Nostalgia - a milky affair
Guest writer Millie Milliken reviews milk cocktails, and Anna takes a snowy walk through teenage memories (but with better booze) - its all nostalgic!
Welcome to our our first free MILK season newsletter! Which, we’ve re-jigged the format for. As well as getting deep into theory, history, philosophy, technique… of food and drink, we also just enjoy eating and drinking. Therefore, our newsletter-for-all is going to make tangible some of those moment, share in the joy, and give some ideas of what to eat and and drink.
Plus, we’re going to have some guests to give mini reviews, tell you their favourite spots in the world and share delights of their own! This month we have drinks writer Millie Milliken share her recent love affair with a milk-based cocktail, as well as other spots in the world that make a good milky treat.
Lyaness’ Multi Milk cocktail is beige nirvana
Millie Milliken
This jaunty, unassuming number from the bar’s Ancestral Cookbook gives non-milk-punch milk cocktails an unexpectedly elevated name. As well as split milk cordial, bourbon and a milk-based vodka, it includes Thunder Mushroom, one of the menu’s five original ingredients made up of a blend of electrocuted (yes) grains, legumes and koji spores. The result? Looks like egg nog, drinks like a boozy vanilla Mini Milk ice lolly – defyingly light, yet nostalgically warming.
5 more cocktails to quench your milky thirst:
Oslo - whisky, black metal & graveyards
I (Anna) went on a whirlwind press trip to Oslo at the tail end of winter to drink a champagne and whisky cocktail. Even if the trip stopped there, 16y/o me would swoon at the heights I had reached. Teenage me would barely be able to tolerate champagne, let alone whisky but goddam it I would’ve wanted to! The peak of rock n’ roll and glamour - hardcore chic.
Champagne and whisky cocktails are ‘classics’ but have become sort of passé, there is an art to them to get the balance. But Adrián Michalčík’s (Diageo World Class & Global Bartender 2022) version was pretty fucking great. Based at Pier 42 bar in the luxurious Amerikalinjen hotel it was a glamorous affair - Singleton 12, strawberry, maple, lemon, angostura and Champagne Palmer; worth leaving the house at 3am that morning for. This was followed (by more whisky cocktails and then) a trip to the metal/goth vibes of Himkok bar, where I cannot recommend enough their ‘bun’ cocktail - a trip down nostalgia lane for a Nordic drinker. An Old Fashioned-esque cocktail served with a mini Skolebrod bun. It’s a bun that gets made at the return of the sun at the end of the polar night, and used to be made for school lunch; households would bake once a week and send off with children as lunch desserts - these versions usually had icing or coconut!
When I go anywhere I try to find one coffee shop to go so that no matter how late I was up, I am out the hotel early in search of good caffeine. Pal James Hansen is my go to for this knowledge, wherever I am in the world. Joe Rogers (another journalist) and I hit the snow covered streets the next morning - I was decked out in my new Docs, another point my teenage self would approve of - and went to the very very cool Fuglen. One excellent coffee for sitting in with, one excellent coffee to go… and walk around the nearby, snow covered graveyard (of course), where Joe and I talked death and the meaning of life; good 10am chat. Teenage me would be dyyyyying right now.
Then a quick trek across town to the black metal record store. Of Course! Neseblod Records has a pretty dark history and was owned by the guitarist of Mayhem. The basement was pretty gnarly (I may have muttered a little prayer to the anscetors for safe protection), but it used to be where a lot of these bands in the early 90s gathered to play. I bought a t-shirt, it looks very cool, it is in Norwegian so I am hoping it isn’t a deeply problematic band. I know purists will be mad at buying a t-shirt and not knowing the band - but whatever:
Teenage me would have thought I was so cool!!!
On Sourced this month
Interview: The Dairy King
Anna speaks with drag artists The Dairy King about drag, clowning, the subversive way we can view big agriculture and lothario reputation of ‘the milkman’.
Bookshop.org reading list
We now have all our past reading lists now on Bookshop! Not all the reading is available, but there is a lot of great recommendations, please do have a look! Plus the Sourced teams are building their own recommendations.
Thanks for reading, and just a reminder our commissioned pieces - available for all on our website - are paid for by subscriptions. It makes a huge difference if you’re able to subscribe, if not do keep reading and sharing our work!
36 hours in Oslo in picture
In case you want to be inspired by the trip!