The reverse is also the case. On occasion, you'll run across what appears to be a "themed" drink: something tropical, with lots of fruit juices or syrups in it, or perhaps something named after a country, whose ingredients conjure up a consistent, vivid mental image. And, lo and behold, said cocktail will contain an oddball ingredient which seems totally out of place.
The incongruousness of the thing might jar you right out of your seat (if the alcohol you've consumed hasn't done that already).
Take the Cactus Bite, for instance.
What's wrong with this picture?
2 ounces tequila
2 ounces lemon juice
2 teaspoons Cointreau or triple sec
2 teaspoons Drambuie
½ teaspoon superfine sugar
1 dash bitters
In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine all of the ingredients. Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass.
Which doesn't belong here?
If you said "the tequila," please turn off your machine and go jump in a lake. If you said "the Drambuie," congratulations! You win a cookie.
Tequila, as we all know, is made from agave. Agave is not cactus. The two plants aren't even in the same family. But since most desert plants are spiky and the cactus is the most famous of these, the term "cactus juice" has become shorthand for mescal. They have deserts and cactus aplenty in Mexico, and tequila is something Mexico is famous for. So there you go. Obviously this is a Mexican-themed drink. Tequila? Of course. Lemon juice? Yes, you can order a rather nice fillet of tilapia with lemon juice, hecho en Mexico. Triple sec? I don't see why not. They have oranges, too. Sugar and bitters? Not all that conspicuous.
But wait...Drambuie?
Drambuie is aged single-malt whisky, mixed with honey and a blend of spices. It's made in Broxburn, West Lothian, Scotland.
Huh?
What's that doing in a cocktail with a name like "Cactus Bite"?
Where does Drambuie fit into a libation with tequila in it, for crying out loud?
Madre de Dios!
Well, since you asked, I'll tell you. It's doing the same job as wood glue in a rocking chair, or molasses in brickwork. It's not an essential ingredient, but it does help bind everything together. Tequila has its own hot brand of spiciness, to which is added a sour kick (the lemon juice), a sweet citrus undertone (triple sec and sugar), and an aftertaste which is sure to pucker your face inside out (bitters and lemon juice). This would dull the tequila immensely if the Drambuie didn't come winging in from left field during the third inning.
The bases are loaded. Two outs. Drambuie steps up to the plate, poised on the back of your tongue, ready to hit a homer and make it all the way round the bases. He swings and connects. Whack! Whoa! Nobody in the stands saw this coming, folks! Who'd a thunk it? Drambuie comes from nowhere, shoring up Tequila's loss of heat with a little Scotch fire of his own, honey and herbs ensuring that the prior run of Bitters, Sugar and Cointreau didn't go to waste. All four runners make it home, one after the other. The crowd goes wild.
Final score: you have a cocktail which balances spice, sweetness and sourness in equal measure. If you're interested in flavor, but don't want to adulterate the liquors with too many mixers, this may not be the cocktail for you; I'd suggest beefing up the Drambuie and tequila. On the other hand, if you prefer not to taste booze in your drink (shame on you!) simply reduce the ratios and you'll have a sweet-sour summery sort of beverage, fit for sipping on the back porch or kicking your shoes off at the local club.
Oh, the heck with it. What am I saying? You're old enough to judge for yourselves what kind of damn drink you want. I've done my part.
The rest is up to you. Sip a Cactus Bite and enjoy.
Fresh off our artisanal Edinburgh pizza, Jeff and I ducked up Chambers Street for a peek inside the Scottish National Museum.
Now, you must understand this beforehand: the whole time we were traipsing through these galleries, Jethro Tull songs and random snatches of the movie Trainspotting (my understanding of Caledonian contributions to world culture, in other words) kept flitting through my head. It was with that prejudice that I entered the Scottish National Museum and beheld a pivotal chunk of the Declaration of Arbroath writ upon the wall there:
"For we fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for Freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life."
The Declaration of Arbroath was essentially a declaration of independence, written up in 1320. Three were originally written, one by the Scottish nobles, one by the King of Scots, and a third (the sole survivor) by Bernard of Kilwinning, Abbot of Arbroath. This letter was addressed to Pope John XXII and was intended to set the record straight: Scotland was, basically, its own country, and had every right to beat the tobacco juice out of every foreign invader (i.e., England) who came calling. The Scots hoped that the Pope would read their letter, decide that he'd made a boner in recognizing Norman sovereignty over Scotland, de-excommunicate Robert the Bruce, and recognize Scotland as a legitimately independent kingdom.
It's unclear how much effect the letter had on John Twenty-Two. Some guess that he did pitch for Scotland by helping arrange for the Treaty of Northampton. Though short-lived, the treaty formally renounced all English claims to Scotland.
But eventually the Scottish and the English started goin' at it again. The first floor of the museum contained displays mostly martial in nature—swords, spears, and even the odd arquebus. Cannons, too. It was something else. Had I not already been inured to the wow-factor of cannons by the Mons Meg, I'd likely have jumped right out of my skin. I'd love to show you pictures, but (a) you people really need to get up off your duffs and go see this for yourselves, and (b) I've been kind of conditioned against taking pictures in museums. Particularly national ones. I sorta get the feeling I'm stealing the soul of the country away in my camera.
If the War Museum hadn't hammered the point home, the National Museum sure did: the Scots have a military background. Heck, these guys have been scrapping it out with their neighbors from Day One, long before Israel made it cool. Seems like every major European power has, at some point, had designs on Scotland. As if that weren't enough, the men of that land don't seem content to just sit around and wait for a foreign power to invade; lots of 'em joined the British Army and went and fought in wars all over the world, from India to North America. (I've got a buddy from Edinburgh who's in the British Army right now, in fact.) Even disregarding how much brawling went on in prehistory and the Middle Ages, the Scots have fought in the Napoleonic Wars, both World Wars, and virtually every colonial conflict that Great Britain's been involved in. (There were Scots on both sides during the American Revolution and the American Civil War; let us not forget my favorite 18th-century badass, John Paul Jones.)
But just because the Scots were at the forefront of like, every major war in world history doesn't necessarily mean that warfare was the limit of those aforementioned contributions to world culture. Hell no. The Scottish invented two of the most important things to human civilization: steam engines and whisky. Extrapolating from this, we can conclude that the Scots simultaneously empowered humanity by mechanizing industry and economy, thereby allowing us to conquer heaven and earth, while simultaneously bestowing upon us the booze we needed to cope with the long-ass workweeks.
Thank you, Scotland. Thank you.
All kidding aside, I could really begin to see how Scotland had made a meritorious donation to the quality of life on Earth. In every arena—engineering, architecture, literature—the Scots have been on the cutting edge. Take James Watt, for example. An engineer by trade, Watt, who was working at the University of Glasgow fabricating instruments, started thinking about steam engines. He realized that contemporary models wasted a lot of energy continuously cooling and reheating the cylinder. After a bit of tinkering, he thunk up a solution: a separate condenser which would let the cylinder stay hot and boost the power output tremendously. He had a working model by 1765, and his design single-handedly turned the steam engine from a Model T into a 1969 Mustang. (Speaking of 1969 Mustangs, Watt was the the guy who came up with the idea of horsepower as a way to gauge engine output. The watt, an SI unit of power, is named after him.)
On the second floor of the museum there was a massive steam locomotive, coal in the scuttle and pistons as spit-shiny as the day they came from the factory. It might as well have been James Watts's tombstone. Fittingly, a there was a whisky still behind it.
As we strolled onward, Jeff and I learned that the Scots had played a vital role in the formation and development of the United States, as well as Canada, Australia and many other far-flung nations. Scots influential to American history include notables like John Witherspoon (who reprsented New Jersey at the Second Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence); the aforementioned John Paul Jones; and Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist and steel magnate who simultaneously proved that (a) the American dream wasn't just a dream, (b) that somebody could be filthy rich and still put their money to good use by establishing a pension fund for their employees, as well as endowing libraries, schools and universities all over the world, and (c) labor unions can't be put down with violence.
[cough]
The Scottish diaspora is one of the most impressive in the world (there was a video about it on the second floor of the museum). All around the world, in every major British colony and elsewhere, Scots have tirelessly labored, dreamed, created, sweated, and built, and upon their labor the weight of empires has stood for ages. Their shipbuilding capabilities are second to none; they supplied a great many to the Allies during World War II. Oh, and during that great war, a little-known Scotsman named Robert Watson-Watt—a descendant of James Watt—invented a little thing they call radar. This radical invention caused the bad guys a world of hurt and royally saved Britain's arse by allowing it to know when the Nazis were sending bombers to un-stiffen the upper lips of its citizenry. And in the present day, writers like Irvine Welsh (who wrote the book Trainspotting, as well as several other influential works on drug culture and Scotland's urban underbelly) are keeping the cultural reputation of the nation alive and well. And we can't forget my favorite flautist, Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull fame), or my homeboys Bon Scott and the Young brothers (better known as AC/DC) who, even though they emigrated to Australia, have created and are still creating some of the most phenomenal rock 'n' roll in the history of human civilization.
All of this was in the museum. Good museum, in other words. Informative. Told me stuff I'd never known, nor even suspected, before I went in. (You have no idea how intricate the kilt creation process is. Did you know that the specific patterns and colors of the tartan in a Scots' kilt indicates which clan they belong to? I didn't! I could recognize a MacLeod a mile off now!)
But dang, the museum's layout was confusing as all get-out. The floor plan appeared to have been designed by an epileptic mouse on carbon monoxide. Staircases, narrow, large, mid-size, were scattered everywhere; floors ran in vaguely rectangular patterns, except where they ran in triangular or circular ones; and pocket hallways and narrow corridors were stuck in the oddest places. It was the hardest thing for Jeff and me to decide whether we'd already been to a particular section of the museum, or merely missed it because we'd taken one of three alternate routes and bypassed it entirely. The gift shop, when we found it, was identical to every other gift shop in the history of the Universe: generic souvenirs, cheap games and puzzles, some postcards, the preserved skulls of six teenagers who were caught vandalizing the bathrooms on Level 3, and Museum-scented cologne. You know, in case you want to smell like James Watt, Greyfriars Bobby, the Monarch of the Glen or the Battle of Camperdown, or whatever.
Nah, I'm just kidding. They didn't have Museum-scented cologne.
Just outside the museum doors, Jeff and I passed a curly-haired man sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sidewalk. He was hunched over as though unconscious, his head on his ankles, hands limp on the pavement. He looked like a pilgrim from some distant land, paying obeisance to the gods of historical and cultural significance; except he was facing into the street, and was utterly motionless. A nearby woman was calling the police on her cell phone.
One last thing.
Our aim, as I mentioned earlier, was to hasten our demise with artery-clogging comestibles. Departing the National Museum of Scotland, Jeff and I were on a cultural high and felt the need to perpetuate it with something to stick in our mouths.
Well, that left only one thing for us to do: march back to the High Street district, to Clam Shell, a tiny fish 'n 'chip shop, and have ourselves a deep-fried Mars Bar.
Mars Bars, just so's you know, are candy bars ("chocolate bar" if you want to be particular) manufactured in Great Britain by Mars, Incorporated. You've heard of them. They make Milky Way Bars, too. But the Scottish people, it seems, are not content with the healthiness of chocolate, and have decided to dip Mars Bars (and a whole host of other foods, like pizza slices) into boiling oil and deep-fry them. The result looks something like this:
And by God, it tastes delicious. Never mind the look on Jeff's face as he sampled one. He looks like that all the time.
How can I describe it? Shall I say that the greasy, salty shell created a near-perfect complement to the mostly-melted candy bar it encased? That the two proud Titans, Sweet and Savory, melded with almost unbelievable harmony and created a combined Flavor so decadently rich and mouth-watering that one could feel the brain melting and arteries hardening as the treat was masticated and swallowed? That the temptation to go back and purchase five more of these sinful confections had to be resisted in much the same manner as a heroin addiction or a gentle stroke about one's genitalia?
Even that doesn't quite cover it.
It was yummy. Let's leave it at that.
Then it was back to Belford Street for a much-deserved break. We had a need to digest our fancy pizza and fried candy bars before the evening pub crawl. Rest came easily in the warm, golden sunlight streaming onto my bunk from the huge west window. I pulled my hat over my eyes and dozed contentedly.
NEXT TIME: The Grand Pub Crawl. Cider and ale. The Scottish take on nachos. Free houses and brew houses. Jeff's roast. Brazilian soccer vs. Communism. "Jeff, I do believe I'm going to go talk to that German girl at the bar." A conspicuous lack of toilet paper. Hard times in Belford Street.
