Well, there’s no snow, per se.  And I ain’t dashing anywhere but into my beverage.

I often make double size drinks.  For a lot of them, it can make it easier to measure the ingredients.  Also, it gives me more drink to enjoy.

With tmfiii trying not to get sick, I figured I’d make a drink that he’d like, and one that would work on some of the stuff that I don’t drink often.  Thanks to the Cocktail Chronicles (where I was scanning to find out the theme for the next Mixology Monday) and remembering his fondness for the drink I went with the Cocktail a la Louisiane.

Cocktail a la Louisiane
3/4 ounce of rye whiskey
3/4 ounce of Benedictine
3/4 ounce of sweet vermouth
3 dashes Pernod
3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

But here’s the question: how big is a dash?

That’s an easy question for bottles such as bitters that have the little plastic dashing doohickey in the top of them.  But what of the Pernod?  If there’s one thing I don’t want it’s too much Pernod; it can so easily overwhelm a drink.

Google to the rescue!

I found this blog posting on A Dash of Bitters and just read the top part first.  Michael Dietsch, the author of that blog, suggested that a dash be about 1/8th of a teaspoon.  I simply did six solid dashes of the Peychaud’s (remember, I was doing a double); for the Pernod, I measured out 3/4 of a teaspoon (6/8ths, natch) of the Pernod and mixed up with the drink with 1.5 ounces each of Sazerac rye, Benedictine, and Noilly Prat sweet vermouth.

Garnished with two of my homemade brandy soaked cherries it came out, as my brother might say, “damn hell ass good”.

A number of the commenters – including Jonathan M. Forester who is a regular poster on Slashfood, one of my daily reads, and hey, he has a drink blog which doesn’t look like it’s been updated since May – pointed out that a dash is 1/6th of a teaspoon.  That would’ve added another 1/4 of a teaspoon to my Cocktail a la Louisiane, which might not have been bad.

Yeah.  It might’ve been better.

But this one is pretty darn good.