MxMo LXVI: Bein' Green

                                                      

This month's Mixology Monday theme, brought to us by the Wordsmithing Pantagruel blog, is the color green. Left open to interpretation, as long as "green" is featured, it sounded too fun to pass up.

Patong is reputed to be the party beach destination in, already famous for it's beaches, Phuket, Thailand. So when I decided to go with a Thai flavor theme for my drink, it seemed an ideal namesake. I'm an amatuer at creating drinks but I was pretty happy with the result. The W&N speaks loudly in this one but I like it so it worked for me. I had this image in my head of some guy in a small Thai village mixing this up with his homemade hooch and I imagined that hooch wouldn't be at all subtle so I wanted something that demanded attention without hiding everything else. I think I got that. The problem with being pretty new at this creating thing is confidence. I always wish I had a critique from someone with more experience before going public. But I didn't, so here it is...

Patong Swizzle
1 1/2 oz Wray & Nephew overproof rum
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
3/4 oz Thai syrup*
1/2 oz unsweetened pineapple juice

Swizzle with crushed ice, top with more crushed ice.

*Thai syrup
1 cup coconut water
2 stalks lemon grass, trimmed, sliced and crushed
4 kaffir lime leaves
1/2" piece fresh ginger, chopped
1 slice from a hot green chile
4 fresh mint leaves
4 fresh basil leaves
6 fresh cilantro leaves
sugar

Heat coconut water, lemongrass, lime leaves, ginger and chile at a slow simmer for ~5 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and infuse for ~20 minutes. Blanch herbs in boiling water for ~10 seconds, shock in ice water and add to coconut water. Blitz everything with a stick blender and strain (I strained through a medium strainer, squeezed the liquid from the pulp through then strained it through a fine strainer). Measure the liquid and dissolve in an equal amount of sugar.

TGRWT #22: Raisin

After a long vacation, TGRWT is back! The theme is raisin and there's a new twist to this round... no second ingredient given. Instead, we've been encouraged to use the foodpairing site to find our own pairings. I went with bacon, apple and walnut for the pairing ingredients and, since my usual inclination is to think sweet, with raisin making that an even easier choice, I decided to go savory with the dish.



fried bacon
60 g egg whites
340 g cold soda water
162 g flour
18 g crisp coat (you can omit this and use 180 g flour)

Cook bacon strips until lightly browned but not crisp, drain on paper towels. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Combine the flour and crisp coat. Whisk the water into the flour mixture and fold in the egg whites. Very lightly coat the bacon strips in the batter and fry in 375 F oil until golden brown and crisp. Drain on a rack.

pickled raisins
150 g raisins
115 g cider vinegar
115 g water
50 g sugar
5 g salt
1/2 jalapeno, minced (I used a ripe red jalapeno for color)
1 clove garlic, minced
2 g mustard seeds
small sprig fresh thyme

Heat everything to boiling, simmer briefly, cool and store in the fridge for at least 8 hours.

toasted walnuts
Chop walnuts, lightly toast them in an oven or hot pan, toss with roasted walnut oil and smoked salt.

apple butter
apples
brown sugar
cinnamon
nutmeg
cloves
salt
vanilla extract

I didn't bother with measurements for this one, just kinda winged it and adjusted to taste about halfway through the cooking. I put everything except the vanilla in a slow cooker, cooked it on high for a couple hours stirring now and then, set the cooker to low and let it go with occasional stirring for about 10 hours. I then pureed it with a stick blender, bumped the cooker back to high and cooked it with the lid off for a while to thicken. I added the vanilla at the end and put it in the fridge to chill.

Ultra-Sperse 3
fresh thyme
cracked black pepper

Whisk Ultra-Sperse into some of the apple butter. (I do this to keep any liquid from seperating out on the plate and to help it hold it's shape better, it's completely optional. I'd give a measurement but I didn't measure, I just looked for the texture I wanted.) Put a strip or two of the warm bacon on a plate. Garnish with drained pickled raisins with some of the garlic and jalapeno, toasted walnuts, a few dollops of apple butter, fresh thyme leaves and cracked black pepper.

Verdict: In my opinion, a tasty and well balanced dish. Perfect? Of course not. But I was very happy with the result for a first-round untested idea. It was no great stretch to imagine raisin, bacon, walnut and apple tasting good together so I tried to put a little imagination into how I used those ingredients to maintain some of the spirit of TGRWTs past where the pairings were not always easy to picture working well together.

Would I cook it again? Absolutely. A future rendition would probably include a little more heat, the jalapeno I used was a bit on the tame side, and more thought put into the plating but I was pretty happy with the result overall.

Caribbean Corpse Reviver

Good stuff! Found this one on one of my daily pilgrimages to the temple of cocktail exploration, the Cocktail Virgin Slut blog. Click here to learn more about it and check out the recipe.

Eeyore's Requiem

Toby Maloney's ode to the donkey with the blues is one of my favorite drinks. Pleasantly bitter, just like it's namesake, with Cynar tying in the thistles he loves (as long as they're not broken). The recipe I had when I first tried this called for 2 oz Campari and no gin but all of the more recent versions I've seen are as below. It's tasty either way in my opinion.



1 1/2 oz Campari
1 oz Martini Bianco vermouth (the recipe calls for Dolin but that's not available where I live)
1/2 oz Tanqueray gin
1/2 oz Cynar
1/4 oz Fernet Branca
15 drops orange bitters (I used Twisted & Bitter)

Stir with ice, strain into glass, twist 3 pieces orange peel over glass.

Nelson's Blood

The recipe...

2 oz dark rum
1/4 lemon, squeezed
1/4 orange, squeezed
1/4 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz blood orange juice
1/4 oz brandy
1/4 oz falernum
2 oz ginger beer


What I did...

2 oz Doorly's XO rum
3/4 oz blood orange juice
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz E&J VSOP brandy
1/4 oz falernum
2 oz ginger beer

So basically I just went with all blood orange, which isn't specified in the recipe, because that made more sense to me than squeezing a little juice out of two oranges. Correct or not, it was tasty.

MxMo LXIV February 20, 2012: Tiki!

This is my first time participating in an MxMo event but I've followed many of them and I hope it won't be my last time joining in. This month's round is brought to us by Doug Winship at the Pegu blog and the theme is tiki.

"Cracking Jenny's teacup" is said to be pirate-speak for a night spent in a house of ill repute. True or not, it's easy to imagine it being tossed about on the boat after a night ashore... so I went with it. This is my first serious attempt at creating a drink so I hope I haven't angered the tiki gods or (perhaps worse) the tiki faithful. I suspect the tea aspect may be taking liberties so toss me in the volcano bowl to appease them if necessary.



Crackin' Jenny's Teacup

1 oz Kraken Black Spiced rum
1 oz Appleton Estate Extra rum
3/4 oz lime juice
3/4 oz tea syrup (1:1 strong black tea and sugar)
1/2 oz pineapple juice
1/4 oz ginger syrup (1:1 syrup infused with fresh ginger)
1 dash roasted pineapple bitters
1 dash chai tea bitters

Shake with ice, strain over crushed ice.

The roasted pineapple and chai tea bitters are from the Canadian company House Made. A cottage business and I don't know if they're interested in growing larger but the bitters are really nice. I used them mainly to reinforce the pineapple and tea in the drink and to enhance the spice notes from the Kraken. Also, as is evident in the picture, I have a lot to learn about garnish but I had fun and enjoyed the result.

Anyway, if you try it, or even if you don't, let me know what you think. I have a lot to learn about creating drinks and feedback from those who know what they're doing is one of the best tools I can think of for helping with that.

Wake up time.

I admit it, I'm a horrible blogger. I put this blog to bed a long time ago due to lack of content and updates. I'll go ahead and state for the record that that's probably not going to change much. The posts will probably be few and far between and very unlikely to be seen by anybody. That's okay, I can live with that.

The truth is, sometimes I need this as a vehicle for other things I want to do. Participating in online food and, hopefully for the future, drink challenges is something I enjoy. Those challenges usually require some way of providing access to what you do to those who are participating and this blog is a way of providing that access. There will almost certainly be posts not related to online challenges when there's something I want to share but they are not likely to appear often enough to sustain any sort of interest.

In case this sounds like I'm saying "get off my lawn", I'm not. I enjoy the world of sharing made possible by the internet. I just don't want to give any false impressions that this is ever going to be a fountain of entertainment. That said, glad you stopped by...