Long before I had the mental capacity to obsess over the terroir of various types of corn puffs and split hairs on specific tamal styles, I possessed a burning passion for juice. In addition to an early memory in which an anti-drinking-and-driving PSA sent me into what may have been my first fit of neurosis (I thought this was advertising a new law that somehow applied to car-seat sippy cup consumption), many of my fondest mealtime remembrances center around various Nectars of the Gods; my personal favorite was Five Alive, whose classy conglomeration of citruses reminded me of some powerhouse cartoon superhero combo. My only wish was that there could somehow be more types of juice, beyond standbys like apple, orange and grape.
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Unearthed at Russ & Daughters during a 40-minute Sunday morning wait for bagel sandwiches: an old-fashioned beverage that was new to me. For the last five years I’ve been intending to recreate this 2010-era New York Times recipe, itself a recreation of a turn-of-the-century cooling beverage. Each year I’m put off by the cost of fresh berries and end up lazily gobbling up any batches I manage to get my hands on. Then, serendipitously, on the first truly cold day of an encroaching winter, I found a ready-made version. Shrub, as it turns out, is just another term for drinking vinegar, with which its sharp bitter notes piercing velvety sweetened vegetable juice proves the perfect complement for the taste of smoked fish. The beet and lemon mixture seems to cement the beverage’s Old World bonafides, apparently isolating its derivation as either the LES itself or one of the Eastern European origin points which once funneled so many new immigrants into this crowded area. This seemingly clear-cut explanation is of course confused by the fact that Russ and Daughters sits squarely at the nexus of genuine old-fashioned conservationism and tongue-in-cheek modernization. The sandwich I ordered, for example, was called the ‘Super Heebster’ and featured wasabi flying fish roe atop baked salmon and whitefish salad.
Liquors often have roots in religious communities, which sounds peculiar until you consider the medicinal history of booze, the traditional mercantile focus of these mini-societies, and the fact that alcohol prohibition within the church is a pretty recent development. Monks are responsible for myriad varieties of beer, as well as Benedictine and Chartreuse among other liqueurs. Nuns, as far as I can tell, are responsible only for rompope, the thick yellow beverage known as Mexican eggnog, which reputedly originated in a Pueblan convent during the 17th century. This story probably has some truth to it, although the drink has roots which stretch back to the Old World, specifically Spanish ‘egg punches’, Dutch advocaat and English posset.
Southern Mexico is a land of bountiful produce, overflowing with tropical fruits and the vivid juices which flow freely from these splendid orbs. Yet it’s also industrializing at the same general rate as the rest of the country, which means that it’s sweet tooth is being adjusted to suit the of desires the global economy and the corporations which service it. Corn and soy form the backbone of United States farm production. Corn is also Mexico’s #1 crop, and while much of it is put to traditional use, the rising price of cane sugar is causing that sweetener to be replaced with corn syrup in many sodas, with the odd consequence that so-called ‘Mexican Coke’ made with cane sugar is exported to the U.S. as a boutique product, while the Mexican version now often uses syrup.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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