A little sun in January? Yes please!

This article is basically a reprint of something that I did with Maryanne for a new online culture magazine in Victoria called Culture Vulture.  Make sure to check it out here.

Who could blame me? My first thought when asked to do an article on Mexican cocktails was “so what ‘new’ twist do I put on the Margarita?”  While I am not here to debate whether the classics should be left alone or not (I see no reason that we should limit ourselves), I decided that I wanted to do something different.

My next thoughts turned to the cilantro infused tequila that I made for delicious, efficient shots and Mexican styled bloody caesars.  Surely this tequila holds many more possibilities.

At home, using one bunch of fresh cilantro (preferably organic) per 750 ml bottle of blanco tequila, I let the tequila soak for 48 hours.  I recommend streamlining this process by transferring the tequila into a second wide-mouthed container before adding the cilantro.  This eliminates a great deal of unnecessary struggle trying to remove pesky stray cilantro stems.  After 48 hours, simply transfer back the tequila into the original vessel with a funnel and a fine strainer.

It seems to me that cilantro has a polarizing effect on most people.  The previous paragraph ought to serve as a fairly clear indicator as to which camp I belong to.  Another popular ingredient in Mexican cuisine that I don’t foresee myself tiring of anytime soon is chili.  While one only need add tomatoes to have a decent bloody Mary (or salsa), I want to keep this cocktail light and refreshing while yet preserving the savory elements of cilantro.

I will be using a decent blanco tequila in this drink to capture the raw vegetal quality of tequila that has not been coloured by barrel aging.  My goal here is to evoke a ‘freshness’ capable of transporting the drinker away from any clouds, rain or dreariness associated with our Victorian winter.  To further enhance the freshness as well as the visual appeal of the drink I want to add some fresh cilantro and basil.  

It now occurs to me that it is entirely possible that you may wish to stop here for a well deserved break.

Simply muddle fresh basil and cilantro in the bottom of a short rocks glass

Fill with crushed ice

Add a generous portion of cilantro infused blanco tequila

Garnish with additional herbs, stir and enjoy

While this simple cocktail is certainly potable, if you’re still thirsty, I want to flesh out the drink with a layer of complexity and lighten it up a bit.  Both cilantro and chilies have the interesting abilities to create false impressions of temperature.  They are also amazing at balancing each other out while dancing across the palate and therefore, I’m going to add a little bit of chili heat by way of a simple syrup.  It should go without saying that red chilies are extremely potent so I only slice up eight for two cups of simple syrup and because this cocktail will only require a dash of the simple syrup, that recipe should be more than ample.  Using a chili syrup has two distinct advantages.  The first is that the syrup (when kept properly chilled) will preserve your chilies significantly longer than your refrigerator could ever hope to; and, it adds a subtle dimension of sweetness that satisfies the palate.

While, until this point I’ve only used ingredients that are well acquainted with each other, in order to lighten up this cocktail, I’ll need to take a brief trip across the Atlantic.  Cinzano Orancio is light orange flavoured vermouth from the same people who bring us the sweater Cinzano Rosso in is available in BC liquor stores for around thirteen dollars.  Using Orancio made sense for two reasons: orange and tequila have been friends ever since the first margarita and, vermouth’s herbaceous qualities will blend well with the fresh herbs in the cocktail.  I want to further tie all of these ingredients together so I will use some Peychaud’s for the herbs and Angostura orange bitters for the citrus.  Now, with everything together, I present the Mexican Connection. 

photo by  Maryanne Carmack

The Mexican Connection

Muddle 3 sprigs fresh basil

Muddle 8 pieces fresh cilantro

1 ¼ oz cilantro infused tequila

1 oz Cinzano Orancio

⅛ oz chili simple syrup

2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

2 dashes Angostura orange bitters

Fill a tall cocktail glass with crushed ice and top with soda   

Garnish with basil and chili peppers

Cheers

Wines & Vinegar

While speciaty imported food items can be somewhat difficult to come by on our little island, in some cases we are lucky enough to have a couple of expats how are producing some superb products, namely Venturi-Schulze Vineyards.  Not satisfied with the dilluted standards of ‘organic’, Venturi Schulze regulates themselves to standards that are ‘beyond organic’.  They believe that these standards result in a greater expression of the terroir.  This is all-the-more impressive given that they use non-grafted pinot noir clones for some of their premium reds (phylloxera vasatatrix has to yet ravage Vancouver Islands vineyards).  

In addition to lovingly crafted pinot,  they make a great verjus (juice from unripe vinifera grapes) and an interesting ‘stewed wine’ called ‘Brandenburg #3” named after the symphony.  Lastly, they make balsamic vinegar in the ancient old Italian style.  It comes at a price however ($49.95 CAD / 250 ml btl @ the winery).  This is a product only made possible by the advent of the slow food movement and the philosophy of drink less but drink better (they consistently sell out).

In the same vain as my previous post regarding the Invierno de Jerez, for wine cocktails I like to use vinegar as the acidic component.  However, with balsamic you get the dual purpose of acidifier and sweetener, itself being fairly balanced to begin with.  Therefore, when choosing the remaining ingredients for the cocktail, they need to be balanced as well.  For my next cocktail I’m using a Chianti (for sangiovese's crisp acidity) and a citrusy gin (Tanqueray no. 10) to balance the Mûroise.

Black Widow Cocktail

1 ⅓ oz Tangueray no. 10 gin (or Absolut Citrus Vodka if need be)

⅓ oz Giffard Mûroise du Val de Loire Liqueur (or Chambord)

⅓ oz Kahlua

½ oz acidic red wine (Sangiovese)

⅛ oz Venturi-Schultz (or other barrel aged) Balsamic Vinegar

A Breakfast Review of a Whisky Dinner

Every so often, insecure patrons with a false sense of entitlement grow old and tiring.  I’m not complaining.  Those are the breaks but every so often its nice to be reminded about what’s good about the job.  It has its perks for sure.  There is the oft recited list: the hours, the social aspect, the moneys and then there’s the booze.  

The booze is, however, somewhat of a double edged sword.  Part-way through the evening it can lead customers to believe that their recently cleared glasswear was, in fact, half-full.  It can also lead them to believe that their glass ought to be completely filled with another (much) more expensive scotch.  Again, I’m not complaining but that was certainly was an occurance at the whisky dinner that we held last night at Canoe - a very nice affair hosted by Macallan and Highland Park.

While excessively enebriated customers are often inconvenient, what could not be more spectacular is the level of generosity that was displayed by the scotch ambassadors.  It gets pretty difficult to remain bitter when you walk home with bottles of Highland Park 12 and 18 as well as Macallan 12 and cask strength.  I’m sure I could even find a use for The Famous Grouse such as the simple little cocktail that we served as a sort of amuse bouche - Grouse & (housemade) Ginger (beer).    

There is after all, a time and a place for everything.  Regardless that this is both a lie and a cliché, the time for Macallan cask strength is now (I mean after 8pm).  This whisky demands to be contemplated and sipped slowly after dinner slightly chilled with a dash of water.   Because it is botted at cask strength, this whisky clocks in at an impressive 59.3% abv and is the perfect winter sipper.  When held from afar, the nose reveals a pleasant fruitiness with a viscous palate and a luscious mouthfeel reminiscent of black cherries and port.  When in your belly, it warms the way few other (purchasable) things can - most preferable to a false sense of entitlement.

pictured above, breakfast

Fireside Veggies

After doing a photo shoot for the Kamikaze Carrot, A friend of mine decided to do an article for a local food magazine about using fall veggies in cocktails.  You can check out the article here.  After she approached me, I marched off to the local grocery store to grab a bunch of veggies.  I picked up some beets, yams, (more) carrots and various squashes.  

Confession time: I never got around to trying the other veggies I was so impressed with the butternut squash which is aptly named for it’s nutty character.  When I think of booze and nuts the first thing that comes to mind (aside of Frangelico®) is sherry.  So off I marched again to the store to pick up some sherry and sherry vinegar.  

The only sherry that the local liquor purveyor of repute had was Lustau’s East India Solera.  It turns out that this is an extremely delicious wine and I sincerely recommend picking up a bottle if you’re ever given the opportunity.  Regardless, this sherry had everything that I needed for a natural and intuitive flavour compliment.  Next I went back to the kitchen for some other possible compliments.  I came back with vanilla and pear to add some winter fruit and spice (apple may have been another possibility).  For the pear I used Giffard’s pear liqueur and a hint of Navan for the vanilla.  Plus, nothing really says fireside like a glass of Cognac (Calvados) and Navan, like it’s cousin Grand Marnier, has Cognac at its base.  I had first planned to use Remy Martin V.S.O.P. but opted for Navan to ensure that its spice was able to cut through the other ingredients.

Next, I wanted to balance the cocktail off with a touch of bitters and because I was using the East India Solera sherry, Fee Brothers West Indian orange bitters made an interesting first choice.  However, the next time I pick up a butternut squash I plan to sub in some Amaro Nonino.  Since Winter’s going to be here a while longer I’m not too concerned.

Another possible twist for the cocktail would involve roasting the squash before juicing it.  I simply peeled the squash, scraped out the seeds and sent it through the juicer.  Either way I think the sage garnish would work out very nicely.

Invierno de Jerez

1 oz freshly squeezed Butternut Squash juice

1 oz Lustau East India Solera sherry

1 oz Giffard Pear liqueur

⅛ oz Navan

⅛ oz Sherry Vinegar (used a 30 year solera)

3 dashes Fee Brothers West Indian Bitters

photo by Maryanne Carmack

Shake all ingredients with ice and double strain into stemmed cocktail glass

Garnish with fresh sprig of sage and pear slices

Tomato & Gin soup -> Bloody Mary -> Carrot & Ginger soup -> Kamikaze Carrot!

It’s winter, and compared to the rest of Canada, I suppose it's not really that cold.  Regardless, its soup weather.  Recently, I was enjoying a great spicy Italian soup at the nice little place behind my apartment.  ‘Tis the season.  Lately I’ve taken several ideas from the kitchen as jumping points from which to create some delicious cocktails.  While, a regular boring Mary is made with vodka and I’ll be the first to admit that I did not bother to research the timeline of whether gin went into soup before vodka went into tomato juice, the point is, that a flavour pairing that works well in the back of house will probably work in the front as well.  And then best of all is when the dishes themselves can be offered as a pairing.  

So back to the title.  A while back I was asked to create a cocktail list for a small Japanese restaurant opening up in a former cocktail bar.  Naturally, I wanted to incorporate ingredients into the drinks that would make sense with the plates offered on the food menu.  Ginger seemed like a logical place to start and so I first took my bottle of gin, transferred it into another container and filled it with shredded ginger to sit for a couple of days.  As well I made some ginger syrup and thought about what I could do with these.  This restaurant was going to be a small operation opening on a shoestring budget (the $1000 i had for a liquor inventory in British Columbia dollars came very close to nothing).   Basically I could have twenty or so bottles of alcohol behind the bar, tops.  Here we go cocktail list!

   

I already had a juicer at home that I simply brought over so I could at least have some flexibility without adding too much to the overall capitol required to open up the place.  Cucumber juice and Japanese was a given so what else could I use the juicer for?  Enter the carrot and ginger soup.  I started out basic with ginger infused gin, Cointreau®, fresh carrot and lemon juice topped with soda.  It was passable but definitely not worth writing home or anywhere about.  It needed zing.  So the first step was to add bitters (it was going to be a cocktail after all) and just as with the Bloody Mary, pepper is the quickest way to add some lively spice to a soup.  Lastly I added just a touch of ginger syrup and there it was – a world of difference.

Kamikaze Carrot

1 oz ginger infused gin (used Bombay Sapphire)

½ oz Cointreau

¾ oz fresh lemon juice

1 ½ oz fresh carrot juice

¼ oz ginger syrup

3 dashes orange bitters (used Victoria bitters)

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into tall cocktail glass with fresh ice

Top with approx. 1 oz soda

And fresh cracked black pepper

Garnish with lemon slices and (if you’re feeling artistic) a flourish of carrot twists.

Photo by Maryanne Carmack

Enjoy!

(Ps. the great thing about this cocktail is that because of the carrot juice and the alcohol, it’s both good and bad for your eyes at the same time).

Cat's Pee on a Mint Bush

At the beginning of this past summer, we at Canoe decided that we ought to include a white Sangria on the menu for our extensive patio.  Admittedly we had some liqueurs collecting dust in our booze room and I thought this would be a great opportunity to move the product in an easy drinking cocktail.  Needless to say I grew quite tired of it by the end of the summer.  It left our list and we now have more of the product than we ever did in the first place.  While the original idea was to recreate the drink as we got rid of the product, that simply did not happen.  I guess I’ll just try again next summer.

In the meantime, I picked up a fantastic book entitled “Taste Buds and Molecules: the Art and Science of Food with Wine” by François Chartier.  As far as food literature goes it is a fairly technical read but he does do a great job of breaking down why whisky and oaken chardonnay will smell of vanilla among other things.  He breaks down foods and wines to the atomic level, ties those together that possess the same flavour molecules and explains how we can find new flavour pairings outside of the traditional standbys.

The first chapter is all about expanding the ties between sauvignon blanc, mint and anise.  The purpose is food and wine pairing but it certainly sounded like a cocktail to me so I put this simple number together.  

Vert in Vino

Fill an atomizer ⅓ full of Absinthe (I use La Fée Parisienne as it’s the most authentic that we can get up here) and spray the inside of a Champagne flute with a healthy dose.

Next combine ⅔ oz mint syrup and

3 oz decent sauvignon blanc (I used a Marlborough) in a shaker tin with ice

Shake and double strain into the absinthe coated Champagne flute

Garnish a sprig of the freshest mint

So thank you M. Chartier, this is breakfast in a glass.  It’s also a far better wine cocktail than anything I slapped together with bin-ended product.  Go ahead give it a try, throw a cock’s feather in your cap or something.

Good morning!

Fun for the Whole Family

Until recently, working at Canoe Brewpub & Restaurant created a unique set of challenges not present in a strictly liquor primary location.  As much as I love alcohol, because of the amendments to our British Columbia drinking and driving laws, pubs and restaurants alike would do well to consider beefing up their non-alcoholic offerings.  Currently we are offering up several shrub variations as well as house-made ginger beer courtesy of a recipe from Jeffrey Morganthaler.  This is proving to be quite the hit, both with and without dark rum.  Ginger beer aside, most of Canoe’s carbonated beverages are still dispensed by a Wonder Bar® soda gun.  Missing from that gun is one beverage that was previously extremely popular with the back of house staff.  That beverage was the bright neon unholy looking Orange Crush®.  So, the other day, after a beverage or two, I asked myself, “what other sodas could I make using this relatively simple formula?”  Enter the Orange Crush®.  How could I could I make this neon drink delicious?

Attempt number 1

Zest ten large navel oranges and 4 lemons with a micro-plane into a sauce pan

Add the juice from six of those oranges (approx. one Litre)

Combine with one Litre (cane) sugar and bring to a simmer reducing the syrup by three forths

Let the syrup cool, strain out the solids and add in the juice from the remaining lemons and oranges.

Top with two Litres of warm water and transfer into EZ cap bottles with ⅛ tsp Champagne yeast and ferment for 48 hours.

After 48 hours, place the bottles in the fridge and enjoy once properly chilled.

Because this was my first attempt I made a relatively small batch but I was very happy with the results.  The soda was not, however, Orange Crush®.  This should not have been surprising to me as my original goal from the outset was to create a fresher tasting product and hence the heavy use of citrus zest.  What I had created instead more loosely resembled Orangina®.  I considered ways that I could modify this recipe to more closely resemble the neon soda but quickly abandoned that line of thought.  

Attempt number two, rather, will focus more on a dual use product.  While the results of attempt number one can be mixed with Galliano and crème de cacao to make a sort of chocolate orange type beverage, what really spiked my interest was a website that suggested bypassing zesting citrus for making syrups and thinly slicing the fruit.  While they presented the main benefit to be speed and efficiency, it was the possibility of drying the candied slices for garnish that really piqued my interest.  

As we are already well into January, thoughts have turned to the all important summer drink list that will make or break service times but also have the opportunity to wow all of our patio customers and hopefully persuade the locals to keep us busy throughout the winter.  Being that it’s January, as mentioned before, we are reminded daily of that importance.  So, currently I have another twelve oranges, thinly sliced sitting in a sugar solution that I will reduce down in about a weeks time.  The dried chips then will serve as an interesting edible garnish for a house margarita that I will be developing over the next couple of days (I’ve got a night off coming up soon so it seams that I know what I need to do).   The result should be a fun fresh soda for the kiddies and a couple of wicked margaritas for the folks.  

Cheers.