rum

Why is the Rum Always Gone?

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Because there are so many yummy ways to drink it!

When flipping through the index of an extensive beverage reference it became quite apparent that I have many fond memories associated with rum, in one form or another:

When I was just a child, about 4 or 5 I’d say, my Aunt Marie was a big fan of Pina Coladas. My grandmother’s living room was fitted with a well-stocked wet bar and, before she added the rum, my Aunt would pour off some of the sweet, pineapple-coconut smoothie into a mini parfait-style glass so I could be a part of the evening.

Later, growing up in prize-winning strawberry country we’d attend or come back for the Strawberry Festival each April. At this festival would be all manner of strawberry concoctions, confections, crafts and contestants (farmer and pageant alike), including the ever-present Strawberry Daiquiri. In fact, if you ever find yourself in Ponchatoula, Louisiana (now fairly well-known for it’s antiques), stop in at Paul’s Cafe for the most strawberry-laden, smooth daiquiris (virgin or not) ever experienced.

As a newlywed and aspiring baker (pre-Culinary School) I had the ambition to make fruit cakes for our first family Christmas. No, not the brick-o-candied-fruit-and-nut doorstops, an actual cake studded with walnuts and dried apples and soaked for 3 months in dark rum. Of course, they were too good to hold that long and we gobbled them before they were sufficiently convivial.

Rum & Coke (aka Cuba Libre) was an easy drink to order at the bar and tasty without being too strong if you didn’t want it to be. Flavored rums (whether spiced, pineapple or coconut varieties) worked well in this combination, as well. If it was rum, I was willing to try it back during my clubbing years.

More recently, at Trader Vic’s in Atlanta, Georgia, I decided to try the Fogcutter, a tall, tart tiki drink ripe with rum and lime. It was, especially on top of the Mai Tai and the multiple-course meal consumed, impossible to finish but the waiter offered to put it into a go-cup rather than waste it. (We were staying just upstairs in the Hilton, of course, Atlanta does not have the open container laws that one finds in New Orleans.)

So what to make this week to extol the virtues of rum? Since all rum is a product of sugar cane (be it in the form of cane juice or molasses), it’s no wonder that most rum drinks are sweet. As sugarcane was originally an island crop, it’s also no surprise that fruit juices usually play a large part. We’ve discussed the daiquiri, the mojito and even the Trader Vic’s Mai Tai in previous posts so I wanted something a little different for this week. To that end, I bring you two lovely drinks that both happen to use dark rum.

Scurvy Cure

3 parts Pineapple juice
1 part Amaretto liqueur
1 part Dark rum

Pour in a short glass over ice and stir.

This was originally called the Nutty-C in AJ Rathbun’s Good Spirits but both Todd & I felt it was a bit too strong. Not the rum, the amaretto. Also, Todd wasn’t crazy about the color of the drink which, thanks to the pineapple juice, is sort of a murky brown. Adding an additional part pineapple juice mellows the almond out and makes the color more orange though I still think it looks like heavily-lemoned iced tea.

The second drink is also from Good Spirits, and similarly tweaked. Originally intended to be a blended drink, I really prefer drink on the rocks but this required a skewing of the mixers to keep the balance that the blended ice would have afforded. From what was once the Taboo, I give you

The Unspoken

2 oz Dark rum
.75 oz Simple syrup
.5 oz Pineapple juice
2.5 oz Cranberry juice
.5 oz Lemon juice

Pour over ice and stir. Garnish with a chunk of pineapple if you like.

Surprisingly, the Scurvy Cure is sweeter than the Unspoken, despite the inclusion of simple syrup and more juices in the latter.

Incidentally, September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Either of these drinks (or any other frothy rum concoctions) would be ideal beverages with which to celebrate. So mix one (or more) up, pop in a Pirate movie or three and indulge in a few Arr’s and Aye Matey’s with the rest of the world.

The Mojito

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This Cuban drink is currently experiencing its second wind among the cocktail elite, with good reason. It’s tart, refreshing and nice to look at with the muddled mint swirling around the glass.

A Mojito is basically lime, mint and rum topped by club soda or sparkling water. In order to release the oils in the mint, a muddler (kinda like a cross between a pestle and a meat mallet) is used to bruise and break up the leaves without destroying their delicacy. (While the back of a wooden spoon can also be used, an actual muddler isn’t very expensive and can also be used to muddle fruits for sangria, lemonades and other beverages.)

While a good start, sugar (or sugar syrup) is also added in the muddling stage (pre-rum). There seems to be a bit of division between what is best: sugar or syrup. Anyone whose grown up ordering iced tea in restaurants where only unsweetened is available knows full well that regular sugar does not dissolve easily in cold liquids. It may give the muddler more purchase on the mint leaves and seem like the best course of action, you’re just not going to get much sweetening from it. Even knowing this, I still tried recipes using both sugar and sugar syrup and found my hunch to be correct. Leave the sugar for rimming the glass and use a 1:1 simple syrup in your drink.

Even with the syrup, a classic Mojito is much more tart than sweet and I prefer my drinks both tart AND sweet. While in Orlando last year, the Ale House near my brother’s apartment was serving Pineapple Mojitos and it was a divine drink. Tart and sweet and very drinkable. Of course, when the Mojito came up on my list, I knew I needed to recreate that yummy version at home.

CHF Pineapple Mojito

1/4 of a Lime, lengthwise
1 oz Simple syrup
5-7 Mint leaves
2 oz Pineapple rum
Pineapple juice

In a medium glass with a heavy base, place the lime, simple syrup and mint leaves and muddle until the lime is juiced and the mint is a little broken up. Fill with ice and then top with the rum and juice. Stir and sip in contented tropical bliss.

I’m not really a big fan of club soda–to me it tastes like stale water and why would I want to drink that? Consequently, it’s left out of my version of the Mojito. If you wanted to thin it out a bit, a la the classic drink, use about an ounce of pineapple juice and then fill with club soda or sparkling water.

When making Mojitos for a crowd, Stirrings makes a tasty mixer version that just needs rum and club soda. I’ve been known to use tonic water instead of club soda and find even just the mix and the tonic water make a very fresh drink on their own, no rum required.

Fruit[y] Cocktails

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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 ice

Combine 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 ice

Blend 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.

The Daiquiri

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Why is the rum always gone?!?!

I did have that thought tonight as I realized I was almost out of white rum. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself…

The little town I grew up in (Ponchatoula) may now be an antiques mecca but when I was small it was mostly known for it’s strawberries. And every April they would have (and still do) a Strawberry Festival that beats the pants off any of the community festivals they do around here. (No offense intended to my adopted home, but what do you expect from a place that’s an hour from New Orleans and in a state where it’s said they have a parade every time a pig’s born–they just know what they’re doing!)

Of course, the house drink at such a time (or anytime, for that matter) was a strawberry daiquiri, a smoothie-like concoction spiked with a good dose of rum. Granted, mine was the virgin variety, but this is what I think of when I hear daiquiri. Did you know that in Louisiana they have drive-through daiquiri parlours? It’s true! The leave the lid unpunctured so they can legally sell them to drivers, then you’re on the honor system til you get home (or to work, my cousin would routinely go on daiquiri runs for the doctor’s office she worked for).

So I was surprised to learn that the daiquiri did not start out as a spiked smoothie, but a shaken lime-rum concoction. Even though I learned this tidbit a couple years agon, I had never tried the original–until tonight.

Daiquiri

3 oz white rum
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz simple syrup
crushed ice
lime wedge for garnish

Combine rum, lime juice and simple syrup in a shaker with ice, shake til a wee bit frothy and then strain into a glass 3/4 full of more crushed ice. Garnish with a lime wedge.

from Good Spirits, AJ Rathbun

Now, be prepared, folks, this is one TART drink. But after the bracing nature of the first sip, the rest goes down nice and easy.

Returning to the beginning of this post, I found out that I’d somehoe managed to nearly run out of white rum. How that happened I’ll never guess (especially since I’ve been drinking the spiced or coconut varieties of late), but I had just enough for the one drink. Wanting to make Todd one, as well, I figured I’d use the Appleton Special Jaimaican Rum from the cabinet (it’s a golden rum, for the record) for the second drink and he could have his pick.

Oh. Oh no. I’ve never had a truly BAD cocktail but this one was in contention. The golden rum just wasn’t the right spirit and it totally overpowered the lime juice. Just wrong, wrong, wrong. Stick to the white rum, folks, TRUST ME! Not wanting to waste the booze, though, I topped it off with 3 oz of pineapple juice and it actually was drinkable at that point. I don’t know what it was, but at least it didn’t make me shudder.

Have a good weekend, gang, and see you in 2 weeks when our blog features return to their normally sceduled content. Until then, safe sipping!