A couple of recent drinks that have been on the cocktail list recently:
The first one I came up with while listening to a bunch of Lynyrd Skynyrd, so I wanted something good and country. Wild Turkey 101 proof rye was a good start. One ounce of that with one ounce of Plymouth’s excellent Sloe Gin, with 3/4 oz fresh lemon, 1/2 oz 1:1 demerara syrup and 1 healthy dash of angostura bitters. Topped off with an ounce of seltzer, and it’s our Man Named Curtis Sloe.

The next one is actually a drink I put on the menu for Mother’s Day, but it’s been so well received I’ve kept it on the list ever since. While local strawberries were in peak season I put a bunch through our steam evaporator; passing water through them and extracting all of their flavor. Hopefully with this I’ll be able to have fresh strawberry flavor available to me throughout the year.
For this cocktail I took some of that ‘strawberry consomme’ and added the juice of thai chili, then added a bit of sugar to make it all a bit more shelf stable. I put 3/4 oz of this in with 1 1/2 oz of Plantation 5 year rum from Barbados, 1/2 oz fresh lime juice, 1/2 oz 1:1 simple syrup, and 1 tsp of Galliano. I shake and strain all of this, and then top it off with 2 oz of a dry Blanc de Blancs made from the Ugni Blanc grape.

Finally this is all topped with a few drops of bitters from Brooklyn’s Bittermens. This one is made with Hibiscus, Acai berry, and Long Pepper; it’s a bitters they describe as “sweet, spicy and a bit of a tart”.

With the combination of the chili’s, the bitters, and the original holiday weekend this was started around I had to call this one the Hot Mama.

And finally, to end this post with a bit of silliness: Our events coordinator brought in a pinata from her family’s Independence Day celebration, and I realized that it was my mission to see to the utter destruction of the thing. Luckily I had a supply of fireworks. Here’s the video (please pardon the language, it was taken by cooks; and there’s no censoring a cook):
pinata doom
I also have a close-up version that was too big to upload to the blog, but it may be seen on youtube at pinata doom close-up.