Published by Matt October 12th, 2006
in recipes, cocktails and liqueur.
This is probably one of my favorite drinks right now. It’s hard to mess up the recipe and just about everyone loves it. The secret for me, as I’ve stated before, is using fresh juice. Sour mix just isn’t the same.
The ingredients are:
2 1/2 to 3 oz. Amaretto liqueur (preferrably Disaronno)
1 whole lemon juiced
4 to 5 drops of bitters
1 Maraschino cherry (optional)
Put a cup of ice into a cocktail shaker. Drop the bitters in first. Then add the amaretto and lemon juice. Shake the usual 20 to 30 seconds. Pour the frothy concoction into a chilled cocktail glass with a maraschino cherry. I say 2 1/2 to 3 ounces of amaretto because it depends on how sour you like your drink. The less you use, the more you’ll pucker. Just adjust the recipe to taste. Enjoy!
Published by Matt September 19th, 2006
in recipes, vodka and cocktails.
I love blueberries. I love how they’re sweet and tart at the same time. How they’re not overpowering. I love the blueberries’ ability to compliment many other flavors well. Before I rushed out to try one of the blueberry-infused vodkas that is out, I thought I’d try my hand at my own blueberry-vodka cocktail. So here’s a subtle fresh blueberry concoction that probably needs a little tinkering around with depending on your personal taste.
2 1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz Stoli vanilla vodka
1/2 cup of fresh blueberries
1 tsp simple syrup
Muddle/Puree the blueberries until they are completely indistinguishable from one another. Add the vodkas and simple syrup. Shake aggressively with ice for 20 to 30 seconds. Double strain into a cocktail glass (with a few blueberries on the bottom).
Viola! A strong vodka cocktail with a pleasant vanilla-blueberry combo. Depending on your taste, play with the straight vodka to vanilla vodka ratio. My wife found the half ounce of vanilla vodka overpowered the blueberry flavor for her. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
Published by Matt September 17th, 2006
in recipes, vodka and cocktails.
In keeping with the theme of summer’s over from the Gimlet post, here’s a perfect summer cocktail my wife and I discovered too late this year. I recently read an inflight magazine article which sang the praises of combining strawberries and basil. Needless to say, since my wife had planted a couple types of basil in her herb garden, I couldn’t wait to get home and try this combo in a cocktail.
After heading out to the herb garden, we discovered that, for better or worse, our poor purple basil plant was a skeleton. We agreed the still living lemon basil would make a fine substitution. We picked our lemon basil and proceeded to make a most excellent summer cocktail.
The ingredients:
2 oz vodka
1 tsp cranberry juice
3 strawberries
3 or 4 large basil leaves
4 tsp apple liqueur
1 tsp simple syrup
1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
Start by muddling your basil leaves until they’re finely crushed (see previous Mojito post formore info on muddling). Then add the strawberries and puree. Once the berries and basil are combined, take a whiff. NICE. Add the vodka, apple liqueur, simple syrup, cranberry juice, and pepper. Shake vigorously and double strain into chilled cocktail glasses. Be sure and use a fine strainer over the glass to avoid small pieces of basil in your drink.
This is a very lite cocktail. No one flavor overpowers the drink. Feel free to try different liqueurs that may combine well with strawberries. Enjoy!
To see the drinks preferred by those mightier than I, head over to Cocktail Chronicles for mixology Monday.
Published by Matt September 17th, 2006
in recipes, vodka, gin and cocktails.
Although summer is officially over and fall has begun, down here in sunny Florida we still need drinks that are nice, cool, and easy to make all year round. It doesn’t get much simplier than the mighty Gimlet.Thought to have been created by the British Royal Navy sometime around 1876 when England required that its sailors received lime juice everyday to ward off scurvy, some British genius decided it would be much easier to get their recommended daily allowance if the lime juice was mixed with gin. Other trivia about the drink include that it was drunk by fictional hard-boiled detective Phillip Marlowe and Ernest Hemmingway immortalized the drink in his story “Francis Macomber.”
I do hold to the notion that if a cocktail recipe calls for juice, then if at all possible the juice should be freshly squeezed. (For me, this also applies to flavored vodkas. For example, instead of lemon-infused vodka, I’d much rather use straight vodka and fresh lemon juice. It just makes the drink taste so much better and it really doesn’t take much to juice a lemon or lime.) However, the Gimlet is the rare exception to the rule. From all sources I’ve consulted, not only does the recipes call specifically for Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice, some actually warn against using fresh lime juice because it turns the drink too tart. In fact, along with the lime juice, the recipe calls for simple syrup. (To make the syrup, just use a 1:1 ratio, sugar to water. Heat over a medium high heat until the sugar is dissolved (it won’t take long).)
So here’s the recipe for this ultra-simple and refreshing drink:
2 oz gin
1/2 oz Rose’s lime juice
1/4 to 1/2 oz simple syrup
Shake the concoction in a shaker with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lime wedge or serve it on the rocks. One more thing, many people out there make the Gimlet with vodka. To me, that takes away some of the subtle complexity that gin brings but to each their own.
Published by Matt August 19th, 2006
in recipes and rum.
I decided to try making this drink shortly after I planted mint in my “herb garden” (and, I must add, before I found out the Mojito’s were the “in” drink for the summer). I was excited to use my new crop, not to mention trying the method of muddling. Depending on who you talk to, you need a special tool (appropriately named, a muddler) to perform the task of muddling, but I find a wooden spoon works perfectly well, not to mention you can use a wooden spoon for so many other tasks. (AB would be proud…)
Muddling is basically just a specific form of mixing. In this recipe you use the abrasiveness of the sugar and the spoon to crush the mint leaves and extract as much of the oils as possible (I think the acidity of the lime juice helps to break down the leaves, as well…). Place the mint leaves, sugar, and lime juice in the bottom of a pitcher and crush the leaves into the sugar with a wooden spoon (or muddler, if you want to spend the money on a single purpose tool).
It is a very refreshing drink, perfect for summertime. Hope you enjoy!
Muddle:
1/3 C sugar
1/2 C mint, roughly chopped
1/2 C lime juice
Add:
1C white rum and stir to combine
Strain into glasses, top with:
Crushed ice
Club soda
Garnish with:
fresh mint sprigs
lime slices
Published by Matt August 10th, 2006
in recipes, gin and cocktails.
What better way to kick off the cocktail recipes than with the gin martini? My wife isn’t a fan of gin. She prefers vodka’s cleaner taste over gin’s juniper overtones. As for me, gin is a bit of all right. I like its distinctive flavor combined with dry vermouth. And no, I don’t subscribe to Winston Churchill’s take on vermouth. His method was to glance at the bottle of vermouth while pouring the gin. The right mix for me is below. Also, be sure and note that the olive goes in the glass before the drink is poured. That’s an important part of the recipe and effects the quality of your martini. Call me crazy, but I never understand why people pour coffee in a mug and then add sugar. Why not let the coffee do some of the mixing work for you? Same applies here. Adding the olive first allows the gin and vermouth to mix better with the olive juice. Yum!
1/2 ounce of dry vermouth
2 1/2 ounces of gin
0live(s)
Pour the dry vermouth over ice in your cocktail shaker. Swirl the vermouth in the shaker or stir. Just make sure you coat the ice well. Then pour the vermouth out with a strainer. Next add the gin. Stir the gin rapidly. Before pouring, be sure and place the olive (or olives, I like three) into the martini glass. Then strain gin into glass and enjoy!
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