by: David Lebovitz

“When asked to name a French drink, people think of wine or pastis, but cocktails don’t instinctively come to mind. but in truth, many of the most sought-after cocktail ingredients are French, including cognac, Armagnac, Chartreuse, Lillet, eau-de-vie, and calvados, as well as champagne, Suze, Gran Marnier, elderflower liqueur, dry vermouth, Salers, and Cointreau, not to mention pastis, crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and crème de cassis, among many, many others,” David Lebovitz. Wow, I had never thought about how many cocktail ingredients are French. I love a good cocktail, if I am out at a bar I rarely order anything other than a cocktail.

Drinking French provides you an at home guide to making some of the best café drinks, aperitifs, liqueurs, cocktails and apero snacks. I loved the recipes I tried and can’t wait to try more.

Hemingway Daiquiri

A fun cocktail is always a great choice. I am a big fan of Ernest Hemingway and loved learning that he had a fondness for rum. The maraschino liqueur was hard to find in my area, so I did substitute a cherry syrup. Funny enough when I looked online it looked like in a lot of other areas Total Wine carries it but not here locally in Washington, DC area.

Even without the extra liqueur this is a strong drink, at least for me. The Hemingway Daiquiri was a nice treat and I really liked it plus it was super simple to make. I can’t wait until we replace our glassware and have the better glasses to serve our drinks in.

Rosemary Bar Nuts

I wanted to try something very different than what I would normally pick and chose these rosemary bar nuts. The recipe is very simple only six ingredients. For the nuts I used a mix of walnuts, almonds and cashews. From start to finish this recipe only took 20 minutes, the longest part was waiting for the oven to heat up.

The nuts are delicious, the combination of the paprika, rosemary, salt and brown sugar is perfect. I am really glad these will keep in an airtight container for up to a week so I can take them on my flight at the end of the week.

A good drink book is always a great addition to any cookbook collection. Drinking French provides you both with alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. This is a book I know I am going to use again and again. I can’t wait to have a bunch of people over and try more of the recipes. What recipe are you looking forward to making?