The Art of the Bar and Polenta

This is not good polenta. This is polenta that stiffens immediately in the pot, is bright yellow and crunchy instead of cream-colored and silken. I've made the damn polenta three times today and now, instead of feeling polenta soothed, I want to stomp out back and hurl the pot into the cow pasture.

Instead, I open The Art of the Bar. It's like walking through an art gallery, and every room has a tasteful display of a perfect cocktail glass filled with a perfect cocktail. No people. Just cocktails in jewel tones with perfectly restrained garnishes. Forget the polenta. Look at the light on the glass stem for the Sazerac. Look at the old-fashioned lime juicer in front of what looks like a pressed brass wall. Look at the square platter with the beaded rim and tiny, perfect little cocktail onions. I'm thinking I could go on an all-cocktail diet and be very happy.

And this thought before I go scrub out the polenta pot: one story of how cocktails may have gotten their name describes Betsy Flanagan, a tavern-keeper during the American Revolution who garnished her drinks with a rooster's tail feather. "The soldiers were so enamoured of her drinks that they would toast her with the chant "Vive le coqtail!" Every time I open the book I wonder about Betsy and those feathers, and how I can have such a vivid idea of what she was like without knowing anything else about her.

copyright 2009 Ann Krueger Spivack