[percy-l] Not *really* off-topic: Percy's mint julep recipe

Steve Petrica steve.petrica at gmail.com
Sat May 2 12:05:58 EDT 2015


>From the "Business Insider" website yesterday:

Walker Percy was a great, cosmopolitan southern novelist and essayist who
> died in 1990.
> Born in Alabama, he lived much of his life in Covington, a town near New
> Orleans.
> That's pretty far from Kentucky and the annual Run for the Roses, which
> takes place on Saturday at the magnificent Churchill Downs racetrack.
> But the signature drink of the Derby, the first leg of the Triple Crown,
> is the mint julep. And Walker Percy knew mint juleps.
> As it turns out, the recipe for [an] elegant and literary julep comes from
> Percy, who won the National Book Award for his very first novel, "The
> Moviegoer," and who for a generation of readers defined a post-William
> Faulkner variety of thoughtful southern writing. I first encountered
> Percy's recipe back in the 1980s, when I picked up a collection of his
> essays, "Signposts in a Strange Land."
> You need excellent Bourbon whiskey; rye or Scotch will not do. Put half an
> inch of sugar in the bottom of glass and merely dampen it with water. Next,
> very quickly — and here is the trick in the procedure — crush your ice,
> actually powder it, preferably in a towel with a wooden mallet, so quickly
> that it remains dry, and, slipping two sprigs of fresh mint against the
> inside of the glass, cram the ice right to the brim, packing it with your
> hand. Finally, fill the glass, which apparently has no room left for
> anything else, with Bourbon, the older the better, and grate a bit of
> nutmeg on the top. The glass will frost immediately. Then settle back in
> your chair for half an hour of cumulative bliss.


I may have to give his recipe a try!

Read the whole article at
http://www.businessinsider.com/walker-percys-perfect-mint-julep-recipe-2015-5



Steve
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