This week's cover story is the cocktail issue, or L.A.'s Best Cocktails, in which Jonathan Gold considers, as you can probably infer from the title, the best cocktails in Los Angeles. To celebrate the happy event, we're giving you a cocktail a day here on Squid Ink. Yesterday's drink was the Donaji from Rivera's Julian Cox; today's is Penicillin from Comme Ça. Here's what Gold has to say about the drink (below), and if you turn the page, we've gotten the recipe so you can make it at home. Who says you have to read your morning paper with a cup of coffee. Cheers.

Penicillin:

Probably the most influential drink to come out of New York's cocktailian renaissance, Penicillin is a carefully balanced blend of blended bar scotch and smoky Laphroiag, lemon and honeyed ginger, which Sam Ross concocted for Milk & Honey on the Lower East Side and introduced at Comme Ça, David Myers' West Hollywood brasserie, when he formulated the drinks menu there. A properly made Penicillin has the complexity, the ghostly resonances of the great pre-Prohibition cocktails but with the modern, spicy snap of candied fresh ginger.

Penicillin

From: Comme Ça

Makes: 1 drink

2 oz. Blended Highland & Islay Scotches

¾ oz. Fresh lemon

¾ oz. Ginger syrup

¾ oz. Honey

Spritz Laphroig scotch

candied ginger for garnish

1. Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker.

2. Pour in a rocks glass with a block of hand-chipped ice.

3. Garnish with candied ginger.

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