GATHER

amuse-bouche White lady & Night owl Tipples have been conjured in every Crayola color, but, much like a photograph, stripped of their pigment they take on a new elegance.

White Lady Night Owl Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Portland’s Pepe Le Moko The enigma of this moody-hued by Natasha gives the ethereal classic an herbaceous spin. David of New York’s Nitecap lies in the Ancho Reyes, a spicy thread woven through a core of dueling rums. Makes: 1 cocktail Makes: 1 cocktail 1½ oz London dry 2 oz aged rum 1 oz thyme-infused * (we like Zacapa 23) ¾ oz fresh lemon juice ¾ oz Antica Formula sweet vermouth 1 tsp rich simple syrup** ¼ oz Ancho Reyes chile ½ oz egg white 1 tsp dark rum orange peel (we like Cruzan Blackstrap) Chill a coupe. Combine gin, infused orange peel 96 Cointreau, lemon juice, simple syrup, Stir the cocktail ingredients with ice for black & white and egg white in a shaker. Shake without 15-20 seconds. Strain into a coupe glass. ice until white is frothy. Add ice and shake Express and discard orange peel. again until chilled. Strain into a chilled glass. Express and discard orange peel. *Thyme Cointreau: Combine 1 cup thyme sprigs, gently bruised, and a 750-ml bottle Cointreau in a 1-qt canning jar. Let sit for 1 week, agitating regularly. Strain through a strainer lined with a coffee filter over a bowl. Infused Cointreau should keep indefinitely. **Rich simple syrup: Gently heat 2 parts sugar to 1 part water until sugar is dissolved. Chill.

Rhapsody in Black and White The first black-and-white film I saw went something like this: a country girl opens the door of her drab Kansas farmhouse into a Technicolor blast of witches, munchkins, and yellow brick roads—her journey from reality to magic unfolding as B&W to RGB. But now I see this as backwards—we live in a world of color, and black and white is the realm of the other. The only things that live there are the ones we chose to capture. Even the washed-out plains of Depression-era Kansas seem sweet with nostalgia when filtered through a Sepia lens. A Bacall noir goddess flitting through a reel of Eastman Plus-X, your Paris romance lurking in Brassaï’s Bergheil plates. In black and white I would smell like jasmine and cigarettes, and you could reach for secrets in the shadows of my hair. I will always be the girl I was on the day you took my picture, forever as beautiful as the best I’ve looked to someone else. TANIA STRAUSS