Filed under: Cocky Cocktails
Basil Cooler
A simple, refreshing drink for these hot(!) San Francisco days. Muddle fresh basil and one blood orange, sliced, with ice. Add soda. For a more potent cooler, add one ounce of high quality vodka and simple syrup to taste. Enjoy!
After having hot buttered rum at KoKo’s last night, I decided to try making it myself. I made a batch of spiced butter, so that I could bring it to work and make this cocktail for my Monday bar patrons. It was a huge success, and I almost ran out of butter. I didn’t measure anything, but it’s easy enough to figure the amounts out by taste. Here’s the recipe:
Salted Butter
Brown Sugar
Pumpkin Pie Spice
I simply melted a stick of butter and mixed in maybe half a cup or so of brown sugar and about half a tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice. I then put slightly less than a tablespoon of the mixture in each glass, mixed in a little hot water, added Captain Morgan’s Spiced rum and more hot water, and garnished it with a lemon twist. Delicious!
My current favorite Hot Toddie recipe:
Two round slices of lemon in a heat proof glass.
(Optional- stud the lemon skin with a few whole cloves.)
1/2 oz. Bärenjäger honey liquor
1 oz. Maker’s Mark
6-8 oz. hot water.
Garnish with lemon.
As a bartender, I have been mostly anti-shooters, for several reasons. First, shooters have different names in different regions, and bar patrons never seem to understand why I don’t know what is in the Purple Hooting Ugly Duckling Blow Job that they always get at their college campus bar. Second, the recipes vary as much as the names. Third, these drinks always seem to get ordered when I am slammed, and they all require chilling several ingredients. Fourth, the people who order them are assholes, and the same young kids who will later puke in the bathroom and try to bring their drinks outside.
However, a few exceptions exist. My new favorite shooter isn’t even in the same category as the rest. It is beautiful in it’s simplicity, and has a strong, clean flavor. This drink is the Russian Suicide, and it is comprised of a chilled shot of vodka, followed with a lemon slice coated in half ground coffee and half sugar. Delicious. I would have photos, if I trusted myself to carry around my camera on the nights that lead to this drink.
Just promise me you won’t try this when your bartender is swamped with customers. Getting out the coffee when busy is kind of a pain.
A few weeks ago I bought a bottle of cachaca for use in the delicious caipirinha, Brazil’s national cocktail. After a few tries, I have come up with a recipe that I believe is pretty darned tasty. There are different ways to put it all together, but I will provide what I consider an easy method for someone without a professional bar setup at home.
Muddle 2-3 large spoonfuls of sugar with half a lime (sliced) and a handful of berries (optional).
Add muddled mixture to an 8 oz glass, fill to overflowing with ice, then add cachaca until almost full.
Either stir thoroughly or pour entire glass into a closed container (or bar shaker) and shake until thoroughly mixed and chilled. Pour back into glass.
Garnish with a lime slice.
Turn on some Os Mutantes, dim the lights, and dream of tropical paradise.
(I used blueberries in the above caipirinha.)
In my early experiments, if the taste was off, it was usually because I didn’t add enough sugar. The sugar I used was an organic, hippy dippy one from the local co-op. A common variation is to take out the lime and add condensed milk. A variation I came up with is to serve this in a taller glass and top off with soda water, (otherwise, the caipirinha is a deceptively strong drink that is quite easy to imbibe too quickly.)
