How to Archer (10 page)

However, I think I’ve also made it pretty clear that I don’t like to invite comparison to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. And so here is
Sterling Archer’s
recipe for a
martini.
Deal.

5 ounces gin

1 ounce dry vermouth

1 tablespoon Extremedura olive juice

3 Extremedura olives as garnish(pitted and pimento-edahead of time by your valet)
⁷³

Pour gin, vermouth, olive juice, and ice cubes into a cocktail mixer and stir. (Just to be contrary; it makes no difference whether it’s shaken or stirred, and only a colossal idiot believes otherwise.) Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with olives speared on a tiny plastic sword. Sip, thinking about how it’s actually pretty damn cool that you haven’t become overexposed. Yet.

Deceptively powerful. I once got so smashed on these at the Derby, I had sex with some huge-hatted married broad in a portable toilet. True story. Not a flattering story, just a true one.

4 to 7 fresh mint leaves

Granulated sugar, to taste

3 ounces bourbon

Muddle the mint, sugar, and a small amount of crushed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Add the bourbon and top it off with crushed ice. Garnish with a sprig of mint and serve in a silver julep cup. Or, hey, you know what? While you’re at it, just make two and dump it all into a plastic cup: twenty minutes from now, you’re gonna be destroying someone’s marriage in a fiberglass shithouse.

Somebody please remind me: Why is it we don’t like Cuba? Seriously, did I miss something? Did John F. Kennedy walk into the Oval Office one day, only to find Fidel Castro lighting his Cohiba with the American flag while teabagging Jackie? In front of John-John? What? Oh, communism. Oh, okay, now I get… No, that still doesn’t make sense. Seriously?

3 sprigs fresh mint, plus more to garnish

2 teaspoons granulated sugar

1½ ounces freshly squeezed lime juice

2 ounces white rum

Soda water, to top up

Muddle the mint, sugar, and lime juice in a collins glass. Fill the glass with crushed ice. Add the rum and top it up with soda water. Garnish with a sprig of mint and serve with a straw. Sip, thinking about how awesome it would be if the Bay of Pigs Invasion had worked and we were all down there right now, up to our eyeballs in the hottest, roundest, mochaccino-coloredest asses on the planet.

I guess this technically doesn’t belong in this section. For one thing, since it contains fewer than three ingredients, the Molotov cannot correctly be called a cocktail. For another thing, it’s an incendiary device which, if you live in the United States, is specifically prohibited under the National Firearms Act. So unless you happen to live in Finland sometime between 1940 and 1945, not only do not drink this, please please please do not even attempt to make it.
⁷⁴

1 750 ml glass bottle(if you’re an adult; kids may want to use a 250 ml or 500 ml bottle)

750 ml gasoline (or however many milliliters you ended up going with, bottle-wise)

1 foot duct tape, torn in half lengthwise

4 storm matches

Live in Finland between 1940 and 1945. Fill bottle with gasoline. Replace cap. Use duct tape to secure matches, longitudinally, to the side of the bottle. Go find some Soviet (or, later, Nazi) invaders driving around your little Finnish village in a half-track. Light matches and throw cocktail at the Soviet (or, later, Nazi) half-track. Hide. Await swift and appallingly brutal reprisal.

I was worried that, given the overall espionage theme of this book, the Moscow Mule might seem like too obvious a choice. But then I realized go write your own fucking book.

2 ounces vodka

2 ounces freshly squeezed lime juice

5 ounces ginger beer

Shake ingredients, over ice, in a cocktail mixer. Strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass.

One of several Italian exports which, like the Vespa or the Fiat 500, should only be driven by a woman. Although apparently frozen-pea-spokesperson Orson Welles was a big fan.

1½ ounces gin

1½ ounces sweet red vermouth

1½ ounces Campari

1 slice orange peel, as garnish

Mix ingredients and serve, over ice, in an old-fashioned glass. Garnish with orange peel.

Another kid-friendly cocktail. And just
amazing
with a toasty raclette, back at the lodge after a cold day on the slopes in Gstaad. Or on a bearskin rug with a beautiful woman, as you both bask in post-coital bliss and the warming glow of a crackling fire. Ooh, or on a hayride!

12 ounces prepared hot cocoa

(Scratch-made, not instant; I shouldn’t have to say that.)

8 ounces peppermint schnapps Mini-marshmallows (optional), as garnish

Combine schnapps and hot cocoa in a thermos. Garnish with mini-marshmallows, if desired.

At first glance, this drink seems like the Brits tried to do to cocktails what they have long done to food. And world wars, Seriously, is that a cucumber in your drink, or are you just glad to see Lend-Lease battleships steaming toward your Luftwaffe-pummeled shitbox of an island?

1 small English cucumber

3 ounces Pimm’s No. 1

1 ounce freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice

Pinch of sugar

Sprig of fresh rosemary

Sprig of thyme

Sprig of mint

1 slice Meyer lemon

1 fresh strawberry, halved

3 ounces carbonated lemonade
or
lemon-lime soda
or
ginger ale
or
ginger beer
⁷⁵

Cut two spears from the cucumber, set aside for garnish, Dice remaining cucumber and place it into a cocktail mixer, Muddle, then add Pimm’s, lemon juice, sugar, and some ice. Shake vigorously and strain into an ice-filled Collins glass (or repurposed 40mm Luftwaffe shell casing). Add the herbs, lemon slice and strawberry halves. Fill the glass with carbonated lemonade (or whatever) and garnish with the cucumber spears. Think about all those brave Americans who died protecting a country that would invent a drink like this. Which, all kidding aside, is actually pretty delicious.

The quintessential girly drink. Which doesn’t mean that, not unlike a scorned stewardess, it can’t embarrass the shit out of you in front of your current date and a restaurant full of people.

1½ ounces gin

½ ounce applejack

½ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 egg white

4 dashes grenadine

1 Maraschino cherry, to garnish

Shake all ingredients, plus ice but minus cherry, in a cocktail mixer. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with cherry. Sip very slowly, while waiting for those guys down there at the other end of the bar to say a goddamn word.

Not to sound like a dick, but except for Paddington Bear (who is totally awesome!!!) Peru has never had much going for it. I mean, even the gruff-yet-loveable Paddington got out of there on the first train he could hop. But this cocktail goes a long way toward bolstering Peru’s image.

2 ounces pisco

1 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice

¾ ounce simple syrup

1 egg white

Dash of angostura bitters

(although Peychaud’s is acceptable)

Shake all ingredients, minus bitters, quite vigorously and over ice, in a cocktail mixer. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and dash the bitters over the foam. Serve with a small marmalade sandwich.

I’m making an exception here because pruno, being technically wine, does not belong in this section. But if you plan on becoming a secret agent, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ll find yourself imprisoned in some flyblown tropical shithole of a country. These countries are generally run by dictators who, among other things, are not known for their humane treatment of prisoners. So while you plot your escape (and subsequent revenge), you are definitely going to want to be shitfaced: the soles of your bastinado-ravaged feet will thank you.

1 vague amount of some type of citrus fruit (although I’ve had luck with raisins)

1 small mound of sugar (turbinado is fine)

2 slices of bread

3 ketchup packets (optional, and actually surprisingly hard to come by)

1 quart tap water

1 plastic bread bag

Force a weaker prisoner to combine all the ingredients in the plastic bread bag and store in the tank of the toilet in
his
cell, due to risk of random searches, for 14 days. Serve at room temperature in either a tin can or half a coconut shell. (Note: A gratuity of two cigarettes to your “pruno punk” is customary.)

Why doesn’t anyone drink sidecars anymore? Or, for that matter, ride around in them? Because I can’t think of a single thing I would rather do than get totally ripped on a thermos full of these babies while somebody motorcycles me around town and country in an actual sidecar.

2 ounces cognac

1 ounces Cointreau

1 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 lemon twist

Shake ingredients, over ice, in a cocktail mixer. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. (Some people prefer their sidecar served with a sugared rim, but those people have vaginas.)

Invented in the Long Bar of that timeless jewel of the Orient, the Raffles Hotel. From which I was banned after an entirely unfortunate altercation involving two prostitutes, a lemur, a rickshaw (and driver), and several members of the Singapore Police Force’s Gurkha Contingent. And let me just say this about that: if you ever want to get the absolute shit kicked out of you—and want it done in a precise and professional manner—the Gurkhas are
the
shitkickers for you.

Anyway, it’s lame the Raffles banned me, so I’m not including their stupid drink.

Chances are you’ve been misspelling this your entire life. I know I have. And now that I think about it, I actually will probably continue to do so. Because “phizz” just looks cooler to me.