Idiot Savant Online too

“If I tell you how to make a drink, will you make it?”

This is the line that effectively destroyed the market for blue curaçao in the East Village from 2008 to the present day. It would also immediately get you 86’ed from the Odessa Bar on Avenue A and Botanica. Legend goes, the drink in question would become a curiosity to other drinkers and they’d order the same until finally they were falling all over themselves—usually after the first drink.

This, dear friend, is the Aqua Velva. So named for the after shave, this drink came into my life when my friend Vadim had me rewatch David Fincher’s Zodiac. Sure enough, when Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.)  goes to find Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) in a bar to talk his theories, he finds the cartoonist sipping from a large blue drink.

“What the fuck is that?”

“An Aqua Velva. Want one?”

Smash cut: the two are at a table surrounded by the blue drinks. And speaking of smash, here’s how you can get yours on.

YOU’LL NEED:

1 bottle of cheap gin

1 bottle of cheap vodka

1 bottle of blue curaçao

A shaker

Ice trays.

1 bottle of Sprite or Ginger Ale. Nothing caffeinated.

Any fucking kind of glass you want. I’ve used pint glasses, highballs, rocks, etc. 

THIS IS THE ZODIAC SPEAKING:

First, take your shaker. Put in five to six ice cubes. Add in 1/3 vodka, 1/3 gin and then top with as much blue curaçao as you want. A two second pour does wonders.

Attach top of shaker. Shake well.

Add 1-3 cubes to your glass of choice. Pour in until glass is filled to your liking. Add the Sprite/Ginger Ale to fill out the rest of your glass.

Congratulations. You now have an Aqua Velva. Drink up.

WARNINGS:

-This drink, for all intensive purposes, was designed for the lowest of the low when it comes to livers: the reporter. One or two is plenty for the weekend warrior. 

-The blue curaçao is packed with sugar. This will make you feel better than you actually are. But be warned, once you start, you’ve got a 4-5 hour window to enjoy your night. You will crash very hard. 

-…you’re also going to wake up 2-3 hours after you first pass out. This has to do with the combination of sugars breaking down in your system and liquor. So if you pass out around midnight, you’ll wake back up for ten minutes at 3 am. You’re also going to have horrifying dreams. 

-Three bottles should make around 12 to 15 drinks. Oh. And don’t drink and drive.

p.s. it looks like this.

The next iPad needs new things. And those things may even need to be borrowed from other things. But at the end of the day, no matter how high the pixel count or amount of streaming Netflix I may have on my pad, I always return to my old friend Moleskin andField Notes.

Because I have yet to find the app that lets me take notes, doodle and frantically scribble ideas down on the phone. 

By birth, I’m from Philadelphia. This means I grew up on pretzels sold on Roosevelt Boulevard by guys who likely pissed in bushes without washing their hands, cheesesteaks from Pat’s Geno’s STEVE’S PRINCE OF CHEESESTEAKS and the Mayfair Diner. Anyway, as my friends invited me over for a Super Bowl excuse to drink beer and eat food, I figured I should bring something over.

Jen asked, “Do you want me to make brats or wings?”

And then my birth pride soared forth. I could totally make wings. 

“No, I will bring wings.Make brats.”

This lead to another trip to asking my mother about my old neighborhood and a bunch of people I forgot about. Then I informed her I was making wings.

“How hot do you want to make them,” she asked.

Instead of hearing this like a normal person, I took it as a personal challenge.

“Hot.”

YOU WILL NEED:

1 Fortified stomach

4 pounds of chicken (wing, drumstick preferred. combined too if you find it.)

1 bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (I used the aptly titled “BUFFALO XTRA HOT SAUCE”)

A gallon plastic bag.

ASSORTED pepper, salt, red chili flakes, cumin

2.5 cups flour

PREPARE THYSELF:

Mix your flour and assorted materials into the gallon plastic bag. Mix briefly by choking the bag and slapping it around. You could also gently shake, but pretending to hit it gives some sense of flavor satisfaction. Regardless of your personal preference, mix for a minute.

Take a large skillet. Now, for the unknown ingredient: butter. Remove large amounts of butter and put into the skillet after heating it for a few minutes on medium heat. This should be enough to start melting the butter without causing immediate browning. While this occurs, take your chicken and begin taking it apart.

The chicken I bought was unfortunately frozen and fused of wing/drumstick. So I had to dethaw quickly under hot water and then sharp knife. This lead to a rather exaggerated cooking process, but one you could possibly avoid.  Let’s pretend you did. 

Once you’ve divided your wing/leg, simply put the pieces into your gallon bag of material and shake. The irony that you’ve created a MacGyver-esque “Shake’N’Bake” should not be lost on you if you’re a child of the 90s. If you are not, merely overlook how ironic this is. Once you’ve got the first few pieces ready and your skillet is heated, place the flowered wings onto the skillet. Allow each side to brown for 1-3 minutes, switch and then remove. In the mean time, add more pieces to your gallon bag and continue. 

Now! During this time, you should’ve been pre-heating your oven to 400 degrees. Oh shit, you don’ forgot didn’t you? Well no worry. We don’t judge here. So take a shot of low-grade tequila. At this point you’re also wondering, “what do I do with the browned pieces of chicken? There’s also smoke! What am I doing!?”

Ok. So, as you remove the browned wings and replace them, add a few more pieces of butter. Expect a little smoke as the butter will be caramelizing and after your sixth piece, open a window. Now add the browned wings to a disposable (or glass) pan with the hot sauce already in. Massage the wings into the sauce and douse them a bit. Continue this until you end up using all the wings and the whole can of sauce.

When ready, enter the pan like motherfucking Bruce Lee at 400 degrees for up to one hour. Check occasionally. When you remove, let sit and cool or move directly to new pan to move them.

Either way, motherfucker gonna be hot as fucking hell. And spicy too. 

ADDITIONAL STUFF:

1 Brick of Blue Cheese

A microwave

Then a bowl

A SPLASH of mayo.

If you want blue cheese sauce, put a bunch of blue cheese into a microwave friendly bowl. A quick squirt of mayo—I know, it’s disgusting and you can do without it. But it helps the creamy nature. Microtize it for 50 seconds or until liquidy. Then remove. Bam. Blue Cheese sauce. 

Add celery.

And then you’ve got this: http://instagr.am/p/BcTT9/