In case I haven’t talked enough about this, my newest book Let’s Make Cocktails! came out this year! You can purchase it (please do!!) anywhere books are sold. The book has sixty recipes in it, which means there are a lot of very fine cocktails that I did not have room for. Occasionally, I’ve been using this newsletter to post a cocktail recipe that didn’t make the cut. Today’s cutting room floor cocktail: the Black Manhattan!

Bartender Todd Smith created this cocktail in 2005. He put it on the menu when he opened Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco in 2006, one of the first speakeasy-style bars of the cocktail renaissance. Most riffs on the classic Manhattan reduce the amount of vermouth, but this one replaces the vermouth with Amaro Averna. The result is unmistakably a Manhattan, but heavier, and even more spirit-forward, with an astounding depth of flavor.
Ingredients: 2 ounces rye whiskey, 1 ounce amaro averna, 1 dash angostura bitters, 1 dash orange bitters. Garnish: cocktail cherries.

Someday perhaps I will combine all these cutting room floor cocktails into a companion minicomic for Let’s Make Cocktails! Or, if I’m every lucky enough for that book to go into a second printing, maybe we can make an expanded edition. 🙂

The Black Manhattan is one of my current favorite cocktails to order; it’s a deliciously decadent slow sipper, and swapping out different amari for it makes it an endlessly new experience. One of my favorite local bartenders made us an insanely good Black Manhattan using a mix of Becherovka, Lucano Anniversario and Fernet Paesani amari. I’m saving her recipe in case I ever have all three of those bottles in the house someday.

In Other News:

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here, but this year I was awarded a DCASE grant from the city of Chicago to produce a minicomic of my kolache recipe! So I’m working on that at the same time as I’m working on the new cookie book. It’s going to have some stories about my grandmother, plus her recipe and my great-grandmother’s recipe, plus info about different types of kolaches and klobasniky. Stay tuned; I hope to have that produced very soon!

What I’m Into Lately:

I just picked up Samanta Schweblin’s Good and Evil and Other Stories, a deliciously unsettling short story collection. I loved her books Fever Dream, Seven Empty Houses, and Mouthful of Birds, and comics friend Mike Centeno recommended this collection to me. I’m only three stories in, but it’s already enjoyably unsettling. Her stories have such a powerful way of pulling the rug out from under you!

What Toki’s Into Lately:

Toki would like to know if you happen to have any of those nice little Greenies on you? and maybe you’d like to share some or all of them with him?

a fluffy orange and white cat with his dumb little tongue sticking outwill mlem for greenies

My Portfolio
Shop my Threadless
Shop Books and Prints