On a late-March afternoon inside her Hudson, New York, home, the cookbook author Colu Henry was gleefully shaking up some improvised Ramos gin fizzes. “I don’t have orange-flower water, so I used a touch of orange juice. And I doubled the lemon juice, because I’m out of limes,” she explained, her tone less vexed than matter-of-fact.
Exact or not, the resulting Creamsicle-like cocktails were delicious, and delightfully strong (thanks to the absentminded omission of soda). The recipe is one of several opening-act cocktails from Henry’s new cookbook, Colu Cooks: Easy Fancy Food, a loose playbook of sorts for hosting and entertaining without fuss and agita.
