The Washington Post - 18.09.2019

BY EMILY HEIL

White Claw keeps tightening its grip

on a thirsty nation, and its appeal is

understandable. The alcoholic seltzer

has a low calorie count, LaCroix-adja-

cent flavor and a meme-ability that

millennials love — so much so that

stores nationwide are running out, and

this month, the company instituted

panic-inducing rationing. But while the

fizzy drink is getting a generation

buzzed, it’s also not so quietly busting a

glass c eiling. Unlike so m any of its boozy

predecessors, the Claw is equally be-

loved by men and women.

For decades, our televisions told us

that men drank beer, women drank

wine, and that’s just the way the world

was. Beer commercials, even when

they’re not overtly objectifying women,

often still truck in mundane male fanta-

sy: dudes sharing brews with their bros

on game day, hanging out over the grill

or golfing.

Wine, meanwhile, is often sold as

Mommy Juice to stressed-out ladies who

SEE WHITE CLAW ON E3

KLMNO

Food

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White Claw

wants to invite

everyone to

the party

Now and then, I revise

a classic scene from t he

Bond m ovie

“Goldfinger,” w hen the

villain has s trapped the

rakish B ritish spy down

and is about to dismember him w ith

an enormous laser.

“Do you expect me t o talk?” B ond

asks, eyeing the laser’s p rogress

toward him.

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die,”

Goldfinger says.

In my version, Goldfinger turns

back a nd hisses, “No, Mr. Bond. I

expect you to apologize for the damage

you have done to the m artini.”

Having daydreamed of this for

years, I laughed aloud when I arrived

at t he James Bond-related part of

drinks writer Robert Simonson’s

terrific new book, “The Martini

Cocktail.”

“This chapter will b e short, because

I find its subject such an irritant,”

Simonson w rites. “Since at l east the

1970s, no journalist has gotten away

with w riting about the Martini

without addressing James Bond. Often

they begin their story with Bond.

Because Bond, more than sixty-five

years after writer Ian Fleming

dreamed up the suave British

superspy, i s still the first thing many

people think of in connection t o the

Martini.”

I guess it’s t oo late to rethink my

lead?

Simonson g oes on to explain our

shared pique: Bond’s f amous “shaken,

not stirred” o rder is infamous i n the

cocktail world ( martinis, most agree,

should not be shaken), as is the fact

that Bond usually orders the drink

with v odka, a spirit w ith much less

complexity than gin.

Simonson a nd I made no such gaffes

when w e sat down recently f or

martinis at Maison Premiere in

Brooklyn. The restaurant’s O ld King

Cole m artini (one of dozens in

Simonson’s b ook) combines O ld Raj

gin, Mancino secco v ermouth and

Angostura orange bitters. Presenting it

is a two-person job: O ne server holds

the tray o f ingredients; another

SEE SPIRITS ON E6

Spirits

M. CARRIE

ALLAN

Want to cause a stir? Talk about martinis.

LAURA CHASE DE FORMIGNY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST; STYLING BY LISA CHERKASKY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

RECIPES ON E6

Puritan Cocktail l Tuxedo, pictured

above l Batched Martinis

RECIPE

Blackened Broccolini and Bittersweet

Almonds on Toast E4

BY CHARLOTTE DRUCKMAN

Special to The Washington Post

Ella Risbridger’s n ew c ookbook opens predictably

enough: “There are lots of ways to start a story, but

this one begins with a chicken.” Here is the universal

emblem of home cooking in the West — the poultry

for every pot.

The second sentence is a little more ambiguous. “It

was the first story I ever wrote about food, and it

begins with a chicken in a cloth bag hanging on the

back of a kitchen chair.”

And then the third. “It was dark outside, and I was

lying on the hall floor, looking at t he chicken through

the door, and looking at the rust in the door hinges,

and wondering if I was ever going to get up.”

Spoiler alert: As the British writer promises, “this

is a hopeful story... a story about wanting to be

alive.” But before she wanted to be alive, she didn’t.

What she thought about, in the hospital, after

attempting to step in front of a London bus, was

baking pie. “I remember the pie, and I remember the

way I worked through each ingredient, step by step,

and how, when the duty psychiatrist asked me why, I

could only think of short crust and soften the leeks in

Irish butter until translucent and rub the butter into

the flour and bind with milk,” she writes. It’s one of

the only things she remembers about that hospital.

And it was all she could think about until she went

home and, with some assistance, made that pie. It

was a small triumph that helped her begin to see that

she had survived, that maybe she would “stop crying

all the time” and, perhaps, “carry on cooking.” She

did.

“Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living

For)” i s the record of Risbridger’s l earning to cope: “a

kind of guidebook for falling back in love with the

world, a how-to of weathering storms and finding

your pattern and living, really living.”

She might have written a memoir with recipes, the

format followed by Nora Ephron, Madhur Jaffrey,

Nigel Slater and Ruth Reichl, to name a few. But

Risbridger has instead given us a cookbook she

hopes we get full of crumbs and sticky with sauce and

syrup.

She didn’t intend to write a cookbook at age 21,

when she set out on what would be a five-year

project. But cooking saved her life, and she hoped to

pass that along in an actionable way. “I wanted the

book to be useful. Actually, I think that’s probably

why it’s a cookbook, not a memoir,” she said in an

interview. “ There’s things in there that are helpful.”

Because of this, “Midnight Chicken” turns out to

be a double departure; Risbridger dares to share her

experience with depression while also offering reci-

pes as prescriptions for happiness. In addition to

roasting chicken, preparing Uplifting Chilli & Lem-

on Spaghetti, Stuck in a Bookshop Salmon & Sticky

Rice, or Life Affirming Mussels can be a path to a

SEE DEPRESSION ON E4

Cooking can

remind us:

Life is worth

savoring

A cookbook author includes the recipes that

helped her recover from her lowest point

ILLUSTRATION BY GRACIA LAM FOR THE WASHINGTON POST