Cocktail — Blog — How to Drink

Milk of The Poppy is everywhere in Game of Thrones, from the Iron Isles to Asshai, but you won't need a Maester to enjoy mine!

Every time someone of wealth and means is seriously wounded on Game of Thrones we see them being given Milk of the Poppy, a powerful painkiller administered by Maesters in careful doses. We see it given to Bran after he falls from the tower and the subsequent "catspaw" attack, it's given to Arya when she's wounded in Bravos, Jaime refuses it when permitting Qyburn to work on his arm, and during the Battle of the Blackwater the women and children wait with fatal doses of it at the ready should the worst come to pass. Poppy milk is actually a real thing and I do my best to explain it in the video, but it's got nothing to do with what I'm making here. My version of Milk of the Poppy involves making a poppy orgeat from commonly available poppy seeds, from there a cocktail of cognac, curaçao and absinthe is produced. It's very tasty stuff and despite it's very milky appearance is totally milk free.

Poppy Seed Orgeat

200 grams of Poppy Seed
200 Grams of Sugar
200 Grams of Water
Combine in blender and pulverize
Let sit one hour
If sugar not dissolved, transfer to pan and simmer til it is
Strain and bottle

Milk of the Poppy

.75 oz. -or- 22 ml. Poppy Orgeat
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Dry Curaçao
2 oz. -or- 60 ml. Cognac
Rinse Glass in Absinthe
Shake over ice and double strain

Did you know that the Sherry Cobbler is the reason we have drinking straws? Well, kinda.

See back in the 1830's when the Sherry Cobbler first seems to be showing up in bar goers hands Ice was something of a novelty. The Ice Trade was a relatively new thing (actually people around the world had been keeping ice through the summer months for centuries, the Persians had a system to do it by like 400 BC, but shipping it around the world for money, that was new) and so for the first time ever people didn't need to drink their cocktails somewhere on the temperature gradient between warm and hot. This new cool kid was on the block chilling drinks down to near freezing and patrons couldn't get enough, at least when it was served up in an ice cold Sherry Cobbler. The Cobbler was extremely popular in it's day, and the crushed ice it's served on, much like it's contemporary the Julep, forced drinkers to rethink how they'd been drink. I mean literally, physically, how do you drink this thing without getting a mouth full of ice instead of drink. One solution was the julep strainer actually, now commonly used for straining out stirred cocktails, at the time of it's invention it's intended use was in holding back the ice in your drink so that you could sip it's nectar unimpeded by the frosty nodules. The other solution was of course the simple straw, and it was the Cobbler that put it on the map. Supposedly.

So what is a Sherry Cobbler? Why is it called a cobbler? According to David Wondrich the name most likely comes from the crushed ice it's served on, the tiny ice nuggets reminded drinkers of miniature cobblestones. Ice cobbles. The drink itself is a relatively simple thing: a combination of orange, sherry, and sugar shaken and poured over crushed ice and garnished lavishly the drink is really about the sherry. Sherry is an aged and fortified wine that originates in Spain and Portugal and it though there are many varieties and styles I find most of them fall somewhere on the "nutty" flavor spectrum. I love the stuff, it's incredibly delicious and in a cobbler it becomes divine. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the episode and please leave me a comment, I love staying in touch with you.

Ever have a drink made with sherry? If not you're missing out. I humbly present to you the Sherry Cobbler, invented sometime in the 1830's it's a real roots cocktail, and the reason we have straws. ********************************** This week on HTD I'm making a Sherry Cobbler, which is really a drink that may very well predate the Old Fashioned.