Yesterday we met Chris Lingua, bar manager at the dimly-lit Scottsdale speakeasy Kazimierz World Wine Bar.
Today he shares with us the recipe for Rimbaud's Left Hand, a drink created by a bartender in Chicago with this story behind it: The drink is named for Arthur Rimbaud, a 19th century French poet. The story goes that Rimbaud, an absinthe drinker, wanted to return to Paris, but his lover and fellow poet, Paul Verlaine, didn't. So Verlaine did what any sensible boyfriend would do and shot the dude's left hand clean off.
"The history is cool enough, and I like telling the story, but the drink is just different than anything you've ever had," Lingua says. "It has six ingredients, so it's getting up there as far as number of ingredients goes. But I like to think of it as a hand -- one for each finger, plus the egg white."
"Another cool thing about it is it demonstrates a dry shake, which no one really does anymore. It's just shaking without ice, to develop that frothy head," Lingua says. "I like to think of it as a really cool, sophisticated tiki drink."
The ingredients:
1 part Pernod Absinthe
1 part Benedictine
1 part Aperol Orange Liqueur
1 part lemon juice
1 part pineapple juice
1 egg white
rose water
How to make it:
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass, shake first without ice.
Shake with ice and strain into a coupe glass.
Garnish with drops of rose water in the center.
