I'd Rather Be Frying Bacon

Hey, new ingredients call for new cocktails. In this case, it's not really a new ingredient, but one that we've had kicking around for a bit and never did anything with. It's Stirrings' Blood Orange Bitters, which we picked up on a whim on one of our trips to LeNell's. (A quick aside -- Stirrings' Authentic Grenadine is brilliant. Made with water, pomegranate juice, and sugar, it's a welcome relief from the syrupy grenadines you find in the average supermarket.) So, Martha's request for cocktail #2 this evening was "something with blood orange bitters." Well, my first course of action when dealing with a new bitters is to make a variation on the Valentino, and in this case it turned out rather well.

No official name at the moment, though for some reason it seems it should have a Song of Ice and Fire related name. I'm currently calling it The Aegon Cocktail, if only because Steve's plug for BevMo was "they have blood orange bitters there!"

2 oz. gin
1 oz. sweet vermouth
1/2 oz. blood orange bitters (yes, that may seem like a lot of bitters, but these fit much more in the Campari category rather than the Angostura category)

Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.