Sippin' on tequila and juice (laid back, with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)

A simple pleasure tonight, sweet, tart, spicy.  Inspired by the curly tail at the Austin eatery Salty Sow, this concoction is the perfect balance of the aforementioned flavors.  Ooooooweeeee it is delicious, but not so sweet to make you think it's dessert!

I've experimented with infused vodkas (chai, tangerine, vanilla) and so far chai is my favorite, especially in a Moscow Mule (thanks Lisa, Steve and Project V Distillery!).  This summer, I have started infusing tequila with spicy peppers.  I like serranos myself, as habaneros are too high up on the scoville scale for my palate.  Anyways, the spicy tequila give standard margaritas a nice kick, and it complements and offsets the sweetness of simple or triple sec.

To infuse tequila with peppers, the seeds are key.  In fact, you can infuse it pretty quickly (20-30 minutes) if you just scrape the seeds into the tequila and let it steep.  Strain the tequila and put in your liquor cabinet.

Tonight I mixed 2 oz serrano infused tequila, 1/2 oz grand marnier but any curacou or triple sec is fine, and 2-3 oz blood orange juice.  Shake, pour over ice and enjoy!

The pepper infused tequila is also wonderful in watermelon based drinks, pineapple drinks, and pomegranate juice drinks.

Enjoy!

Bourbon is king

Of all the base spirits, I think Bourbon is my favorite.  I love the butterscotch color, the vanilla/spice flavor.  It can be sophisticated without being boring or pretentious.  It may be a battle between Bourbon and Gin, with Rye coming a close third.  A war where everyone wins!

Salted caramel desserts seem all the rage these days, and for good reason.  I decided to join the fray.  I made ice cream with caramel, bourbon and sea salt.  OMG.  DO NOT MAKE THIS AT HOME!!!!!!!!  Unless you want to eat a quart of ice cream in one sitting.  Wow.

One can of sweetened condensed milk

One pint of cream

Caramel syrup

Sea Salt, course

Bourbon (I used Woodford Reserve)

Whisk cream and milk, add in caramel syrup (1/4-1/2 cup to taste)
Add 2-3 oz bourbon, continue whisking.  Add a few shakes of salt in, place in ice cream maker.  Half way through once the ice cream is solidifying, add a few more shakes of salt so that when you get the finished product, you will get occasional chunks of sea salt.  Soooooooooo delicious!

the fruits of summer

The mission of the cocktail journey, though far from complete, has made blog posts somewhat self limiting.....the more drinks I make and discover, the more I find drinks I like a lot and want to repeat, thus less need for blogging and sharing (over the internet....I always share in person!).  But sometimes a new twist on an old favorite makes a post necessary....and sometimes the fringe use of etoh in other recipes make an appearance too.  

A wonderful friend who also happens to be a culinary genius brought me some fantastic grapefruit infused gin.  She made the infusion with Texas grapefruits from a local farm, and though I did not taste the actual fruits, she assures me they are the sweetest grapefruits she has had.  And she had them in spades.  So, how to make use of an abundance of grapefruit?  Gin of course!!!!  She juiced the fruit, boiled with some sugar, and then combined the gin, juice/syrup and the zest.  After infusing for some time, straining the zest/rind out and voila - amazing treat!  The infused gin is thicker than straight gin, has a light pink color, and I mixed it with a bottle of fever tree light tonic. which is not particularly sweet so combined well.  I added a dash of Angostura bitters and made the singularly best summer drink of 2012.  Thank you Kate!

In a tall glass with lots of cracked ice, pour 2 oz infused gin and 1/2 oz plain gin.  Add 3-4 oz (or to taste) fever tree light tonic.  Dash or two of bitters (I used Angostura).  Enjoy!

A cerulean cocktail.....

A summer time beauty.  It tastes good too!  Kind of like a less sweet pina colada.  This is not particularly sophisticated, but it sure is fun.  

Blue Hawaiian

1 oz rum

1 oz blue curacao

2 oz pineapple juice

1 oz cream of coconut

Shake/stir and enjoy on ice

I can hear a ukulele playing in the background, and feel the tradewinds......if only!

Superb Summer Sippin'

It's been awhile.  Sorry.  A lot has happened in between the last post and this post.  We sold our house and bought a new one.  We moved.  That in and of itself consumed about 2 months of our collective lives.  We had to pack up the hooch for awhile and it wasn't as easily accessible for a couple of weeks, which put a dent in the cocktailing.  But then I got this:

 

Bar angels sang when I brought home this consignment piece to hold my liquor.  Yay!  So we are back in business, and summer time is a great time to experiment with the fruitier side of drinking, imo.  We have made some delicious scratch margaritas in the interim, and there will be plenty of Pimms cups and G&Ts too, so don't expect posts about those.  But with the heat comes ample opportunity to imbibe, sit in the backyard, and take it all in.

Tonight, I made a Mai Tai.  My first experience with the Mai Tai was in Hawaii in January.  I was pleasantly surprised by this very refreshing fruit friendly drink. But given that it was January, once I got home, I was not very inspired to make them in freezing weather.  I did purchase some Orgeat, in anticipation of warmer temps and tonight I broke it out, in honor of triple digits.  Yay Texas.  There are about as many iterations of the Mai Tai out there as there are bartenders.  One thing I am clear on, the original did not have an abundance of juices added, as many tiki tenders are wont to do these days.  Trying to remain as true to history as I could with what was in my cabinet, I decided to try an old school Mai Tai, and I was not disappointed.  It was refreshing without being overly sweet.  The original recipe calls for Trader Vic's Rock Candy Syrup, which I did not have so left out.  The other ingredient called for is Orange Curaco, and I only have blue.  Both are orange in flavor, but I will save the blue for a Blue Hawaii.  So I used Grand Marnier in lieu (in luau?) of the Curaco.  I thought it worked.


For 2 drinks:


2 oz Mt Gay Rum
2 oz Black Seal Dark Bermuda Rum
juice of 2 limes
1 oz Orgeat syrup
1 oz Grand Marnier (substitute for Orange Curaco)

Shake with ice cubes and pour over crushed ice.  Garnish with some sort of fruit slices (I had lime wedge and maraschino cherry).

Find a nice place to sit outside at sunset and enjoy!

Lawn Dart - oh yeah

My friend and colleague gave me a cocktail book last week.  It has many, many recipes that look interesting so will give this blog many more months of material at least.

It is essentially summer's prelude here in Texas, the average high is 80 degrees, people are in shorts and tank tops, flip flops.  Grass is growing quickly and thoughts turn to the light, refreshing drinks such as margaritas and G&Ts.

In this book, a cocktail called the Lawn Dart caught my eye.  It has green bell pepper.  What you say?  Yes, I know, weird ingredient.  But it makes the drink.

Muddle a slice or two of green bell pepper with 1.5 oz agave syrup

The add and shake over ice:

2 oz tanqueray (I only had T10)

2 oz high quality tequila blanco

1.5 oz lime juice

0.5 oz green chartreuse

Strain and serve over rocks or pebbles

Enjoy!  

This is my new favorite drink.

Good as gold

Hi all!  I know, it has been awhile.  We are in the process of selling the small bar to move into a larger bar that has more space for the liquor.  Er, I mean we are in the process of moving to a bigger house!

My bestie Winnie gave me a cocktail book, the PDT cocktail book, this week and it has so many awesome and interesting recipes.  I started out easy, because I did not want to mess anything up!

The Gold Rush is a variation on the Whisky Sour, an all time favorite of mine, and it used honey in the stead of simple syrup.  The honey imparts a rich color and flavor to the drink that improves the experience over a traditional whisky sour.

The Gold Rush

2 oz bourbon
0.75 oz Lemon juice
1 oz honey

Shake in ice and pour over cubes in a rocks glass.

I was a little short on the honey (we were running out) and a little long on the lemon juice (it was a Meyer lemon so I did not want to discard the extra juice!) but it still tuned out lovely.  Definitely an easy, delicious drink for a warm spring evening!