This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
Come on, let’s face it: the holiday season is traditionally also the time when alcohol flows freely. THE party Christmas with colleagues, long meals with family, potlucks between friends, Uncle Jean’s little crème de menthe when visiting: everything is subject to raising your elbow. Does this reality, paradoxical with that of increasingly popular non-alcoholic drinks, tear you up? Then the balanced and creative approach of the popular Patrice Plante, aka Monsieur Cocktail, should please you. Just like discovering other facets of this endearing mixologist, cook, entrepreneur and father.
Patrice, what do the Holidays mean to you?
I probably wouldn’t have said this in my 20s, but I think now the holidays are about reconnecting for me. It’s a necessary break that should be taken more often, because it allows us to break away from our hectic pace of life to take time for ourselves, as well as time to see those we love. In the past, I would also have said that this period was good… but that is no longer the case! Here I come out of the closet with my latest book intended for cocktails light in alcohol or without alcohol.
What vision of alcohol do you present there, precisely?
The one that I myself adopted since I was diagnosed with hypertension and had to rethink my consumption. Unlike others, I never suffered from alcohol addiction, but my job required me to try a lot. For the production of my book as in my life, I asked myself this big question: why do we like alcohol? Certainly for its taste as well as for the feeling of heat it brings. I would add the variety and creativity to which it is subject. But drinking alcohol also means shorter evenings, restless sleep and hangovers the next day, not to mention the deleterious effects on your health and those around you. Between drinking too much or not drinking at all, I therefore opted for a third way, to drink better. It is indeed not because we consume alcohol that we cannot do so in a balanced manner. In particular, we can find the taste and complexity with recipes that contain just less. Like when you have a Paris-Brest in front of you and rather than eating it whole, you only take a part.
How was this reflection concretely translated into glasses?
By doing a lot of testing! Since 2021, I’ve been making tons of these in my kitchen to create low-alcohol or no-alcohol cocktails that would possess the same complexity of taste, panache, and attention to detail as the traditional ones. Things that would be drunk socially and weren’t just soft drinks. With the glasses of a child, I had fun with the multiple light alcohol or non-alcoholic bases around us to make tasty and fun liquid concoctions. 180 recipes (and 300 pages) later, I think I’ve met the challenge. I am now able to prepare a dry martini with three times less alcohol than the original, as well as cocktails based on wine, cider or sherry. I even created one (Campfire) without alcohol using lapsang souchong tea and whole-grain mustard. And I swear it works very well!
Beyond good cocktails, do your holidays combine with good meals?
Of course ! As I was a cook before becoming a mixologist — Patrice Plante studied cooking at the École hôtelière de la Capitale and was at the helm of the Tripes & Caviar restaurant, which has since closed — I love being behind the stove, It’s a real outlet for me. At home, it’s me who cooks every evening, as well as on Sunday afternoons to have preparations in advance. I am well equipped and make lots of homemade things, like soups, stocks, sauces, pastas, dashi and even my sourdough bread, which my partner and I affectionately call Bob, ha ha!
I also love entertaining. So much so, in fact, that I’m the one who prepares my birthday meal every year! For the holidays, December 24 and 25, I don’t do anything, because we go to my parents and my in-laws. But afterwards, I often have friends over for a few days and, there, I have a blast in the kitchen even if I have to clean for two weeks after their departure. I prepare all kinds of things at that time, including four essential dishes: the traditional lac tourtière, the recipe for which comes from my ex-mother-in-law; my sandwich bread, which has nothing traditional since it is made with a layer of ham braised in beer and BBQ sauce, another with eggs mixed with almonds and a third of chicken confit with olives, plus a guacamole topping; Korean Bo ssam (glazed pork loin) that I accompany with tortillas, kimchi, lettuce and several sauces for everyone to help themselves; and, finally, my creation La tartinade, that is to say pieces of buttered and grilled baguette on which I can spread either smoked corn salad, beef tataki, shrimp flambéed with pastis and eggs calves, or even fried chicken. So there’s no shortage of good meals on my side during the holidays, that’s guaranteed!
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Duty, relating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.