Diana Millay's Vampire's Delight and Dracula's Sunset Cocktails

from the Dark Shadows Celebrity Cookbook

Among some of the more intriguing contributions to the Dark Shadows Celebrity Cookbook are two vampiric cocktails from the occult kitchen of beguiling Diana Millay.  Vampire's Delight is sweet, red, and potent, concocted with fragrant gin, grenadine syrup, and spiked with orangey zest of Grand Marnier.  It indeed has the particular red color that would attract and delight a thirsty vampire.  You'll love it too, perhaps as an after dinner cocktail, but one beforehand wouldn't spoil the appetite either.  It's a nice aromatic drink and an imaginative blend of elements.

Miss Millay's second recipe is for Dracula's Sunset and calls for Chartreuse yellow  as the featured ingredient.  I enjoy Chartreuse very much and purchase the more commonly available green preparation.  The yellow is less often seen in liquor shops, although this would pose no problem for a phoenix at whose command anything might appear.  As it happened, I asked our local purveyor of spirits if he could order a bottle of Chartreuse yellow for me and he said he just happened to have a case in back that had been shipped to him by mistake.  Mere serendipity, or the power of phoenix magic?  I'm really not making this up.  I discovered the crystal skull of vodka by chance at the same time and thought it was perfect to evoke the mood, as well as being something that I imagined Miss Millay would probably have chosen herself.  One part of Chartreuse is blended with two parts of vodka for a subtly sweet, herbal, floral, and mildly intoxicating drink that is definitely worth trying.  I would not be surprised to find Barnabas sipping one (or two) of these upon arising since it is to be served at sunset.  And it has a beautifully surreal color that is hard to describe.  This is the kind of drink you'd expect from the hand of a sorceress like Laura Collins, who probably offered these to visitors she lured to Matthew's cottage while she was a guest there.  A side note to the recipe is my recommendation of a movie about the lives of the Carthusian monks at the Chartreuse monastery entitled "Into Great Silence."  It's the first and only time anyone has been permitted to film the activities inside the this unique and remote location in the French Alps and it includes a section devoted to how the 400 year old secret recipe liqueur is produced.  Be warned however, once under its spell you may become addicted!