TASTElist

Who doesn’t love a good G&T? Well, the Spanish certainly do. Condé Nast Traveler reported that Spain is home to the biggest gin drinker population (per capita) in the the world. Although this refreshing take on the classic gin and tonic would be great on a hot summer day, we’d be happy to sip on one (or a few) as a pre- or post-dinner libation all year round. Perhaps make a batch to wash down a feast of our homemade paella recipe.

Pizzas topped with bacon, eggs, and goat cheese—perfect for brunch, lunch, or dinner. Next time you cook bacon for breakfast, set aside a few pieces.

A soft taco topped with a fried egg is perfect as the first thing you eat in the morning or the last thing you eat at night, even when those lines blur a bit. These have refried beans, melted cheddar, and creamy Greek yogurt to boot.

This recipe from the blog Confections of a Foodie Bride cranks up the intensity of hummus, incorporating kalamata olives in an otherwise standard chickpea-and-tahini affair. The results are bold and surprising: the perfect thing to shake up a snack spread. Game plan: Make the hummus up to 5 days ahead and refrigerate it in an airtight container. Let sit at room temperature for an hour before serving.

Four hours in the slow cooker makes these hot wings beautifully tender; a further 30 minutes in a hot oven gets them crisp and brown. Serve these wings before the main event as a substantial game-day snack, or as the centerpiece of a meal, alongside a big crunchy salad to keep things cool.

Proportions for the classic Manhattan are two (sometimes three) parts whiskey to one part sweet vermouth, with a little aromatic boost from bitters. The drink is believed to date from 1874, created by a bartender at New York’s Manhattan Club. “Since New York was a rye town in those days,” writes cocktail expert Dale DeGroff in The Craft of the Cocktail, “the original Manhattan was made with rye whiskey.” Bourbon Manhattans are a thing in the South.

The classic Old Fashioned is whiskey with a bit of sugar, aromatic bitters, and dilution in some form, from a splash of either water or club soda. The earliest mention of an Old Fashioned–style drink is from 1806: Drinks writer Robert Simonson, author of The Old-Fashioned: The Story of the World’s First Classic Cocktail, calls this “the primordial cocktail,” older than either the martini or the Manhattan Drink.

Named for the French Quarter in New Orleans (a.k.a. the Vieux Carré), this sophisticated, spirits-driven cocktail is a lot like the Big Easy itself: a fun and potent blend of diverse elements. What to buy: Bénédictine, a gold-colored liqueur first produced by Benedictine monks in the 16th century, adds a sweet, aromatic flavor to cocktails. Peychaud’s Bitters were created in New Orleans around 1830 by the Haitian apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud.

Classic, elegant, and stiff, the martini is a simple fusion of gin and dry vermouth, stirred together with ice, and strained into a chilled glass. The main variables are the proportion of gin to vermouth, and what you choose to garnish with. This recipe uses a 2-to-1 for the former, though 4-to-1, even 5-to-1, is popular. For some, washing the martini glass with dry vermouth, then dumping the vermouth in the sink before stirring straight gin with ice, is just right.

Who doesn’t love a hefty slice of dark chocolate cake? This one has an appropriately diabolical twist: a hint of ancho chile powder for warmth and complexity, but that won’t light anyone’s tongue on fire (chileheads can add a teaspoon of cayenne). Spread the layers with sweetened whipped cream or buttercream and sliced strawberries; top with toasted almonds.

According to Rob Chirico, author of the Field Guide to Cocktails, this iconic New Orleans cocktail dates to the 1850s, when it was served at the Sazerac Coffee House. American whiskey eventually replaced the brandy of the original. Rinsing the glass with absinthe gives the cocktail the right touch of herbal perfume without upsetting the balance—you can always substitute Pernod if you don’t happen to have a bottle of absinthe.

Except for the gin and tonic, no other cocktail is as quintessentially English as pink gin, also known as gin and bitters. A few drops of aromatic, sweetly spice-scented angostura bitters are a gentle enhancement for the bracing, juniper-driven taste of London Dry–style gin. We give you two options: a simple version (just chilled gin and bitters), and the same thing served over ice, topped off with a splash of soda water.