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Pippali Pineapple

A few weeks ago, folks started sending me this link via Twitter regarding  a cocktail and mocktail competition hosted by the folks at Marx Foods. The rules were pretty simple. Once you sign up, they send you a sample of some of their spices. Using at least one of the samples per drink,you had to come up with an original cocktail and an original mocktail. It sounded like an interesting exercise, so I thought, what they hey, let’s enter this thing.

About two weeks after emailing my interest, I received a package containing my samples. It included dried pineapple, juniper berries, saffron, (Indian) long pepper, fennel pollen and dill pollen. I was super excited about the long pepper because I’ve always wanted to experiment with it in cocktails.

Long pepper is a little hotter than regular black pepper but has this beguiling aroma that is hard to explain. It’s almost sensual and velvety. And it just screamed TEQUILA! But I didn’t want to infuse tequila with the long pepper because I wanted to be able to control the overall long pepper use. Instead, I created a long pepper syrup.

Long Pepper Syrup
Take 8 long peppers and crush them in a mortal & pestle, a meat mallet or some other heavy object.
Add 1.5 cups of sugar, 1 cup of water and the crushed pepper to a sauce pan.
Bring everything to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
Allow to cool to room temperature.
Using a fine mesh strainer and some cheese clothe, strain out the solids.*
Add half an ounce of vodka to the syrup for preservative purposes.
Bottle. It will keep in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks.
*If after using the fine mesh strainer and cheese clothe there are still particles floating in your syrup, bottle the syrup and allow to settle for a few hours. Then carefully transfer the syrup into a new bottle keeping the sediment in the first bottle.

So now I had some damn tasty long pepper syrup. What else did I want to do? For the heck of it, I diced the dried pineapple and added it to 2 cups of tequila. A let it set for two days, shaking the jar twice a day, then strained out the solids. The drink I then came up with is:

Pippali Pineapple
1.5 ounces Pineapple-infused tequila
.5 ounce fresh lime juice
.5 ounce long pepper syrup
.25 ounce fresh pineapple juice

-Combine all ingredients into an iced filled shaker. Shake vigorously for a slow 10 count and double strain (using a Hawthorne and fine mesh strainer) into a chilled couple glass. Pour one drop of Peychaud’s bitters on the foam and run a pick through it for a quick design. See the photo above.

Now that we have the cocktail, time to turn our attention to the mocktail. There could be any number of reasons people don’t want to have an alcoholic beverage including religious, medical or moral. I’m sure some of these folks still want to head out to a bar with their friends or experience the scene at the hot new cocktail bar in town. Regardless, they shouldn’t be subjected to soda and a squeeze of lemon or soft drinks or fruit juice and soda water. They should still be able to enjoy all the complexity and balance that a proper cocktail provides. The mocktail should also be visually appealing, not just fruit juice and soda water.  So the first think I did was decide how to make it visually impressive without relying solely on run-of-the-mill fruit juices. After some thought, I went with beet juice. The bright red-purple juice is both earthy and sweet. Not as sweet as fruit juice, but I know it would provide a great flavor and a great color. In to the juicer four beets went.

So how do you get this complexity in a beverage without all the things the spirits bring to the table? I’ve found that if not using spirits to add the complexity, you have to turn to more labor intensive culinary tricks.  One of my favorite spirits, and one of the most complex, is gin. With it’s various botanicals and styles, gin adds so much to a cocktail other than alcohol. I knew I wanted to replicate the complexity of gin in my mocktail.

Here is where you need some special tools for this mocktail. First, think about botanicals that are commonly found in gin. Juniper berries (hey! I got some of these in my samples!), lemon, orange and coriander are common gin botanicals. Then you need a cream whipper. This iSi Whip Plus is the one I used, but whatever the brand you want to make sure it is charged using N2O gas.

Non-Alcoholic Gin
.75 ounces, by weight, juniper berries
.5 teaspoon dried lemon peel
.5 teaspoon dried orange peel
8 cardamom seeds
2 allspice berries
25 coriander seeds
3 black peppercorns
25 fennel seeds
8 saffron fronds (also included in sample box)

Take all of these botanicals and crush them in a mortal & pestle or with some other heavy tool. Add the crushed botanicals to the whip cream canister. Add three cups of filtered water. Apply the lid and charge using a N2O. Gently swirl the canister for 30 seconds and then allow to set for 30 seconds. After that, quickly release the gas from the canister.  For a more detailed set of instructions and explanation of the science, check out this article. Once you’ve vented the gas, strain out the solids. What you’re left with is water flavored with traditional gin botanicals, or, non-alcoholic gin!

Beet Me to It
1.5 ounces non-alcoholic gin
.5 ounce fresh lemon juice
.5 ounce simple syrup
.25 ounce fresh beet juice
soda water

-Combine 1 tablespoon granulated sugar with 1 teaspoon fennel pollen.
-Prepare rocks glass by rubbing one-half of the outside rim glass with a slice of lemon. Using a spoon, dust this part of the glass with the sugar-fennel pollen mixture. Fill the glass with ice and place  in the freezer while preparing the rest of the drink.
-In an ice filled shaker, combine the non-alcoholic gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and beet juice. Shake vigorously for a slow ten count.
-Strain into your prepared rocks glass and fill the rest of the way with soda water. Gently stir.
-Garnish with a fresh mint sprig.

There you have it. A beverage containing the complexity of gin, the flavor and visual appeal of a great cocktail without the alcohol!

Thanks to Marx Foods for letting me compete in this contest. If you try either of these drinks, please let me know in the comments what you think.

Cheers!

Well, maybe not all of you or even most of you but definitely one of you – Mr. T. Marshall Fawley III.

Yes, I came up with a drink that when I made it tonight I thought “this had none of the original ingredients I thought to associate with Marshall but I think it works!”  Helped by the lovely and talented Ms. Sergi, we even came up with how to vary it up a bit.

So enough jibba jabba, let’s see the drink.

Another fuzzy pic, another lazy photographer moment

The TMF-aye-aye-aye
1 1/2 ounce cognac (Chalfonte VSOP)
1 1/2 ounce amer picon (Boudreau recipe, made by me)
2 dashes Marshall’s Moonshine Bitters
San Pellegrino Aranciata
Stir the first three ingredients over ice.  Strain into a double old fashioned glass and top with the Aranciata.

The amount of aranciata will determine the drink.  If you use the whole 6.75 bottle you get a nice, light drink, great for hot summer nights.  Use less – like half the bottle, for instance, and you get a stronger drink, with a stronger bitter component and something more of a sipper.

[Fifteenth in a series of drinks named after bloggers, mixologists, and random others who'll hopefully be at Tales.  The first post in the series is here.]

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday was “Broaden Your Horizons”.  The first one for 2009, it’s being hosted by The Scribe over at A Mixed Dram.  So, before I forget – thanks “The Scribe” for hosting this month!

It was kind of a tough topic.  Basically, The Scribe wanted us to think of an ingredient or technique we hadn’t used before and explore it.  I don’t want to act all jaded and like “oh, you know, I’ve been there and done that, har!”  But I was also like “uhh…what to do?”

That’s ’cause I’m typically the type of guy that if there’s something I want to try I just go ahead and try it.  I do the same thing with buying stuff, so it makes me hard to buy presents for, I’ve been told.

There’s one recipe however that I found in Harry Johnson’s classic bar guide that I’ve been wanting to try mostly for one big reason: it uses an egg yolk.  Not the white…just the yolk.

He has pictures in his book of various drinks and there’s one picture of a layered drink with an egg yolk in it so I knew exactly how I wanted it to look.  I had the liquor ingredients – green Chartreuse, maraschino, and Benedictine – so I went to the store, bought a fresh batch of eggs, and got ready to make the drink!

The recipe:

Widow’s Kiss
(Use a medium size wine glass)

1 yolk of a fresh egg;
1/3 glass of maraschino;
1/3 glass of green chartreuse;
1/3 glass of benedictine, and serve.

(Courtesy of Harry Johnson’s New and Improved (Illustrated) Bartender’s Manual and a Guide for Hotels and Restaurants, copyrighted 1900, reprinted 2008 by Mud Puddle Books.)

Wow.  Hit a few issues right away.  I didn’t have a great cordial glass for this (like the ones in Harry’s illustrations).  I wasn’t certain how much to use of each liquor and couldn’t be bothered to look that up in something like David Wondrich’s Imbibe!.  I also wasn’t certain which order to layer them in because Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology only had Benedictine listed of those three drinks.  His book did list ingredients in order to layer them in so I figured, hey, what the heck, I’ll try it that way.

But before I actually made the drink, I thought I’d get the yolk out first.  The first egg I managed to break the yolk of and so I didn’t want to use it.  The second egg I was much more careful with and the yolk was intact.

Then it was a glass.  I ended up grabbing a tasting glass from Horton vineyards; it was one of the smaller glasses I have and it seemed like it’d be a good shape and size for the drink.  It holds six ounces, so in a bout of not-thinking-things-through-completely (see below) I decided to use one ounce of each liquor.

Grabbing my bar spoon and measuring glass, I poured out the drink.  I put the maraschino in first, then the yolk – basing that off some random thing I’d read during the day – then the Chartreuse and last the Benedictine.  Looking at the picture, it might’ve been the wrong order to do them in.

But the drink looked neat!

As you might be able to tell, the chartreuse appeared to float up to the top right away.  The egg yolk didn’t stay perfectly in the middle – there might’ve been a bit of egg white left – but hey, I thought it looked kind of cool.

Then I realized something.

How in the name of Captain Tightpants was I supposed to drink this monstrosity?!

I took a sip off the top and really, that just gets you Chartreuse.  Not that I mind a nice dose of Chartreuse, but it wasn’t going to work (particularly when I’d get to the maraschino – ick!).

So I manned up, took a deep breath, and drank that #%()!-ing thing in one long pull.

THAT WAS THE WRONG THING TO DO AND DON’T DO THAT UNLESS YOU USE SMALLER PORTIONS.

Let me reiterate that:

DO NOT DO THAT.

My eyes watered.  My throat choked up.  I haven’t reacted that poorly to a shot in a long, long time.

I can’t even tell you what it tasted like – let’s just say, uh, wow, it was intense, and I would consider trying it again if I made it smaller.  (And if you want to make a “that’s what she said” joke, go for it, just … well, that’s the kind of thing that’d happen more likely maybe over in the Mixoloseum chat room, I’d bet.)

While I had gone through all that I’d made up a new batch of simple syrup.  This syrup I was going to modify a bit.

You see, I love vanilla.  I don’t know when that happened – I guess as I grew up, I discovered a big love for vanilla.  Kind of like when I realized that my favorite color was no longer black or blue (emo SeanMike for the win!) but red.  Weird.  And — I’ve never used vanilla simple syrup in a cocktail.

I tried my best to polish off my demerara sugar and let it cool off as a simple syrup then I added some Penzey’s double strength vanilla extract.

It cooled, I added an ounce or so of 100 proof vodka to help preserve it and add in about 1/4 of an ounce or so of the vanilla.  Tasting it straight, I thought it tasted pretty vanilla so I decided to try a drink with it.

In the middle of my debates inside the aforementioned chat room, wondering what to make with it (and getting very good suggestions from Stevi for dacquiris and French 75s) a horde of future in-laws showed up and I was forced to shut down my computer rapidly less they see some of the less-than-family friendly site titles in my Windows bar.  DARN YOU VISTA!

I thumbed my way through The Joy of Mixology and through Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails before suddenly thinking: HEY!  A Sazerac!

You know how I love a Sazerac.

I grabbed my Old Overholt, the Peychaud’s bitters, my little dripper bottle of absinthe, and a lemon.

If you know my favorite recipe for a Sazerac, you know how I made it.

Sazerac

3 ounces rye
3/4 ounce simple syrup
2 solid dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
Mix the rye, simple syrup, and Peychaud’s over ice.  Rinse out a chilled rocks glass with absinthe, dump out the absinthe, and strain the stirred mixture into the glass.  Squeeze a lemon peel over it and toss out the lemon peel.

(Recipe based off Gary Regan’s in The Joy of Mixology.)

The drink wasn’t bad – though the vanilla tones to it were really wiped out after the bitters and rye.  I might need to add more extract to the mixture.

But before I do that, I’ll probably have to go ahead and make a French 75.

I’m sure it’ll be delicious.

Anyways, thanks again to The Scribe over at A Mixed Dram for hosting this month.  Me, I’m going to walk back over to my precious, precious vanilla syrup.  What?  You want me to mix you up with an egg yolk in a some kind of layered drink that doesn’t have the same ingredients as before?  Hmmmm….

Honestly, I was – and still am – rather befuddled as to what to get my friends for Christmas this year.  Thus, I’m still behind on giving most of them gifts.

Damn.

Marshall had, in fact, given me a bottle of spiced pumpkin liqueur.  For some reason that got me feverishly thinking and I announced to my roommates “I’m going to make Marshall gin for Christmas!”

My brother – the criminal defense attorney – was not amused at that statement until I pointed out that it would be an infused gin, not a distilled one.

You see, someone had shown me a recipe in Gourmet for “kitchen gin” and I’d decided to make that.  I wandered over to Penzey’s, bought some spices and herbs and what-have-you, then hit the ABC store over near West Falls Church and got a bought of vodka that I bought as much for the bottle itself as anything else.

Then something hit me (ow!).  Did I have to use vodka?  What if I used a different base…like unaged corn whiskey?

Giggling, I set about getting everything together.

Once that was done, I wrote down the recipe.  Okay, we’re starting off with just the juniper berries over night, aren’t we?  That’s fine.

Two tablespoons of juniper berries went into each bottle.  Well, they went into the Georgia Moon bottle – that was an easy bottle to use for your infusing needs!

The 360 vodka bottle, on the other hand, was a little more annoying, so I ended up having to use a different container for infusing.  Not a huge deal.

That infused over night.  The next morning I got up and went to add the rest of the botanicals, etc., to infuse while I was at work.  Of course I was running late for work, and thus forgot to take pictures, and I made a huge mess through my kitchen because I hadn’t had any caffeine yet.

But, none the less, I got it done.

When I got back I had that kind of wondering feeling – I’d used ground allspice, since that’s all I’d found, and should I have used whole allspice berries?  Unfortunately, it was too late to go back, and after filtering it – and being out of cheesecloth and coffee filters dammit – there was still some allspice in the bottom of the bottles.  I hoped it wouldn’t hurt it too much and packaged it up.

It’s definitely cloudy but I was warned that it would be that way.  I smelled it and, well, it smelled like gin.  As I had kind of hoped, the whiskey one smelled a bit like genever gin, so I was eager to see how that turned out.

How did it taste?

Well, I can’t rightly tell ya.  We were going to taste it New Year’s Eve but didn’t get around to it.  So maybe Marshall will follow up and say if he has tasted it yet.

If it sucks – hey, whatever.  Could’ve been worse.

My parents gave me my presents this year a bit later.  I’d asked for an iSi soda siphon and instead they gave me a SodaStream after doing some research online.

The SodaStream works by carbonating clean, cold water – and that’s it.  You can pick how carbonated it is by pushing a button on top.  After it’s carbonated (in the provided 1 liter bottles) you add concentrate to make it flavored.  Included was a sample pack of flavors – I found most of them pretty darn close, and pretty tasty, to their equivalents.  I will probably buy more of their diet cola and energy drink versions.

They make a tonic water but it didn’t come with that, so my big complaint is this: to buy it in a store, I have to go to freaking SPRINGFIELD to some store I’d never heard of before (Boater’s World?!) to buy it!  Even though Williams Sonoma (of which there are a GAZILLION near me in places I’d rather go than SPRINGFIELD) carries the CO2 tanks, they don’t carry the mix!

STU-PID.

I’ll probably just end up ordering some cichona bark online and making my own tonic syrup starting with Jeffrey Morgenthaler‘s recipe.  I’m going to end up a member of the Cult of Morgenthaler or something.

Of course, researching that today got me looking into making some of Jamie Boudreau‘s amer picon recipe, too…