with cold  ginger beer.

Variations on this recipe suggest that you can use ginger ale instead of the ginger beer.  Or that you can add 1 tsp of simple syrup.  You can also garnish with a sprig of mint!

Although the Moscow Mule doesn’t sound as glamorous or as complex as some of the other classic cocktails you’ll find on the Mad Men website, I think it is smooth, refreshing and elegant in its simplicity – especially when you consider some of the more horrifying vodka-based cocktails (like the Cotton Candy Martini, shudder).

As with many ‘classic’ cocktails, the Moscow Mule has a historical past being credited as vodka’s ‘breakout cocktail’ – invented for the purpose of marketing Smirnoff vodka to Americans.  Even the traditional copper Moscow Mule mug was part of that marketing campaign.

I decided to go with the Moscow Mule this week because the last week’s Negroni was just too boozy for the Jock (who hates gin and loves beer), and wanted to go with something that incorporated some non-alcohol mix.  If you were drinking along last week, and also found the Negroni a bit on the bitter side, the folks over at Post Prohibition posted a variation on the recipe that tones it down a bit to make it more palatable for cocktail drinkers like the Jock.

The good news with the Moscow Mule is that you probably already have vodka at home, and a quick trip to the grocery store for ginger beer and a lime means that you can drink along!  And if you are a reader of the blog with AMC, a free spot on your couch, and open to a mooching opportunity, do let me know.  In the meantime, I will extend a sincere thank-you to Lisa for accommodating a couple of moochers.  Enjoy the next episode, everyone!