Photo: Nina Lincoff
Dumplings, pho, and scallion pancakes constitute a good meal. One hundred dumplings, three hours of dough rolling, and a dinner that stretches out over five hours constitute a great meal. A great meal that I’m lucky enough to enjoy, partake in, and help create once a year on New Year’s Eve. But such a great meal is, fortunately on most days yet unfortunately on New Year’s, often complemented with an intense food coma and a need for the closest sofa. Not a good symptom to endure when trying to ring in 2012. Thankfully—and to my surprise considering that this family-oriented dumpling party is complete with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandmothers—the host of this year’s dumpling extravaganza is something of a cocktail enthusiast. And so he offered up the perfect remedy to food-induced sleepiness: Irish Coffee, to which I promptly said, “No, thank you.”
You see, still in my terribly naïve youth, I thought that the main ingredient in an Irish Coffee was Bailey’s or some other horribly saccharine, creamy derivative. That faux-distillation of whiskey, sugar, and cream has the awful power of turning a cup of coffee into something relatively undrinkable. Of course, I was wrong. Irish Cream liqueur takes the purity of the ingredients of a real Irish Coffee—the whiskey, sugar, cream—and muddles it, getting rid of the original’s simplicity and the overall drinking experience.
A real Irish Coffee, or at least what was given to me, is composed of four ingredients: whiskey, coffee, cream, and sugar. No ‘coffee’ or ‘chocolate’ flavorings. Simple, delicious, hot, and quick to wake anyone out of a food coma. The coffee is freshly brewed, the whiskey sweetened with a hint of sugar, and the cream whipped just enough so that it sits atop the liquid, a floating cloud of richness. The relationship to Irish Coffee liqueurs is striking, but the flavors and the experience create a drink that can’t be imitated with a pre-bottled product. It is truly the experience that differentiates the real from the imitation, and the experience is worth the extra couple minutes.
As always, the original is best.
Irish Coffee
Makes two
Take 1 part whiskey (Irish in origin, preferably) and pour into glassware. Irish coffees look lovely in thin-stemmed glassware. Pour 2 parts freshly brewed hot coffee into the glass and stir in a small spoonful of white sugar, combining the whiskey, coffee, and sugar. Take ¼ cup heavy whipping cream and place in a separate bowl. Whisk the cream for about a minute by hand until thickened. Pour half the cream over the back of a spoon into the top of the glass, diffusing the force of the cream so it sits atop the coffee. Repeat the whiskey, coffee, sugar mix in another glass and top with the remaining cream. Sip the Irish Coffee through the cream collar and enjoy.
