From Rio with Love and Cachaça Cherries

Squeaking this one in on a Sunday to officially have a Cachaça Week here on Feu de Vie (check out Tuesday's rye-cachaça Chimaera for the other entry in the festivities). This was a recipe I originally developed last summer and it was good enough that it was worth publishing for this year's cherry season.

Is it just me or have you dear reader also had difficulty finding a good, simple DIY cocktail cherry recipe? Don't get me wrong, there are several good recipes out there - I've tried Dr. Adam's recipe with good results, for instance - but many have a level of culinary process involved that can daunt one from even starting. And sometimes you really need cocktail cherries, STAT.

So with the criteria in mind of good-but-simple I came across this recipe from Michael Dietsch over at Serious Eats, with a notable openness to variation. (and seriously, go check out the crew over at Serious Eats in general if you haven't already. In particular, Mr. Dietsch is a master of Shrubs and Marcia Simmons has a slew of great DIY cocktail anything recipes)

3 jars of cocktail cherries (brandied, sherried - yes, sherry cherries - and cachaça) and an hour or so later, I was a happy camper. Sherried cherries I may write-up at another point, but I noticed recently the more-unique cachaça cherries have been cropping up in my recipes, so deserved a decent write-up.

Ever come across a white spirit cocktail recipe that calls for a cherry garnish? Kinda rare, to be honest -  red cherry juice could spoil an otherwise clean-pure cocktail, and who wants baking spice flavors coupling with grass notes or green herbs for that matter? But what if the latter weren't necessarily so, and you didn't have to rely on cherries' seasonality to get a fresh flavor?

Enter cachaça cherries, bursting with a fresh bite and brio, perfect for white bases such as tequila, cane spirits, and even gin.

Cachaça Cherries  

(adapted from a recipe for 1lb cherries, down to 6oz (weight) cherries, then scaled back to up to 1lb cherries)
1 pound cherries
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 cup cherry juice or water
1 cup white cachaça*
pinch salt
1 1/2 to 2 sprigs fresh or 1 1/2 tsp dried peppermint
3 T julienned ginger
zest of half a large lime (strips)

*if lacking cachaça proper, try using a white rhum agricole or even Batavia arrack.

The instructions are effectively the same as the original brandied cherries recipe I used (gently heat sugar, juice/water, salt until dissolved; add spirit; bathe cherries in warm spirit-syrup and bottle).

Because fresh ingredients are being used, I wouldn't add these when preparing the syrup itself, as heat will diminish the flavor. Instead, layer these in the jar amid the cherries and pour the warm spirit-syrup over top. Then seal the jar and shake to ensure thorough syrup-coverage over the cherries.

I strongly urge using fresh peppermint (maybe half a sprig per 8-12oz jar). It's less messy and profoundly more robust/green a flavor than dried. Dried will work though, if you don't have access to fresh; this you would want to infuse in the syrup as you're cooking it, but be sure to strain it out prior to adding to the cherries.

The brandied cherries recipe indicates that the cherries will be ready for use after an overnight in the fridge, and it's true that the flavor transfer does happen in that short a time frame. But I encourage longer resting (perhaps a week, initially) for deeper balanced flavors (peppermint + cherry + cachaça = dark chocolate) and a more thorough curing. How long do they last? I'm still working through my summer 2014 batch, and they're still pretty decent.

The above seasonings are good for a fresher, brighter take on the cocktail cherry, though if you're looking for some darker notes to anchor, a fresh chopped rosemary needle or two (literally, needles, not a whole sprig - it's way too powerful infusing over the long term otherwise) or a small bit of sage leaf or cacao nib might not be untoward.


To take these cherries for a spin, try out this little ditty, that not only treats you to three juicy flavorful cachaça cherries, but a bit of the jar syrup as well.

From Rio with Love

1 1/2 oz white cachaça (Pitu)

1 oz dry vermouth

1/2 oz Strega

1/2 oz lime juice

1 dash lemon bitters

dash or two of cachaça cherry syrup

3 skewered cachaça cherries for garnish

Shake. Strain. Garnish. 

Turn in the appropriate directions and salute Brazil; Campania, Italy; 

and NOLA where the maestro of Strega cocktails plies his trade.

Briny citrus with a hint of herbs, saffron and spirit-swiss chocolate funk on the nose.
Cachaça brine, lime-activated sweetness influenced by peppermint-juniper then chocolate, but still crisp on the tongue. A bite of cherry warms and fills the mouth, spiced by mint.

A sweetheart of a cocktail

Not Quite Mixology Monday, April 2015: Drink of Shame

Hi everybody! The grand catch-up continues with my entry for last month's Mixology Monday event (gotta get it out before today's deadline for May's event, natch!).

For the month of April, our host was Whitney of Tipicular Fixins, a lass with a creative bent and sensibility for far-ranging ingredients after my own heart - go check her out (especially the Ikea lingonberry post)! She brings us a theme that's a recipe for searching out the deep dark parts of our cocktail psyche (bring Q-tips!): Drink of Shame!

So, you’re a certified, mixologist, craft-tender, bar chef or fine spirit enthusiast...now.

But, there was a time when you only ordered Long Island Iced Tea. Or, maybe you always made the Jello shots for your frat? Perhaps you’re the reason that your local had an Island Oasis machine for so long? Rye & Ginger? Vodka Seven? Someone was ordering these things. Your street cred would be ruined if you ordered or (gasp) served one now, but don’t you miss it, just a little?

Wouldn't you love to have one more Jolly Rancher? A chance to drink a mudslide without shame? We all made questionable drink choices in our past, the popular drinks from 1970 to the year 2000 were a cheap, sugary mess. Now is the time to resurrect your favourite drink from the time before modern Mixology. Give a new life to the drink you had to put down after you had your first real cocktail.

This is the remix.

Maybe you need to use fresh ingredients, or you can try elevating the spirits. Make everything from scratch or remove an offending ingredient. Do whatever you can to bring back and legitimize a drink you used to love.

Check out last month's round-up post here, along with the transformative magic at work from all the participants!



Y'know? For the life of me, I struggled to even remember a trashy recipe I had more than once (and that's not just because of the blackouts they induced). No, I remember the Cerebral Hemorrhage and the What She's Having and (ha!) the Angel's Tit (the crusty old bartender at the brewpub went wild, swinging his towel around when he heard that order - that was actually in a recipe book they had, natch). But my motto back then was (and largely still is except for certain classics) "never have the same drink twice." And with all the recipes I was finding on drinksmixer.com (don't click, avoid the potential viruses) and writing down on business cards I'd never otherwise use so I could have them at the ready for bartenders, I had too big a world to explore not to.

Our drink, nearly finished, with my old
Incredible Hulk/Chuck Norris recipe card.

But there is one recipe I do remember quite well and maybe even had a couple of times, both at home and out when I could find a place that kept Hpnotiq in-house (yes, we're going there, today): the Incredible Hulk. Real simple: drizzle an equal part bright sky-blue Hpnotiq over cognac on ice, letting the drink morph into a radioactive green mess - bing! There's your Hulk. (although if you add a shot of Johnnie Walker Red from there, the Incredible Hulk gets angry and morphs into Chuck Norris! I never had a Chuck Norris.)

The Hpnotiq was good while it lasted, both for the Hulk and other brand-proprietary recipes (and my own bright violet Fairy Princess made with pink Kinky liqueur and vanilla vodka - see what my early editorial discretion saved you folks?). But I finished that bottle off in my early days of getting serious and haven't looked back. Until now.

Looking at the recipe, the cognac was never the issue, just the crayon-colored industrial sugar and acid bomb that was Hpnotiq. How much actual cognac they used and what their definition of "premium" is, we'll never know. Nor do we know the exact flavor profile other than "vaguely tropical with a heaping helping of passionfruit esters" according to its brand competition with blue Alize (don't get me started on the Alizes..). Ahhh...but tropical, that's something we can work with, especially if it involves approximating a flavor with a stack of ingredients.

Bruce Banner's ditched his plane somewhere in Fiji and taken up with a hula maid down in a little tiki hut by the sea. I give you the Tiki-fied...

The Beachcomber Hulk
1 1/2 oz cognac
3/4 oz Batavia arrack
3/8 oz passionfruit syrup
1/4 oz blue curaçao
1/4 oz lemon juice
1 dash orgeat
1 dash vanilla bitters
1 slice starfruit
Mint and cherry for garnish

Fill a rocks glass with pellet or slightly-larger-than-pellet ice.

Muddle the starfruit in a shaker along with everything but the cognac and garnish. Shake with 1 small ice cube to agitate with minimal dilution.

Add the cognac to the rocks glass and then drizzle the blue mixture over top, letting it sink down to turn the drink green.

Give a little stir and garnish.

Secret of the Ooze

Passionfruit and blue flavors, anchored by the wondrous funk of arrack, a light lemon acid edge not generated by a dumptruck of sugar, based on able illuminous cognac. Avec un certain je ne sais quoi.

So I gave the blue mix a good initial eyeball for ingredients -- how was I supposed to know it'd smell exactly like Hpnotiq? Incroyable! Who says you have to stick to the model of a cognac/vodka base? Batavia arrack is infinitely more interesting, and at 100 proof a lot more Hulk-like. The starfruit extends the tropical flavors and brings some good mild freshness as well, though you might want to play around with other tropical fruits too.

I know the pics show one large rock instead of small ice - that was a misstep for the initial version, however much the flavor was spot-on. You want something that will bring a good dilution and balance without also over-diluting. Otherwise, go to town!

Thanks to Whitney for hosting a fun theme and to Fred for wrangling as ever.

Stay tuned, dear reader - this very eve is another Mixology Monday - and this time I've got the time, the recipe and the name already in place.

Mixology Monday, September 2013: SMOKE

Rock on! It's Mixology Monday! [cue the theme song!]

This month's edition is hosted by Elana of the très très chic Stir and Strain (seriously, it's like My Little Ponies dancing on your eyeballs in the best way possible - do go check out her marvelous and beautiful creations!). The theme? Ideal-for-the-season (and a great companion piece to last month's theme) SMOKE.

From the announcement post:

They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire– it isn’t necessarily true if we’re down to the smoldering embers, but, well, they say it anyway. In our case, where there was fire, now there’s smoke, and it’s time to stoke your enthusiasm for the next challenge.

Smoke has been everywhere this past year, from liquors to lemonades, to the hills here in Southern California(!); smoke in its many forms has been front page news.

For me, smoke is also a transitional element: it symbolizes the last summer bonfires, sitting around the fire pit making s’mores, and the start of the fragrant crackles from the fireplace announcing that fall is coming.

For September’s theme, I’d like to see how you interpret smoke. With your liquor or ingredients? Your glassware? Will you whip out a chemistry set to transform your cocktail into ghostly vapors? Do you own a home smoker, still in the box, that’s never been used? Well then, you’re welcome. Unpack those ideas and let’s set off a couple smoke alarms this month for MxMo.

When active, this link will send you to the summary post of this month's festivities.


This is a recipe I've had in the back of my mind since about May or so, when I first discovered fresh oregano. I quickly learned the herb is generally better-used dried - you won't get as much flavor as you might like if you muddle it fresh in a drink. So, with that little ditty on the backburner, when the Smoke theme came up the idea and image of oregano smoke sparked renewed interest ('cause dried oregano infused into spirits seemed more spaghetti western than straight western, knowwhatImean?).

But why stop at oregano smoke? I had also considered doing another western-y sage smoke cocktail, but the ingredients for that one are still out of sight in the ether... Oregano's all well and good, but what about some sage too? And maybe some homemade dried bitter orange zest for balance? And some wormwood while we're at it.. And and and...

How about Vermouth Smoke?

Originally dubbed The Melancholy Heart of the Ancient Desert, maybe something a touch less dramatic was in order for all the mixed herbals involved. Elana's one to post a song of the day on Twitter, and I've started doing a once-monthly #FridayMuse series beginning with MxMo hosting duties last month, so a song seemed in order. I had thought to perhaps name the sage smoke cocktail after a similar-themed song, Horse with No Name by America, but that name was already claimed. Second best, The Distance by Live, off one of my favorite albums The Distance to Here, also worked well. The transformative smoke fit just right with the message.

Let's go to the recipe:

The Distance

1 oz Buffalo Trace bourbon

1 oz añejo tequila

3/4 oz tawny port

vermouth smoke (recipe below)

1 small sprig oregano planted in a bourbon cherry for garnish

Stir the first 3 ingredients on ice.

On the lightest heat possible, gently heat the vermouth smoke tea in a tin pie plate or similar on the stove or hot plate. Collect vermouth tea fumes (even lighter than regular smoke - you want to avoid char scent and flavor in favor of the vaporized essences of the herbs you use) in a jar for several minutes. AVOID IMPATIENCE, YOU'LL MESS IT UP.

Strain the cocktail into your smoke container, swirling for 15 seconds or so.

Immediately pour into chilled cocktail glass.

Add garnish.



Notes:

• This is one of those cocktails that turned out almost-right the first go-around (a 1/4oz less port and it was just right). The original mix prior to the smoke is pretty good itself: buttery toffee, agave and warm bourbon, with port's depth. The Distance starts a little jumbled as the smoke integrates itself, but as you get into your sips, the alchemy takes over. It's difficult to say when you get beyond the initial nose, but shortly after you find a sip on your palate you swear was either vermouth or a cocktail made with vermouth. The vanillas in the barrel-aged spirits and the bit of cherry from the garnish add to the impression, but so do the herbs and the orange zest too. It seems a deeper sort of flavor melding than even, say, the emergent-unique-flavor of a Manhattan, probably because of how the smoke binds it all together into something new. As a bonus, the nature of smoke itself dries the cocktail out, and the slight bitterness of the herbs negates a need for a dash of bitters. (any herbals would get in the way of the smoke effect, frankly)
• I would avoid a Smoking Gun here because that would require actually burning the tea - it's great for various types of wood smoke, but would blunt more delicate aromatics.
• There's something wonderfully westernly world-weary about Buffalo Trace - it's like bourbon imbued with the dry dust on the hooves of its mascot. If you've got a bourbon like that, by all means, but otherwise I recommend this particular one. I used Don Julio añejo and Sandeman tawny port, but use as your preferences and availability allow (though a nice black pepper note on the port would be quite good here).

Vermouth Smoke Tea
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried sage
1/4 tsp coriander seeds
10 dried rosemary needles
1 petal star anise
1 nickel-sized (1.5 cm diameter) piece of dried bitter/sour/Seville orange zest, chopped
1 small pinch dried wormwood
1 small pinch dried centaury

Grind all into a tea with a mortar and pestle.
By all means, omit wormwood if wary of it.

Cheers to Elana for a delicious theme and for hosting, and to Fred of cocktail virgin slut for the cat (and possibly marsupial)-herding!

Rudolph Steps Out & Maccabee Sling

It's company holiday party time, and as resident Cocktail Girl I've been asked to whip up a few recipes with some bare requirements: a Christmas cocktail with red and green colors, and a Hanukkah cocktail with blue and white colors. In addition, we were pairing drinks with the beginning of a lovely multi-course Italian meal at a local culinary school, so I wanted to include Italian spirits and elements where possible. Here's what I wound up doing.

Rudolph Steps Out
1 oz bourbon (Elijah Craig 12 year)
1 oz sweet vermouth (Martini & Rossi)
7/8 oz Ramazzotti
1/8 oz (barspoon) Solerno
bourbon cherry skewered on rosemary sprig*

Stir ingredients on ice and strain into a(n ideally chilled) cocktail glass. Garnish with a bourbon cherry skewered on a rosemary sprig. Bonus points if garnish is twisted reindeerly and Rudolphly.

*bourbon cherry a modified take on Dr. Adam Elmegirab's cocktail cherries, using Buffalo Trace and subbing half an orange's zest for vanilla bean

I originally wanted to use Cynar instead of Ramazzotti in the drink because in coordinating with dinner there were several earthy rustic-style options, including some artichokes in the appetizer course. Trying to think to my audience, however, Cynar has a particular long bitter finish, which, while good as an aperitif function, might not agree with the audience (also, that drink veers very close to a Colonel Carpano). I've had Ramazzotti on my to-get list for awhile now, so testing was a great excuse to bring it into the fold. Ramazzotti's bitter/sweet ratio is on par with Averna and the gentian similarly stands out among its bittering agents, but I like how its famed cola flavor comes through. Some would say it's more root beer/citrus, but while I do get root-i-ness, it's, well, less dour than Averna. That cola note (and, if we're getting highly aesthetic, the red and white label coloring -- and the word "cola" with its rounded shapes evoking images of red glass ball Christmas tree ornaments) just has a friendly let's-get-down-and-boogie feel to it that finishes a sip on par with the bourbon and vermouth, perfect for a holiday party.

So overall, this is a Boulevardier variation, along the lines of my Doe's Path. Solerno is the orange liqueur here - opulent, regal, ornament-invoking. Along with the green rosemary, red cherry and general red tint of the cocktail, this fit the Christmas criteria


Maccabee Sling
1 oz Magellan gin
1/2 oz honey-ginger-lemon sour mix
top with prosecco (about 3 oz)
Fuji apple garnish

Shake gin and sour mix with ice, strain into a champagne flute and top with prosecco. Garnish with Fuji apple cutout or sliver.

While not a "sling" cocktail per se (more of a champagne cocktail), the Maccabee Sling riffs on the French 75 using classic Jewish flavors apple and honey. With this drink I wanted a lighter and drier cocktail to provide variety up against ol' Rudolph up above. Magellan gin is a French-style gin that utilizes orris root and blue iris flowers during its final distillation, rendering the gin a pale sky blue (if unavailable, substitute Citadelle gin and a smidge blue food coloring). To add white to the equation: delicate-flavored Fuji apple. The apple along with the ginger-honey add hints of flavor around the edges but not as to dampen the gin's multitudinous aromatics.

Honey-Ginger-Lemon sour mix
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup honey (a lighter honey helps the cocktail remain gin-forward)
1/2 tsp powdered ginger (McCormick has a new interesting roasted ginger powder out at the moment)
1 cup lemon juice

Blend water, honey, ginger in a pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Immediately strain through a coffee filter into a container to cool. Refrigerate until ready to use. Blend syrup half-and-half with fresh-squeezed lemon juice just before cocktailing.

Virginia Sakura

[Update, 03-20-2013: Call it a rookie mistake, explicitly naming a cocktail with a brand name (without so much as asking). I was delving into my love of bourbon by exploring the different brands available --including Jefferson's-- and, as you might expect, with love comes inspiration. With this particular bourbon I noticed an interesting swiss chocolate note that truly reminded me of cherry blossom trees for some reason, so I wanted to play that up in a cocktail, deliberately skirting actual cherry flavor in favor of the "everything else" of the tree. When it came time to name the cocktail, well, if you google, you'll see scads of recipes with "cherry blossom" in their name (which miffs me because they tend to have a straight cherry flavor: cherry blossoms don't taste like cherries, cherries do!). Given my focus on Jefferson's Bourbon, all other potential names tended to fall short of "Jefferson's Cherry Blossom", noodle on this though I did.

I've stuck with this name for about 9 months now (not so comfortably), and I think it's overdue for a fix for the longer term. Recently I've received some feedback on the recipe using a different bourbon (Bowman's), and it sounds like it turned out quite well with the substitution: "etherealized bourbon" summed up the impression. I imagine any classic/not-too-spicy profile bourbon would also work well in the cocktail. This recipe/post's link has to remain "Jefferson's Cherry Blossom" due to Blogger's set-up (all previous links will continue to function, natch), but given the cocktail seems to hold up with substitutions and I still have on my mind the third president and the Washington D.C. cherry blossoms of my youth, it shall henceforth be called Virginia Sakura.]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ..." 
- Declaration of Independence, authored by Thomas Jefferson

Virginia Sakura

2 1/4 oz  Bourbon (Jefferson's)

1/2 oz Umeshu (plum sake - I used Choya)

1 tsp Maraschino liqueur

5 drops Bittercube cherry bark vanilla bitters
Cherry-Mint blossom garnish


Stir liquid ingredients on ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass in which the garnish is already placed.

To prepare the garnish:

1. Take a preserved cherry (ideally a Luxardo or homemade maraschino cherry, or a homemade bourbon cherry), remove the stem, and with a paring knife cut 5 roughly equal-sized "petals" while being careful not to cut all the way through the base - it needs to hold together.
2. Select a mint sprig with tiny just-starting leaves at the very top and second-level leaves just larger than your cherry - break off the sprig just under those second-level leaves. With your cut cherry, gently roll and poke the baby leaves through the hole at the cherry base, leaving the second-level leaves to flutter prettily in the breeze behind the cherry.
3. If the garnish is a tad bit juicy, that's perfectly all right. A few cherry-flavored drops will round the drink out nicely.

MoD's Cachaça Old Fashioned

 

Yes it's pink. How un-manly, I know. But watch it get 20 repins on Pinterest in 5 minutes!

A simple one for this week. It just so happens to turn sugar-plum-colored thanks to a stray drop or two of cherry juice, which really makes it a perfect birthday treat.

I want to do a cute equation line here involving 51 cachaça and me turning 31, but, math major that I am, I'm drawing a blank. Heh...if only it could help me score..


MoD's Cachaça Old Fashioned

2 oz cachaça (Pirassununga 51)
3/4 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp water
2 dashes cherry bitters (Fee Bros.)
1 dash orange bitters (Fee Bros.)
Cherry garnish (I used Bada Bing, but anything other than maraschino should do well, particularly fresh)

Stir/muddle sugar and water in your serving glass until dissolved. Add bitters either during or after this, depending on if the sugar-dissolution needs some help. Add 2-3 regular-sized ice cubes that you'd make at home, or equivalent. Add cachaça. Stir until ice is dissolved and drink chilled. Add King Cube and cherry garnish.


Notes:

For a cocktail like the Old Fashioned, your mileage may vary (as well as your taste), so please, freestyle at will. I find, for every 1/4 tsp sugar, a dash of bitters balances well - you may want more.

My overall intent was to use the flavor (not just the sweetness) of the sugar, plus the cherry bitters and the minimalist style, to bring out that dark chocolate note in the cachaça*. The cherry bitters, in my opinion, are non-negotiable. Party-in-your-mouth Regan's No. 6 could be a fun orange bitters sub, but it depends on how dominant you want that flavor to be. I find Fee's orange bitters add a faint bitter orange glace - emphasis on the bitter - while preserving the underlying flavors. Old Fashioned/Angostura bitters would also work nicely here with the cherry and/or orange.

*I would go so far as to cite Costa Rican dark chocolate. Find a single-source bar and see what I mean.