Level-headed

Dinah Sanders who authored the Art of the Shim, a nice little book about low-alcohol cocktails, is hosting Mixology Monday this month and has chosen shims as her theme. She defines them as drinks that contain less than half an ounce of strong spirits.

One of my favorite discoveries in the book is the Rhum Dandy Shim by Craig Lane of Bar Agricole in San Francisco. It’s red vermouth-based and cleverly uses rhum agricole and absinthe as modifiers. It manages to create a huge amount of flavor with only half an ounce of hard liquor. A very inspiring drink that shows that you don’t have to compromise on taste with these low-octane libations.

Drink the coconut water

The Mixology Monday Challenge this month is about coconuts, right in the footsteps of a recent pineapple challenge. There is something delicious about a proper Piña Colada made with fresh ingredients that I could not resist. For the coconut element, using fresh coconut water instead of cream preserves the coconut flavor but cut downs considerably on the sweetness, which is a good thing. There is no need to compensate by adding sugar – pineapple is plenty sweet on its own. My pineapple had the right balance of sweetness and acidity and was fine as is, but if it’s very sweet, adding a squeeze of lime juice can help make flavors pop.

Marmalade skies

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday, Preserves, could not have arrived at a better time. A few weeks ago, armed with a good knife, a very large pot, and a lot of patience, I made a traditional British marmalade.

It’s been a few years now that I’ve been trying to track down the elusive Seville oranges. They are not commonly found in stores and have a short season. So I was quite excited when I saw them appear at Specialty Produce, my local source for produce. Bumpy, thick-skinned and full of seeds, with an intensely bitter juice, they are not the friendliest of fruit. But under the right conditions, they can become sublime.

Smoke: Playing with Laphroaig

After Fire! in August which gave me an excuse to make a classic tiki Volcano Bowl, this month’s Mixology Monday challenge was Smoke!, the theme picked by Elana of the Stir and Strain blog.

When considering smoke, two ingredients came to my mind immediately: mezcal and Laphroaig. I decided to focus on Laphroaig as I don’t use it very often. I bought a bottle after falling in love with Sam Ross’s Penicillin, a new classic that pairs blended scotch with ginger, lemon, and a touch of smoke from the Laphroaig. Sam seems to play with Laphroaig quite a bit; his Fitzroy is a great Rob Roy variation where Laphroaig makes a great impact.

Punch drunk love

Ti’ Punch is more than just a drink in the French Antilles, it’s a ritual. First there is the rum or rather, the rhum. Rhum agricole has the particularity of being made from fresh sugarcane juice rather than molasses as most rums (the so-called “industrial” or traditional rums). Rhum agricole can be likened to an eau-de-vie obtained by fermenting and distilling sugarcane juice. In Martinique, rhum agricole is protected with an AOC (controlled designation of origin) which regulates the provenance and cultivation of the cane and the production process. These characteristics confer a distinctive flavor profile to the rum. Rhums agricoles are typically grassy, vegetal, funky, and powerful.  Whereas most other rums are immediately approachable, rhum agricole can take some getting used to. But once you get hooked to the fresh cane aroma, you never look at rum the same way.

Don’s Mix

Tiki cocktails are usually thought as complicated drinks with a lot hard-to-find exotic ingredients, various syrups, and esoteric rum mixes. While this is often true, many of them have a more accessible structure. Take Trader Vic’s Mai Tai for example, his signature drink created in 1944 and composed of six ingredients: aged Jamaican and agricole rums, lime juice, simple syrup, curaçao and orgeat. At the core it’s a daiquiri variation (rum | lime juice | simple syrup), with orgeat and curaçao added as modifiers.

It’s fascinating to see how Don the Beachcomber comes up with something completely different based on a similar structure. When I think of Don the Beachcomber I immediately think of his characteristic use of spice syrups. In his Donga Punch (1937), another Daiquiri variation, he uses lime and grapefruit juice for the citrus, similar to a Hemingway Daiquiri (~1935). This time, though, the sweetening agent, which also acts as a modifier, is the highly aromatic cinnamon syrup, an ingredient that we immediately associate with tiki drinks.