Cocktail #22: Voodoo Grog

This week's cocktail was a fun (and delicious) one.

I've been wanting to try a flaming cocktail for a few weeks and this week's Voodoo Grog seemed like the perfect opportunity. I found it by looking up cocktails in Jeff Berry's Potions of the Caribbean that use allspice or pimento dram (which I made myself recently and have been wanting to use more often). Following last week's Suffering Bastard, which I found to be a wonderfully spicy and dry cocktail, I was looking for a drink that might have a similar profile and figured that almost anything that used allspice dram would be a good candidate. I wasn't disappointed.

According to Berry, the Voodoo Grog was invented by Trader Vic in the mid-1950s. Berry slightly adapted a version he found in Trader Vic's 1972 Bartender's Guide as such:

1.00 oz. gold Puerto Rican rum (I used good old Bacardi)
1.00 oz. gold rhum agricole vieux (I used the closest rum I had - a rhum Barbancourt)
0.75 oz. fresh lime juice
0.75 oz. fresh white grapefruit juice
0.75 oz. allspice or pimento dram (I cut this back to 0.50 oz. - use what works for you)
0.25 oz. honey
0.50 oz. passion fruit syrup (given my past experience with drinks being overwhelmed with passion fruit syrup, I decided to cut this back to 0.25 oz. and I'm glad I did).
1 egg white
Nutmeg
1 cup crushed ice

Dissolve the honey in the lime juice. Place this mixture, and all other ingredients -- except nutmeg -- into a blender. Blend for 20 seconds. Pour un-strained into a Voodoo tumbler, large snifter, or, as I did, into a hollowed out pineapple with the core still intact. Dust with freshly grated nutmeg. Garnish with a mint sprig and pineapple stick (I used three pineapple leaves and a swizzle stick).

I'd heard that nutmeg can sometimes be used on flaming drinks to create sparks with the flame, so figured I would try a small flame with this cocktail. I kept the core of the pineapple intact after using my handy tool to hollow the rest of it out. I then used a plain toothpick to attach a spent half of a lime to the pineapple core. I soaked a sugar cube in lemon extract (which has a higher proof than 151 rum, and thus provides a better flame) and lit the sucker on fire! My first attempt was slightly less flame than expected, so I used more lemon extract - probably about a tablespoon - and tried again, with excellent effect!

***Please note: Always use extreme caution when creating flaming drinks! Always be sober when using flames, warn any guests, be sure you have a fire extinguisher handy, and be sure to extinguish the flames safely before drinking the cocktail. ***

To my delight, not only was this cocktail fun to make and look at, but it was also delicious. The egg white gave it a beautiful, light froth, and the combination of the sweet passion fruit and honey with the spicy allspice dram and nutmeg made for a surprisingly fantastic meld of flavors. The passion fruit did not overwhelm the drink at all - just be careful to not use too much. The two types of rum almost took a backseat - the drink tasted like it barely had any alcohol in it at all.

In honor of the name of this week's cocktail, I give you "Voodoo Dreams" by Les Baxter. Cheers!

Cocktail #13: Macadamia Chi-Chi

While visiting Palm Springs, Calif. in March of this year, we were lucky enough to visit the relatively new Tonga Hut location there, where we were treated to a lovely experience in their semi-private "back room" which must be accessed through a "secret" phone booth door.

Through the Tonga Hut's phone booth ...

Tonga Hut's back room booth and decor

They got everything right for a tiki bar - the ambiance, music, decor, drinks, menu, etc. were all fabulous. One of my companions' favorite drinks from that night was the "Nutty Chi-Chi" which, it seems, is Tonga Hut's version of the 1960s drink, the Macadamia Nut Chi-Chi, itself a variation of the Don the Beachcomber Chi-Chi. According to Jeff Berry's Intoxica! "chi-chi" is pidgin-English for "breast milk." The addition of the hard-to-find macadamia nut liqueur makes a regular chi-chi a macadamia nut, or nutty, chi-chi. Here's the recipe:

8.00 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
2.00 oz. Lopez coconut cream
4.00 oz. vodka
2.50 oz. macadamia nut liqueur

Put everything in a blender and fill blender to the top* with ice. Blend until slushy. Serves two to four.

* I used about 3 cups of ice, which did not get near the top of my large blender. Your mileage may vary.

I chose to serve mine in a "rum barrel" mug I bought at the Tonga Hut, along with a cocktail cherry skewered to a slice of pineapple with a cocktail sword, with a cocktail umbrella, of course.

Jen getting into the mood with her muumuu, flower, and mini-chi-chi

If you've never had macadamia nut liqueur or a drink with it in it, you're in for a treat. It adds a wonderful, nutty (obviously) sweetness to the cocktail but doesn't knock you over the head or overpower the other ingredients, namely the pineapple juice and coconut cream (the vodka is neutral and I barely registered any booze in this cocktail at all, taste-wise). I was a little conservative with the coconut cream, so next time I might add another 1/2 oz. (I halved the recipe). Both my better half and I truly enjoyed this cocktail - another blended slushy drink that fits in well with warm July afternoons.

Finding the macadamia nut liqueur can be tough. Here in the Chicagoland area we're blessed with the superstore of booze, Binny's Beverage Depot (32 locations) - they are basically the Walmart of booze and carry really difficult to find products that your corner store would never have. Trader Vic's makes the macadamia nut liqueur that I found, and you may be able to track it down online or a retailer near you by searching here. Unfortunately, depending on where you live, local/state laws may prohibit the shipment of spirits - so good luck.

While you're blending up this delightful drink, what better music to put on than some cha-cha to go with your chi-chi? Here's the wonderful compilation from the Ultra-Lounge series, Vol, 9: Cha-Cha De Amour:


Track 13 is my favorite! Enjoy!

Cocktail #12: The Coconaut

Sticking with the space age theme from last week, this week's cocktail is a simple one - the Coconaut - an original creation from Jeff "Beachbum" Berry in his Grog Log:

The recipe is as follows:

8.00 oz. Lopez coconut cream
2.00 oz. lime juice
7.00 oz. dark Jamaican rum (I used Myers's)

Put everything into a blender and top with ice cubes. Blend until slushy. Pour into ceramic coconut shell mugs. Serves two to four.

I basically cut this recipe in half and even then I probably could have cut everything down further - the coconut cream by 1 oz., the lime by .25 oz., and the rum by 1 oz. Up until now I hadn't made a cocktail that made use of coconut cream, which I really enjoy, and this one didn't disappoint.

Garnished with a lime wheel and lemon peels that resemble the rings of saturn (which I probably should have used on last week's Saturn!) - inspired by a suggestion in the fantastic Smuggler's Cove book by Martin Cate I recently received.

Not a lot of backstory to this cocktail since it was created by Jeff Berry himself, but it's a tasty concoction that, if you like coconut, you will love. Easy to prepare and with the right garnish, your friends will be impressed. Try one today!

While you mix this sucker up, throw on the Fastastica! record by Russ Garcia from 1959, and blast off into outer space:

Cocktail #11: Saturn

I love "space age" kitsch, music, and movies. Of course, there are also space age tiki drinks! I decided to give the Saturn a try this week.

A little different than many exotic cocktails based on rum, the Saturn is instead based on gin, which was a nice change of pace this week. Many write-ups of the origin of this cocktail mention famed tiki bartender J. “Popo” Galsini. Apparently he created it at a tiki bar in California in the 60s and it was originally called the X-15, after the manned rocket plane that achieved 4,520 miles per hour. The drink was supposedly created to appeal to the Douglas Aircraft engineers who apparently blew off some steam at the bar after work. In 1967, the X-15 cocktail was renamed the Saturn after an accident with the aircraft which claimed the life of a test pilot. Also according to Jeff Berry, the cocktail went on to win first place in the California Bartenders’ Guild contest and later the International Bartender’s Association (IBA) World Cocktail Championship (WCC) that year, though apparently there is little to substantiate these facts. In any event... here's what we have, recipe via Jeff Berry:

0.50 oz fresh lemon juice
0.50 oz passion fruit syrup
0.25 oz falernum
0.25 oz orgeat syrup
1.25 oz gin
8 oz crushed ice

Put everything in a blender. Blend until smooth. Pour unstrained into a pilsner glass.

As you can see, I opted instead for one of my new vintage tulip glasses, in part because the yield of this drink would not have come close to topping one of my pilsner glasses, and also because I just thought it looked more space age-y (and staging it with my rocket-shaped cocktail shaker and robots from my small collection also helps!).

I garnished with the hollowed out shell of half a lemon, speared with three toothpicks. I then spiked maraschino cherries to the toothpicks, resulting in a garnish that resembles the Sputnik satellite!

This is only my second cocktail using passion fruit syrup, and again, I found that it really took hold of the drink, and it was difficult to make out any other tastes. If I made this again, I might knock the passion fruit syrup down to a teaspoon or so to enable the other flavors to shine through. That being said, I love passion fruit so I didn't mind too much. As summer comes on, I'm also really enjoying blended drinks - they are like refreshing adult slurpees, which is a-ok in my book.

As for listening suggestions for while you mix and drink, consider the following, one modern, one not:

The modern:


Man or Astro Man? have got to be one of the most fun bands of all time. They take performance art to a new level, and completely embrace the space age / sci-fi / surf aesthetic.

And, for the vintage, the king of space age bachelor pad music, Juan Garcia Esquivel's 1958 master piece, Other Worlds Other Sounds:


Cheers!

Cocktail #3: Puka Punch

A couple of weeks ago I tried my hand at making a small batch of falernum, so I came to this weekend's cocktail looking for a drink which called for falernum so I could try it out. Thumbing through Beachbum Berry's Intoxica!  I came across the recipe for Puka Punch. Berry credits the drink to the Tiki-Ti, a classic tiki bar in L.A., circa 1960s. Ray Buhen opened the place in '61 after three decades of working in some of L.A.'s original tiki bars including Don the Beachcomber's (starting in '34), the Seven Seas, and The Palms. The others have long since closed, but the Tiki-Ti is still going strong. I've never been, but the next time I'm in L.A. it'll be a must see.

The Puka Punch is a cocktail to be reckoned with. Weighing in with nearly 4 ounces of rum (including 3/4 oz of 151), this drink can pack a punch. Some of the old time Polynesian Palaces used to print "Limit: 2 per customer" next to some of their supposedly stronger drinks on the menu and this one falls into that category. Here's the setup:

The recipe is as follows:

1 oz. fresh lime juice
.75 oz. orange juice (I had some clementines on hand so I just juiced those)
.75 oz. pineapple juice
.75 oz. passion fruit syrup
.75 oz. honey
.25 oz. falernum
dash Angustura bitters
1 oz. white Puerto Rican (I used Virgin Islands) rum
1 oz. dark west Indies rum
.75 oz. Myers's Rum
.75 oz. 151 Demerara rum

For the honey, I actually used a honey simple syrup I made a couple weeks ago - basically heating equal parts honey and water until combined. I added a splash of vodka to the honey mixture to make it last a little longer - it should keep in the fridge for 4-6 weeks.

Combine all the ingredients except the 151 rum into a blender with one cup of crushed ice. Blend thoroughly (I made the mistake of blending only for a few seconds with the result of chunks of ice left that were too big to make it through my straw, so make sure you really blend it).

The original recipe calls for serving this in a clear chimney glass, but I chose to pour this sucker into my vintage black Maoi tiki mug that I found for $5 at an antique store in Minnesota (apparently it's from an establishment call the Fireside in Ft. Atkinson, WI - so says a label on the back of the mug). Float the 151 on top of the slushy goodness, and garnish however you like - I speared a clementine wheel, lime wheel and maraschino cherry to a paper umbrella.

What really comes through in this drink is the passion fruit syrup - be careful to use the correct amount. And despite the hefty pour of rum present, it's not at all overly boozy. It is a big drink, however, so nurse it and make it last and savor every drop! Cheers!

Since this weekend is the venerable Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender, I've been listening to a lot of 50s-60s rockabilly and surf music, so I recommend checking out The Astronauts, a great surf band from the 1960s. Here's about an hour's worth of their instrumentals to get you going: