I Left My Heart in Fizzy Pisco

 

It’s easy to go a bit mad considering mandarins. Clearly pulling apart tangerines from clementines from trademarked brands like Ojai Pixies and Cuties… well, it’s certainly not as easy as pulling apart the luscious segments from these oblate wonders of the citrus world. Actually, telling them apart has something to do with the roughness of the skin, and, of course, genetic crosses you’d have to be a botanist to bother about. But the best thing is many of us locally have a tangerine tree of some sort or know someone who does who is probably offering you fruit. Say thanks, and get cracking on this cocktail.

Care to read the rest then do at Edible Santa Barbara & Wine Country (they've even got a fancy new site for you).

Drinking Gingerly

It seems like it's been awhile since I posted a new cocktail (and have you been reading the Drinkable Landscape column in the last two Edible Santa Barbara's? they are in the print issues only) so thought it was time. We were having curried garbanzo beans last night with cucumber raita, so that meant coming up with something that could stand up to and complement all that flavor and spice (it's not too hot a curry, at least). That led to....

The Salty Star

4 oz. Russell Henry Hawaiian White Ginger Gin
2 oz. Hangar 1 Mandarin Blossom Vodka
1 oz. Cointreau
3 star anise, whole
4 thin strips of preserved lemon (rinsed)
a few cilantro sprigs

Lightly muddle the cilantro and preserved lemon in the gin in a shaker. Add the vodka and Cointreau and one of the whole anise. Add ice. Shake to chill. Strain into up cocktail glasses. Add one star anise per glass for garnish.

makes 2

Note: The gin can be ordered from Caddell & Williams. It adds a lovely floral but not overdone touch of ginger. Preserved lemon is just too fun to play with in drinks and food. Even rinsed, it adds a nifty saltiness to whatever you use it for, and that salt helps the cocktail work with food.

Necessity Is the Mother of Inebriation

That photo is a bit blurry, sure, but so would you be after a cocktail contest. Still, if you want to read about that, you have to wait till the June 30 issue of the Independent, when all the BBQ & cocktail contest dirt goes down (actually, it was pretty cleanly delicious, but you'll see).

So, after drinking 5 cocktails (that is, tasting 5) in a little over an hour, and then commingling and co-drink-ling with winners and non-winners (can there be a loser at a cocktail contest?) alike for a bit, as cocktails are nothing if not the grease for society's wheels, I came home with my sweet companion who did not drink and therefore did drive, and hunger followed. We opted to play that game "what can we make with what's in the house?" and luckily our house was filled with raw goods goodness, so soon Farmers' Market cherry tomatoes were slow roasting, pasta water was boiling, pesto was grinding in the blender, and it was left to me to put my shaker to tasty use. And, after a cocktail contest, what else could I do but try something new?

Soon I had my muddler out, as sudden-kitchen-ers like me don't have time to infuse. We choose, we chop, we drop, we muddle the heck out of yummy items, expressing essential oils. Tonight I thought something with zing would be fun, but we lacked fresh peppers. We did have a dried one, so I cut off half of that, chopped that half into four, zipped the seeds. That sat at shaker's bottom with some fresh lemon peels and a couple of rips of cilantro. Soon it bathed in 1.5 oz. of fresh lemon juice and .5 oz. of lime juice. Why both? Cause I didn't have enough lemon. But sometimes you go to cocktailing with the citrus you have, not the citrus you wish you had. (If only Donald Rumsfeld didn't give up his nascent career behind the bar to be Defense Secretary.)

After the therapy of muddling (how often do you get to pummel things and then drink them afterwards? even Muhammad Ali didn't get to do that, and yes, now I'm thinking of really perverse Thrilla in Manilla fan fiction, sorry), I added 4 oz. Absolut Citron, 1 oz. Citronge, and then as a bit of a wild card, 1 oz. Blonde Lillet (figured some depth, acid, sweetness, but not that sweetness)(plus I always want to work Lillet in drinks, at least till I figure out of it's pronounced li-let or li-lay). Ice. Shake. Pour into two glasses. (Never drink alone, and if you are, you might as well have two, no?)

That got garnished--and you have to garnish, people, or it's simply not a cocktail, it would be like going outside without a natty hat in the 1950s, and you wouldn't have been one of those philistines, would you?--with a sprig of cilantro and a wide lemon rind. Name of the drink: Thai'd and True.

Foraging for Borage

Ok, that title is pretty much a lie, as the forage in our case means go out into the backyard and grab some, but that's just part of what makes this new cocktail creation from last evening a spring is sprung delight. Borage can either be good for you or bad for you (anti-inflammatory and good for PMS or bad for your liver, but you're drinking anyway, so moderation, my friend!) depending on who you believe or what part you eat (flowers ok, leaves not so much). The blooms certainly are a beautiful addition to a drink, and even add a bit of a cucumber taste (Pimms once was made partially from borage flower).

If you're worried that maybe some bugs came in on the blooms and that's what's afloat in the glasses in the photo, you shouldn't, for that's some mint, also fresh-cut from the backyard too. And then that's a lithe little lemon twist for both essential oil zippiness and yet more color. Not to mention you might be lucky and have lemons in your yard, too, or hanging over a neighbor's fence or something.

Let me introduce to you, then, the All the Rage Cocktail:

2 oz. citrus vodka
1 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 oz. Citronge/Cointreau
the leaves from a healthy stem of mint
lemon twist
2 borage flowers

In a cocktail shaker rip up the mint leaves and add 1 oz. of the vodka. Muddle thoroughly to get the mint to express some of its oils. Add the rest of the vodka, the lemon juice, and the Citronge. Add ice and shake vigorously. Pour into an up cocktail glass. Add the lemon twist and float the 2 borage flowers.