Through the Looking Glass – Bloody Mary Variant

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.

Ahem, Sorry about that. I’ve wanted to combine Marmite in a drink for a while. And when KJ did a Marmite-sriracha bread, I decided to take the opportunity to make a savory cocktail to go with it. This isn’t really a bloody mary in the traditional sense since it doesn’t contain any of the same ingredients aside from the tomato juice, lemon juice and vodka. The salt and umami flavours (the soy sauce and/or worcestire sauce) are replaced by the marmite, the Tabasco and black pepper are replaced by Sriracha, and the horseradish is replaced by wasabi. But the result has all of the things one would look for in a tasty bloody mary, but with a radically different flavour.

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,  Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.

Bloody Mary

50ml Vodka

10ml Lemon juice

400ml Tomato juice

50ml Bloody Mary mix (recipe below)

Combine ingredients in a tall thin glass, stir to combine. Garnish with celery stalk and lemon.

Bloody Mary Mix

1 Teaspoon Marmite

1 Teaspoon Sriracha

.5 Teaspoon Wasabi

100ml Boiling water

Stir ingredients together in a glass. Allow to cool.

Bloody MARY BLOODY MARY BLOODY MARY BLOODY MARY BLOODY MARY

Huff and Puff: Smoked Stout Cocktail

In my continuing struggle to come up with interesting cocktails I try to come up with some weird stuff. Those who have been reading for a while now know that I love beer and frankly I’d like to see it used for as a cocktail ingredient beyond your typical lager and whisky Depth Charge. Thus I present the Huff and Puff, a smokey cocktail inspired by Bigby Wolf of the Fables series.

It may look simple but its complex flavour and strong alcohol content will knock you back. I got the idea from the horrific Nicotini idea. My idea was to start with the idea of cigarette, of which Bigby consumes thousands, and try to make something smokey but tasty. The result is a mix of cold-brew lapsang souchong, a type of Chinese black tea tried over pinewood fires to get a nice smokey flavour, stout or porter, and bourbon.

Ingredients

25ml Bourbon

35ml Cold-brew lapsang souchong black tea. Prepare this by putting one teabag is 300ml of water and let it steep for 2 hours.

330ml Stout, higher alcohol stouts or porters work best. Try to avoid smoked porter as it will overpower the flavour. I used Summer Wine’s Padrino Imperial Affogato Stout, which is sweet and nutty with a 9% ABV.

What do you call a lumberjack wolf?

A timber wolf!

The Rose Baron: Bourbon Caraway Cocktail

I’m a pretty terrible geek. I’ve seen a lot of anime, but I haven’t really seen most of the Studio Ghibli’s films. KJ has though, and not being one to rewatch films often we’ve been making our way through some of the lesser known ones. Of these our favourite is The Cat Returns. Primarily for the suave cat protagonist Baron Humbert von Gikkingen. Also after watching a lot of Studio Ghibli I’m pretty sure Miyazaki is directly responsible for at least half of the Furries in our current generation.

I wanted to create a cocktail that mimicked the classy aura that the Baron exudes. So I started with my favourite liquor, Bourbon. I used Four Roses for it’s smoothness and also for it’s rye content. Because what goes with Rye? If you follow KJ at Need to Knead you’ll know that Caraway seeds are essential for a nice rye bread. So for my rye cocktail I made a caraway and lemon simple syrup. For some reason the Baron reminded me of a cat version of Tuxedo Mask from Salior Moon, so I thought I’d stick with the rose theme and add in a bit of rose water. The result is a sweet and flowery cocktail with a pleasant bourbon punch.

Ingredients:

50ml High rye bourbon or rye whiskey

15ml Lemon Caraway simple syrup (recipe below)

1 Squeeze of lemon

4 dashes rose water

Combine ingredients in cocktail shaker with ice, shake and double strain into rocks glass.

Lemon-Caraway Simple Syrup

2 Tablespoons caraway seeds

1 teaspoon lemon peel

90g caster sugar

100ml water.

Bring water to a boil and combine with ingredients. Stir until sugar has dissolved then remove from heat. After it cools to room temperature strain and put into a clean bottle. It will keep in the fridge for about 2 weeks.

Why was the sad cat in a hurry?

He was a Russian Blue.

The Neighborhood – Studio Ghibli Cocktail

This was a really fun cocktail to make. It was the first time I started with a theme and worked back to the ingredients. Here’s The Neighborhood, based on My Neighbor Totoro.

 

Despite being a milk or soymilk if you prefer, based cocktail the Neighborhood is surprisingly light, this is mostly due to the low-alcohol nature of the cocktail. It’s mostly a nutty flavour with a bit of creaminess from the milk and a small fruity aftertaste.  I’ll explain a bit about the process.

I chose a wine glass to capture the rounded shape of Totoro’s body seen below.

Souce: http://youandmie.files.wordpress.com/

The trickiest part of the cocktail was recreating Totoro’s signature greyish colour. I considered a few different ingredients, from black food colouring to Kristoff Black. But I wanted to avoid artificial colours since what’s the point. I could have just coloured anything grey and then called it a day. 

I ended up choosing black sesame powder, though based on some issues that I encountered I would recommend using black sesame paste in the future or superfine black sesame powder since as you see from the picture there was a fair amount of sediment at the bottom of the cocktail.

Since in the film part of Totoro’s character is giving nuts and seeds as gifts and his whole nature collection I thought a nutty/fruity cocktail was best.

 

Some of the ingredients may be a bit difficult for you to get your hands on. I recommend seeing if there is a specialty Asian store and a specialty liquor store near you.

 

Ingredients

15g Black sesame powder

220ml semi-skim milk or soymilk

50ml Frangelico or other hazelnut liqueur

3-4 dashes Plum Bitters 

Granulated sugar for rim

Combine sesame powder and milk in a pan on the stove over low heat. Whisk until powder dissolves and milk turns the desired grey colour. Transfer the mixture to a different container and put in the fridge to cool down.

While that’s cooling rim your glass with sugar. Coarse sugar is recommend as it adds a nice crunch and crystal look to the drink. 

Once cooled combine mixture with frangelico and bitters and shake well with ice. Double strain into the glass. 

Garnish with mint leaf and little umbrella. Big thanks to Kim-Joy for inspiring this cocktail with her Toroto cosplay she rocked last weekend.

 

 

A doctor made it his regular habit to stop off at a bar for a hazelnut daiquiri on his way home. The bartender knew the doctor’s habit and would always have a drink waiting. But one day the bartender ran out of hazelnut extract, so he substituted hickory nuts. When the doctor arrived, he took a sip and exclaimed, “This isn’t a hazelnut daiquiri!”

“No, I’m sorry,” the bartender replied. “It’s a hickory daiquiri, doc.”

Auron’s Cucumber Cooler

For my first cocktail I decided to tweak an old favourite of mine. It’s a blend of gin, lime, basil and cucumber. This is pretty much the ultimate summer cocktail as it’s refreshing and extremely versatile. It’s more of a spritzer than a cooler, but I like alliteration. The name comes from Final Fantasy X’s Auron who always sort of remains calm in high pressure situations. It might seem like a stretch, but since his character is sort of a Kurosawa-esque samurai I should probably make a version of this with sake.

This cocktail is best with a mid-range gin, since the other ingredients will mask any bluntness in mediocre gin, but will also make the subtleties in a really nice gin go unnoticed. I recommend Bombay Sapphire, at 15 pounds it’s not too expensive and the slightly higher sweetness of Bombay blends nicely into the flavour. I used Whatever I Found in the Liquor Cabinet brand gin.

The reason I called the cocktail versatile is because you can make lots of little changes to suit your palate. This just happens to be the way I prefer it. You can substitute vodka for gin, though I’d recommend increasing the simple syrup ratio to compensate for the loss of sweetness. You can use rosemary instead of basil for your simple syrup.  Soda water can be swapped out for tonic water or left out entirely and served straight up if you’re anything like the guests at my barbecue.

Ingredients:

Ice

50ml Gin

20ml Basil Simple Syrup (Recipe below)

25ml Cucumber Essence (Recipe below)

10ml Fresh lime juice

Soda water or tonic water to top

Sprig of basil to garnish

Combine all ingredients except for soda and sprig in shaker. This is a dry shake so don’t use any ice. Strain contents over a short class full of ice, top with soda or tonic. Give it one final stir with the sprig of basil to make sure it is fully combined.

Basil Simple Syrup

50g white sugar

120ml water

10-15 fresh basil leaves

Bring water to a boil and stir in sugar and basil leaves. Once the sugar dissolves remove from the heat and let  cool. Once it’s cool strain the basil leaves out and the syrup is finished. It will keep in an airtight bottle for about a month.

Cucumber Essence

1/2 English cucumber

150ml water

Peel half an English cucumber and cut into chunks. Put into blender with the water. Blend until the cucumber is fully pulped. Strain the liquid into a container and discard the pulp. The essence will last for a couple of days in the fridge.

I was going to end every post with a joke. But I’m skipping the first week because every cucumber related joke I found was disgusting,