Category: food

Cocktail of the Week: Honeydew Margarita

2014-09-21 19.04.14

Have you noticed anything different at your local grocery store? Specifically, in the produce aisle? Most of the stone fruit is gone, as is the citrus, and there are now a lot of apples and pears and if you were lucky for about a two-three week span the place was overrun with melons. So many melons! Watermelons, cantaloupes, honeydews, casabas, muskmelons! We have a friend who had been growing their own melons in a private garden plot and had more than he could handle himself and so gifted us some. More than we could normally eat before they went bad and so D and I went looking for alternative uses for melons. Cocktails immediately came to mind, and that is how this post ended up here today.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Honeydew Margarita

  • 2 ounces honeydew juice
  • 1 1/2 oz tequila
  • 1 oz fresh lime juice

Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake. Strain over ice into glasses with either a salt or sugar rim (I used a mixture of sugar and chili powder to rim these glasses.)

2014-09-21 19.04.00

Wow! Wow! Wow! I’m a big fan of honeydew on it’s own but mix it with some tequila and lime juice and you’ve got yourself an amazing cocktail. The Honeydew takes center stage making the margarita sweet with only a hint of sour provided by the lime and almost no alcohol taste. Really refreshing. I’m sad I only found out about these now as there won’t be any melons in the fall or winter and margaritas aren’t really seasonal or appropriate again until spring… If you do happen to find a honeydew in the supermarket in the next couple of days though, grab it!

Cocktail of the Week: Blue Mule

2014-09-18 21.10.07

I needed an excuse for using my copper mugs so I poked around on the internet for ideas and tweaks of the Moscow Mule. I saw this blueberry syrup on something and thought it’d be neat to try in a Moscow Mule. So, I bought some blueberries cooked them down and strained them into a syrup and then I made some Mules! I called it a Blue Mule because that seemed the easiest, my first inclination was to call it a Mule of a Different Color but I don’t know how I feel about putting Wizard of Oz references into my drinks…

The ingredients
The ingredients

Blue Mule

  • 1 oz vodka
  • 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
  • 1 cup Ginger beer
  • 1/2 oz – 1 oz. blueberry syrup

Pour vodka, lime juice, and ginger beer into copper cup and stir. Add crushed ice to top of cup. Pour a small amount of blueberry syrup on top and stir again. Garnish with a lime wedge and blueberries.

2014-09-18 21.10.00

Wow! This was a good idea! To get the perfect blend of blueberry, lime and ginger you might have to play with the proportions some but it’s worth it! Also, you can adjust those three ingredients depending on which flavors you want to be strong or subtle. I put in a little bit more lime juice than 1/2 oz and a 1 oz of blueberry syrup and I thought it was just about perfect though. If you need a recipe for making blueberry syrup I’ve included one below.

2014-09-18 21.12.32

 

Blueberry Syrup

  • 1 cup fresh blueberries
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1/4 cup water

Combine all into a small pot and bring to a boil for five minutes. Then lower temperature and simmer for another ten. Stir throughout or else you’re going to have a burned pot. Using a strainer or cheesecloth strain over a bowl and then cool.

Cocktail of the Week: Simple Whiskey Sour

2014-08-16 17.44.34

I’m starting to see a lot of fruit on the citrus trees around town. I’m considering making a map of Davis that highlights all the best spots to glean fruit from people’s yards. All the oranges, limes, and lemons got me thinking about sours. And I had all this whiskey lying around…

The ingredients (minus powdered sugar)
The ingredients (minus powdered sugar)

Simple Whiskey Sour

  • 1 1/2 oz. Whiskey
  • 2 lemons
  • 1 lime
  • 2 tsp powdered sugar

Juice lemon and lime. Combine whiskey, juice, and powdered sugar in a shaker full of ice. Shake. Strain into a old fashioned glass. garnish with lemon wedge or wheel.

2014-08-16 17.44.14

This is not a real whiskey sour, as it lacks egg white and cheats on the simple syrup part. I don’t know if I had a pair of really strong lemons or I didn’t add enough powdered sugar but my drink was sour. Really, really sour. I was unprepared for the sour. Definitely made pucker faces while drinking it. That isn’t to say it wasn’t good, just to say that bar made whiskey sours are a sad, sad, imitation of the almost real thing. Future whiskey sours will probably have a little more sugar in them.

 

Cocktail of the Week: Pimm’s Cup

2014-08-09 19.12.56

I don’t know where I first heard of a Pimm’s Cup. It’s really starting to bother me… I’m not British and I don’t have any British friends, so, I don’t know why it would have come up in random discussion. I’ve never heard anyone order it at a bar. I’ve never even seen a bottle of Pimm’s until today when I decided to hunt one down. Maybe it was somewhere on the internet? Or in one of my cocktail books or magazines… Anyway, somehow I knew about them and somehow I also knew that they’re fairly standard drinking fare for the summertime in Great Britain. You’d think that the land of tea would have stumbled upon bourbon sweet tea, but I guess not… I had to visit three different stores but I finally located a place that not only knew what I was talking about but also carried the product. I picked it up and, well, you’ll see.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Pimm’s Cup

  • 2 oz. Pimm’s No. 1
  • 1/4 oz. fresh lemon juice
  • Ginger Ale

Fill a highball glass with ice. Pour in Pimm’s and lemon juice. Top with ginger ale and garnish with thin cucumber slice if desired.

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So, really simply, right? Pimm’s No.1, lemon juice, and ginger ale. There are recipes on-line that have a bunch of fruit and mint in them or require two or three types of liquor. I ignored all of those recipes and went with a simpler one that seems closer to what your average bloke would make for themselves at home. It also happens to be really close to the recipe printed on the bottle itself.

What to say about the Pimm’s Cup? It is refreshing. Reminds me a little of a lemonhead candy? I think it has something to do with the herbs used in Pimm’s? Something about the taste reminds me of candy for some reason.  In the future I think I’d swap out the lemon juice for orange juice and probably up the amount to an ounce or 1/2 an ounce.  The cucumber garnish also doesn’t add anything, easier to just use the orange or lemon you squeezed as a garnish.

It was good though! And I can certainly understand why its so popular! If I didn’t already have bourbon sweet tea I could see myself drinking a lot more of these. I suppose if I ever get too lazy to brew tea…

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