Candied 'Apples' on sticks, the streets of Shanghai, food vendors, a South American Gentleman's Companion, a tall drink served in a bar in Courtenay Place... what do they have in common? You'll be glad to know the answer to this question you never knew you wanted to ask.
When one thinks of the street vendors of old Shanghai the flavour of candied apples is not the first that springs to mind. Chinese five spice, stuffed buns and perhaps the odd roasted silkworm would seem more evocative of those time and care worn passages -yet these miniature fruit on a stick are a traditional snack of China.
And now we begin the digression...
Candied fruit on bamboo skewers (usually about 20cm long) are called tanghulu (糖葫蘆). Tanghulu typically have a hardened sugar coating that comes from dipping the skewer in sugar syrup, but versions can also be found with a second chocolate coating, or sesame sprinkles.
Traditionally, the fruit used has been Chinese hawthorn (山楂 shānzhā), which are miniature bright red fruits freckled with light brown dots that resembled crab-apples.
The hawthorn fruit is the most common form of candied fruit snack, but in recent times vendors have also used various other fruits, such as cherry tomatoes, mandarins, strawberries, blueberries, pineapples, kiwifruit, bananas or grapes.
These snacks can be found widely along the Beijing snack street Wangfujing and also there are street vendors who travel from place to place selling them
Many people outside of China may have tried hawthorn fruit without realising it. Haw Flakes (山楂餅) are thin one-inch diameter discs of light burgundy colored dry cakes sold in cylinders with paper or cellophane wrappers. Somewhat chewy and tart they are sold in most Asian supermarkets.
And now back to the bit with the drink...
To evoke this traditional flavour of China the Candied Apple cocktail was created, adapted from a drink noted by the often-deferred-to-but-never-duplicated Charles H. Baker, Jr..
Starting in the 1930s, Baker authored two inimitable bibles of exotic drinking: The Gentleman’s Companion (1939), and The South American Gentleman’s Companion.
In his South American Gentleman's Companion (1951) Charles talks of the Ron Habanero Dubonnet Helado cocktail (translated from the Spanish as: "Havana Rum, cold/frozen Dubonnet"). This refresher is composed of: 2 oz. white rum, 1 tsp. lime juice, 1 oz Dubonnet, 1 tsp. grenadine and 2 tsp. maraschino liqueur - served over crushed ice, or even through the agency of a blender.
Who is this Baker (Jr.) fellow you might ask? (go on, ask, it's the rhetorical question angle).
He is/was a man with his finger on the limpid pulse of the drinking classes and also a prose writer of rare ability.
Calling his writing style florid is a major understatement. You've never read anything quite like it. It’s ridiculously baroque. You could spend a lifetime putting on airs and graces and striking poses and still have a hard time getting out sentences like this one, where Baker describes the female patrons of a restaurant in Montevideo:
"...a demitasse-sized bevy of slick sultry eager and amiable black-haired young ladies…who sit about with—as one friend expressed it—practically plunging waist-lines whose outer Paris-sewn fabric manifestly covers nothing approaching outing-flannel weight beneath; and whose streamlined chassis are patently custom-built, not run off any routine assembly line."
But enough of that - I digress.
The Candied Apple as served at Ancestral Bar & Restaurant is made thusly:
- 30ml Dubonnet
- 3 lime wedges
- 15ml maraschino liqueur
- dash of grenadine
- apple juice
- garnish: a shake of ground cinnamon and an apple fan
Muddle the lime with the maraschino liqueur, then add the rest save the apple juice and cinnamon. Shake this mixture with cube ice then strain into a tall Collins glass that you have filled with crushed ice. Top with the apple juice and add a fan of apple segments, dusting the top with the cinnamon.
For greater 'pep' and in order to sup more closely with Charles H. Baker, a shot of white rum may be added to the mix.
As a further aside: Dubonnet was first produced in 1846 by Joseph Dubonnet, in response to a competition run by the French authorities to find a way of persuading French Foreign Legionnaires in North Africa to drink quinine as a protection against malaria. The answer, as always, was to mix the bitter ingredient with alcohol.
The aperitif is based on red wine grapes from Roussillon infused with a surprisingly exotic selection of herbs and spices, including orange rind, cinnamon, green coffee beans and quinine, which is extracted from the bark of the Peruvian cinchona tree.
Reputedly it was a favourite beverage of her late majesty the Queen Mother who liked gin with it: 30% gin, 70% Dubonnet with a slice of lemon under the ice. She once noted before a trip, "...I think that I will take two small bottles of Dubonnet and gin with me this morning, in case it is needed..."
Better advice for travelers I never heard.
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