Cocktail #51: Marlin

As I've said before, I'm a sucker for blue drinks. They can be so striking and so kitschy (and in my view, delicious), that I really enjoy one every so often.

I came across this recipe in Jeff Berry's Intoxica! and it immediately appealed to me - the drink includes blue curacao, a good dose of citrus, and marachino liqueur - sounded right up my alley. Berry credits this modern era drink recipe to Clancy Carroll, a Milwaukee-based music journalist. Here's how to make one:

0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. fresh lemon juice
0.50 oz. orgeat
0.50 oz. maraschino liqueur
0.50 oz. blue curacao
1.00 oz. Martinique rum (I used the closest I had on hand - a rhum Barbancourt from Haiti)
1.00 oz. light Puerto Rican rum (again - closest I had on hand was Plantation 3 Star).

Shake with ice cubes and strain into an old fashioned glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with green and red maraschino cherries skewered on a marlin swizzle stick.

Given the title of this blog, I added a couple extra flourishes as garnishes - a pineapple wedge and drink umbrella. The marlin swizzle sticks are, of course, available on Amazon, and they are even made in the USA.

To me, the flavor that came through the most with this cocktail was the maraschino liqueur, followed closely by the lemon and lime juices; the rums somewhat took a backseat. When I make this again, I would cut back the maraschino by maybe .25 oz. and also maybe knock .25 oz. of lemon juice off as well, to cut down on the pucker factor. But even so, this drink went down easily, and was immensely pleasurable, especially on a warm July day.

 

Well, one more cocktail to go! Stay tuned for when I end this little project next week with my final drink of the 52. Thanks for reading!

Given the name of this drink, I'll leave you with this clip from the film version of the classic Hemingway story, The Old Man and the Sea.

Cocktail #32: Juan Ho Royale

I'm a sucker for blue drinks, I admit it.

Blue curacao has such a bad rap in some exotic cocktail circles. And probably for good reason - it conjures images of really crummy, watered down, artificial drinks you might see served on a cruise or at a Sandals resort. But used sparingly, I kind of love it. There's something very fun about a shockingly blue drink. So, when I was paging through Martin Cate's wonderful Smugger's Cove book and came across a drink that not only seemed relatively straightforward, but also contained all ingredients I had on hand including blue curacao, I figured I'd give it a try. It's also the first drink I've made in this series that uses tequila, which is a welcome change.

The Juan Ho Royale was created by Martin Cate himself, for the tiki bar Hula's in Santa Cruz, CA, in honor of a surf spot called Steamer Lane. Cate notes, on his use of blue curacao, "To capture the azure seas, I make a rare exception for blue curacao." Here's Cate's recipe:

2.00 oz. Champagne or sparkling wine
0.75 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. orgeat
0.50 oz. blue curacao
0.50 oz. John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum
1.50 oz. tequila blanco

Pour the sparkling wine into a chilled coupe. Add the remaining ingredients to a cocktail shaker and shake with cracked or cubed ice. Double-strain into the chilled coupe.

He notes, "garnish - none" but I thought a lime wheel pinned to a cocktail cherry with a flamingo pick dressed this drink up nicely.

This was a nice departure from rum, which dominates many of the 31 previous drinks. As you can see, I used regular old Trader Joe's tequila blanco - nothing too fancy. Tequila blanco is tequila that has little or no aging so the alcohol presence or "burn" is felt a bit more than an aged tequila, as is the agave flavor. It might not be the best quality tequila, but mixed in this cocktail it was just fine. The agave and slight smokiness of the tequila are the most noticeable flavors, and the falernum adds a nice hint of spiciness. The sparkling wine's carbonation is also a nice feature, not something you get in many tiki drinks. And of course it's electric blue! This would be a really nice, simple cocktail to serve at holiday and New Years parties, the sparkling wine adding a bit of festivity.

A Note About Photography

Apart from wanting to learn more about exotic cocktails and their history, the other reason I started this project was to force myself to take more pictures and get better at it. I use a Nikon D300 DSLR for all the photos on this blog and lately, I've been experimenting with off-camera flash techniques for lighting. Of course there's plenty of inspiration for nicely photographing cocktails on Instagram, etc. which has been helpful. If  you're also a photography geek who's been experimenting with off-camera flash, I'd love to hear from you. Tips? Tricks? Cool effects? Let me know!

I'll probably have at least one more post before 2016 comes to a close, but I'd like to wish you all a very mele kalikimaka and a fabulous New Year! Be safe, and enjoy.

Cocktail #27: Blue Hawaii

If one word could sum up the last 12 months as it relates to politics in the USA (and about 45% of the population of our country), I think it would be deplorable. This Tuesday is, at least, a pause in the insanity (though with all of the damage that Trump has done to the body politic, the insanity will undoubtedly continue, no matter what happens). The last couple months for me have been filled with fitful nights of sleep, and a constant low-level (and ever heightening) anxiety. I'll be glad when this is over.

Back in 2008 on Election Night my wife and I had friends over to watch the returns as we rooted for Obama. To pay homage to his heritage, as well as the color that has come to symbolize democrats, we made a version of the Blue Hawaii, way before I had any appreciation for proper tiki drinks. So it seemed appropriate on this Sunday before the 2016 election, that I revisit the Blue Hawaii - again to honor probably the best president I will see in my lifetime, and also to root for blue.

As my favorite, now retired from blogging, political writers used to say, "know hope."

Ok, we're going to need this. Let's get into the drink.

The Blue Hawaii was invented by the famous bartender of the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Harry Yee, in 1957. A sales rep for a new Blue Curacao liqueur asked Yee to create a cocktail that featured it, and after experimentation he came up with this gem. I found a recipe for the Blue Hawaii in Jeff Berry's Grog Log which I modified slightly with some attributes of this recipe from Modern Tiki. Berry's is probably the most historically accurate so here it is:

2.00 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
1.00 oz. sweet and sour mix (I made mine from scratch, recipe here)
0.75. oz. blue Curacao
0.50 teaspoon cream of half and half
1.50 oz. vodka

His only instruction is, "mix everything in a tall glass packed with crushed ice."

Since I'm not a huge fan of cocktails with vodka as the only spirit, I decided to go with the Modern Tiki version where they do split of 0.75 oz. light rum and 0.75 oz. vodka. If I were to make this again, I would stick with Berry's 2.00 oz. pineapple juice instead of the 3.00 oz. Modern Tiki used. Also, I shook everything with lots of crushed ice in a cocktail shaker and poured it unstrained into a Pilsner glass (though a Hurricane glass would probably be more appropriate). I added ice as needed. I garnished with a pineapple wedge, three pineapple leaves, and an umbrella.

Blue Curacao gets a bit of a bad rap, especially in today's world of "craft, grain-to-glass" cocktail snobbery. But what the hell? Blue drinks are ridiculous and fun. Is this bottle of Blue Curacao going to last me the next 20 years? Probably. But once in a while it's fun to whip up something that the characters in the Fifth Element would have been drinking. And what is tiki if not fun?

As for the taste - like I said, I would have held back a bit on the pineapple juice, but otherwise, this drink was absolutely wonderful. Sweet, fruity, frothy - this is absolutely a cocktail that you would drink at some Disney resort, and it goes down so, so easy. It's not complex, it's easy to make, and your guests would love it if you served this at your election night gathering. Grab that $10 bottle of Blue Curacao at the supermarket and mix one up for Tuesday night.

Hopefully we will be celebrating, and not drowning our sorrows.

Know Hope.