Welcome to the 1000th recipe on smittenkitchen.com. One. Thou. Sandth. Didn’t I just start this thing? Wasn’t it only supposed to last six months? How did we let things get so out of hand? Wait, do I finally have an answer to the ever-present question “What do you do all day?” that’s not “Read The Awl and try to figure out what it means that most of my life goals look like this?” Hm, probably not.





Instead I’d like to talk about the Perfect Manhattan, which, to me, is currently the most glaring oversight — yes, yes, except the Russian Napoleon and/or Coconut Cream Pie, I got your email and they’re going to happen this winter or you should definitely fire me already — in the archives right now.

It’s my suddenly-cooler-outside favorite cocktail, introduced to me by this guy I met at a bar my husband shortly after we began dating. I, in turn, introduced him to this Austrian restaurant I had a thing for in the West Village and while waiting for a table 12 years ago, we ordered a Manhattan and the bartender asked if we’d like it “perfect.” ‘No, I’d like it flawed?’ I thought, because I wasn’t then and am now not as funny as I’d like to think. But he explained to us that a classic Manhattan was made with sweet vermouth and a perfect Manhattan is made with part sweet and part dry vermouth and we said “sure why not” and there’s never been another Manhattan for us since. It’s not sweet but balanced. You take a sip and it surprises you, you have to shut up and pause the constant churning in your brain for a moment. And as quickly as we became obsessed, it began to feel as elusive as, well, anything self-described as ideal should be.

There was the fact that for at least 6 years, we never found another bartender who knew how to make it without instruction, which made us those terrible people at the bar telling the bartender how to do his/her job. (Thank you, whiskey trend, for fixing this great problem of our time.) There have been the endless, unforgivable variations on Manhattans we’ve politely endured (the Bronx! the… No.)* instead because nobody can leave a good thing alone. There are memories, like the night my cookbook came out, the launch party understandably cancelled as Hurricane Sandy skittered along the coast of NYC; we saw an explosion over in the direction of the ConEd plant, the lights went off and we decided to not be freaked out and made Manhattans by flashlight. And there was the time that I arrived at Labor & Delivery with a stack of magazines because I heard that inductions could be a little dull until they are suddenly the very opposite of dull and wearily cracked open Martha Stewart Living only to be taunted with this picture, as if there was a contest for “what is the very opposite of your life right now?” and this was the winning entry. I can still feel the longing.

In a way, it mimics our weird messy relationship with Manhattan itself, a place we’ve been talking about leaving almost since we arrived. This is where you say, “I thought you lived in Brooklyn,” and of course you did, we have children, we eat kale, we have every Gerald and Piggy book, our people are across the river. Every year we decide to move and every year, we never do and it’s almost like we haven’t realized we rather like it here, here being the place where I almost never have a subway card because pretty much everything is walkable and I have a perfect grocery store a block away and the best Greenmarket in the country four blocks beyond that, right downstairs from my late grandfather’s one-time dental office (and from what we hear, the source of this ginger’s ginger), 56 blocks down from my parents’ first apartment, five blocks from mine and good god, maybe this is just our home, you know? Maybe it doesn’t have to be perfect, just perfect for us.

But this wasn’t supposed to be about interborough unrest, it’s supposed to be about what it means that this site now boasts 1000 recipes. It means, I fear, we have at least another thousand to go. So, what should we cook next?

* Although I am keenly interested in the actual traditional cocktails named after the other four boroughs. Perhaps this should be our next course of “study.”

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