Super Sunday? Fat Tuesday? That's all well and good, but first: it's ACBN Friday.
The Friday Newsletter puts on its game face and lets the good times roll.
The Super Bowl is so freakin’ weird.
We recognize this, right?
I’m coming at this from the perspective of an avid football fan, mind you—this isn’t one of those “har har sportsball” commentaries. It’s just… it’s really weird. It’s not like any other sport’s championship—not the World Series or the NBA Finals or the UEFA Champions League Final, all of which have a good deal of spectacle about them and none of which are as batshit insane as the NFL’s championship game. It’s not even really a game, it’s a circus, one that seemingly-incidentally has a football game happening in the middle of it. It’s like we decided to reward the two best teams in the league by sending them to the moon. It’s a garish, overdone spectacle that can almost never live up to its hype from a pure sports perspective.
And I love it.
I love it for the excess—for the reputable publications filling my inbox with nacho recipes, for the endless manufactured narratives about the players, for the overblown media coverage, for the sheer maximalism of it all. I love it because it’s the last stand of the monoculture—one Sunday evening when we all watch the same ads, all react to the same events in real time, all tune in as we offer up one musical artist for public consumption in something halfway between a lifetime achievement award and a human sacrifice.
I started to write something longer about this, and then I realized that I’d already written it two years ago:
If the NFL were to end tomorrow—if the stadium lights were flicked off and the franchises disbanded, if Roger Goodell and Dan Snyder and Stephen Ross and Jimmy Haslam and their peers were stripped of their powers and marched off to jail, if Aaron Rodgers were just a weird guy in your office whose Facebook invite you’ve ignored for six months—we would still need a day like this. Just as the Tournament of Roses parade existed before the football game we know as the Rose Bowl ever did, the Super Bowl could march on without football.
The Super Bowl is barely about the football at all, unless, of course, you’re in one of the two fan bases for whom it might be a day you’ve waited a generation or more for. In that case, it’s your chance to feel like a king or queen for the day. I’ve spent the last week looking at the many Cincinnati Bengals fans with whom I am acquainted with a mixture of vicarious happiness and deep envy, as I imagine what it might feel like if my hometown Cleveland Browns ever take that stage. (It looks like it feels nice!)
Until then, and for all the rest of us, the Super Bowl is simply a secular holiday at the actual worst time of the year, a frigid, slushy spot in the meteorological calendar far more bleak and depressing than the comparatively-mild winter solstice around which Christmas hangs. Valentine’s Day might deign to fill this void, but brings with it the anxieties, pressures and responsibilities of romance, gift-giving and/or finding the right set of 25 cards for a child’s class in a ransacked Target seasonal section where every set available contains 24 cards.
Valentine’s Day is but a pretender; the Super Bowl is the reason for this season.
I’m ready.
Friends, it is once again Friday at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.
The ACBN is always ready, and it’s not just the Super Bowl on my mind this week. We’ve got the final push of Mardi Gras as we approach Fat Tuesday, and Valentine’s Day is hot on its heels. I’ve got a little bit of all of that in today’s mix—including a party-ready dessert recipe, a decadent-and-depraved cocktail, a band on the rise, a game that will destroy your productivity today, and more!
Let’s get those bon temps roulin’, pals.
Do not eat the baby.
One of my favorite things about this time of year is that it’s King Cake season.
Now, I’m not from a place where Mardi Gras—or by extension, its signature dessert—were a big part of the culture. A few years back, though, I worked at a company that had an office in Louisiana, and every year the boss would bring a cake or two up after a visit.
I was hooked with the first one.
I mean, what’s not to love? They’re delicious, festive and colorful—but most importantly, they’re a dessert with a winner. On my very first slice, I got the hidden plastic baby that supposedly represents good fortune to whomever finds it.
I’ve got an order in for one that I’ll be picking up from a fancy bakery here in Louisville tomorrow, and I even noticed (after placing that order) that local Krogers are intermittently stocking Louisiana-made cakes.
But what if you don’t have access?
I decided to whip up something that is decidedly not King Cake—but it’s still a delicious dessert, and one that you can whip up with little effort and still recreate the fun of a Mardi Gras-themed dessert: a King Cake icebox pie.
Icebox pieces are among my favorite easy desserts, and while I usually make them with lemon juice, here I’m swapping in passionfruit syrup to bring in the flavors of a classic Hurricane cocktail. This is a no-bake version, and only has a few easy-to-procure ingredients—it’s the perfect thing to whip up if you need to bring something to a Super Bowl gathering this weekend.
Now, I happened to have a fève (plastic baby) that we’d saved from last year’s King Cake on hand, but if you don’t? Get creative. Throw a Lego minifig or something in there. It’s not getting baked, after all.
“King Cake” Icebox Pie
8 ounces cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup passionfruit syrup (usually found with drink mixers)
12 ounces Cool Whip
green, yellow and purple gel food coloring
premade chocolate pie crust
plastic fève or alternative good-luck charm
Place the plastic baby (or whatever you’re using in lieu of one) in the premade pie crust. (Do it first so you don’t forget it.)
Using a stand or hand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk and passionfruit syrup until smooth. Pour into the pie crust, and refrigerate (covered) for at least two hours.
Separate the cool whip into three bowls, and add one color of food coloring to each, stirring until even. Spoon onto the chilled pie in alternating globs, then gently smooth together with a spatula to swirl but not mix. Chill for another 1-2 hours before serving.
That’s it. It’s not a complicated dessert or an especially nuanced one, but it’s pretty darn tasty, and adding the “who’s gonna get it???” angle into the mix is fun.
I like foods that are fun.
(For the record: my wife got the baby, which was for the best given that I have two grade-school-aged children and one of them getting it would’ve been A Whole Thing. )
Now, let’s make a drink.
Payin’ anything to roll the dice just one more time
As soon as this week’s cocktail entered consideration, I knew it was going to slot into this week. It’s not just Mardi Gras week—there’s a Super Bowl happening in Las Vegas on Sunday. I needed something that would strike just the right note of old-school degeneracy, and this would be just the thing.
This was inspired by a drink that one of my oldest and dearest friends had at a cocktail bar in Chicago and immediately felt compelled to send me—a slightly-smoky Old Fashioned that has a bit of fun with the garnishes.
Waking Up In Vegas
1-3/4 ounces Old Overholt Rye Whiskey
1/4 ounce Ardbeg Scotch
1/2 ounce Lazzaroni Maraschino Liqueur
1/2 ounce Lapsang Souchong Syrup (see below)
2 heavy dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
1 candy cigarette1
1/4 tsp culinary-grade activated charcoal
EDIT: An important note regarding activated charcoal from Kacie in the comments: if you’re on prescription medications, wait at least three hours between taking your meds and making the drink. Activated charcoal can affect medication absorption, especially estrogen for folks on birth control and HRT.
Lapsang Souchong Syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 bags Lapsang Souchong tea
Bring the water to a boil. Add the teabags, remove from the heat, and allow to steep until strong, 4-5 minutes. Remove and discard the teabags, return to a boil, then stir in the sugar, whisking until fully dissolved. Remove from heat and allow to cool fully.
Add a large ice cube to an Old Fashioned glass. Shake the bitters over the ice.
In a separate glass filled with ice, add the rye, scotch, maraschino liqueur and tea syrup; stir gently for 20 seconds. Strain over the ice in the main glass.
Sprinkle a small dusting of activated charcoal over the ice cube. (This achieves nothing other than a fun visual, to be clear.) Hold a candy cigarette over a flame until the end singes and gives off a toasted-marshmallow scent from the burning sugar.
It looks disgusting, but, y’know, in a good way—and it’s actually one heck of a drink, too. The smoke from the tea and scotch play well off the candy notes of the maraschino liqueur, anise-y bitters and burnt sugar from the garnish.
It really captures the vibe of a smoky casino floor without losing your life savings in the process.
A dispatch from America’s unsung musical hotbed
Today’s music recommendation comes courtesy of reader Josh D., who accurately assessed that this act “sounds like something that would feature in a Friday newsletter”.