Since I’m still recovering from the impromptu trip last weekend and in honor of the holiday this coming weekend, here’s a couple of fun, fruity drinks to get you through the weekend. We’ll pick back up with our tasty tour of US History next Friday!
~~~oOo~~~
I’m not a girl who likes her liquor straight. On the contrary, I prefer mine well-mixered and my favorite class of mixer is fruit juice. Frou-frou umbrellas are not necessary and the blender can usually stay in the cabinet, but a good juice-to-booze ratio makes a happy camper of this cocktail chick.
I went flipping through my mixology books and found a promising “Mocktail” (a non-alcoholic cocktail, from the book of the same name) that I thought had potential. Even better, I had plenty of fresh strawberries and honeydew melon on hand that the recipe called for.
The one criticism I have for the original recipe is that the quantities are not specific. In school my chefs quickly figured out that I was definitely a baker (as opposed to a line cook) since I preferred (and always asked for) exact quantities, times and temperatures–everything that’s necessary for proper baking chemistry but more subjective for cooking on a line. How much is a “slice” of honeydew? What, to you, is a “part”? Since one ingredient was pineapple juice and the cans I keep on the bar are 6 oz. I decided that a “part” for this trial would be 3 oz. to prevent waste. (I decided to try the recipe two ways.) Here’s my version of the original:
Fantasia
6 strawberries, hulled and washed (halves are okay if the strawberries are very large)
6 1-inch balls of honeydew melon (I’d just finished a party and had extra melon balls, adjust as necessary)
3 oz orange juice
3 oz pineapple juice
1 c iceCombine all ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. This makes 1 tall smoothie or 2 short ones to share.
—adapted from Mocktails, David Biggs
Now, this was okay. Todd commented that it was all sort of mushed up together–no one flavor dominated. And that’s okay, really, but it doesn’t make the drink stand out. Even with the amount of liquid in this, it’s still very frothy and a bit chewy. If you, as the original recipe suggest, blend everything but the ice and then pour the mixture over crushed ice it may make a difference. I combined them for convenience.
So we have Fantasia, non-alcoholic and, frankly, G-rated. I was in the mood, however, for something with a little more kick and a little more flavor. This is our preferred version of this cocktail, still low-alcohol so safe for Summer consumption without fear of a hangover, but no longer safe for the kiddies:
CHF* Pink Elephants on Parade
6 strawberries, hulled and washed (halves are okay if the berries are large)
6 melon balls (for more kick, soak them in a little Midori)
3 oz orange juice
3 oz pineapple juice
1.5 oz spiced rum
1 c iceBlend all ingredients until smooth. Makes 1 tall cocktail or 2 shorter ones: make a friend.
The spiced rum in the Pink Elephant version (does anyone else remember that scene from Dumbo? my favorites were the plaid ones) smooths out the flavor, warms it up even for being a blended ice-drink and gives a pleasant aftertaste.
Safe Sipping!
*Cocktail Hour Favorite. There may be only so many ingredients in a drink but there’s many ways to mix them.
. I remember reading parts of it while in Culinary School and using it for a research paper (yes, folks, Culinary School requires homework, papers and all that other stuff in addition to cooking) but I really didn’t retain much. This time around I’m just finding the material so much more interesting–maybe I should have been blogging back then, too!
. Since I was going for simplicity for the new cook and speed as it was a weeknight I used canned great northern beans, 3 types of meat (chicken sausage, ham and diced chicken–no confit around that night, sad to say) and skipped the baking step.
? There are store-bought versions available at a specialty grocer or you can just omit it. And next time you see a duck in the store pick one up and confit-it so you can have it available for your next cassoulet.
to go stylishly from stove to oven? Transfer the stove-top beginnings to any available casserole dish with a lid and go with the flow.
. Of course she has a chocolate angel food cake recipe and, of course, the instructions are incredibly detailed. It’s really tough to mess up one of her recipes unless you take a short cut somewhere.
I wasn’t too worried about that. The 2 cups of egg whites (from 16 large eggs) quickly grew to fill the 4.5 quart bowl. It’s a good thing to have a separate, larger bowl to do the folding of the scant dry ingredients in with the very stiff egg whites.
was made differently than most and the opening of the center tube was not large enough to fit over the neck of the wine bottle, as suggested, or anything else that we could find. Until, that is, Todd spied the lighthouse decoration in our bathroom–between the dowel-rod point on top and the upper cabinets to keep it from wobbling we managed to keep the finished cake from deflating too very much while it cooled the required 1 1/2 hours. Pans with the little arms on top can also serve this same purpose, sans lighthouse.