Tweaking An Old Favorite
Welcome to the June edition of my weekly blog that is updated monthly.
[This space is reserved for lame excuses and dubious promises about posting more regularly going forward, to be drafted just as soon as I get around to it.]
The good news is, as usual, my lack of posting does not correlate to a lack of drinking. In fact, over the last few weeks, I spent a lot of time tracking down ingredients and experimenting with cocktails that no reasonable person would drink on a regular basis (specifically due to the difficulty and expense of sourcing the ingredients). Thus, this week's (month's?) blog post will be the flip side of last time, in which I sort of advocated limiting ingredients in your bar (or, at least, seeking ways to use the ingredients you already have before seeking out new ones).
This week's cocktail is definitely not the result of such silliness. Instead, it is the direct result of 3-4 weeks of indulging whims and experimenting with fun ingredients I will never use with any regularity. Do you recall the booze devil I mentioned last time? The one constantly tempting me to buy odd ingredients and fine spirits of very limited utility? Well, he won out over the past month, in spades. I've been using ingredients I dislike outside the context of cocktails, such as celery and tea; I've purchased even more bottles of incredibly bitter Italian liqueurs, such as Fernet-Branca, which booze devil specifically recommended in May; I've even combined way too many habanero peppers with ginger and beer in an attempt to create my own cocktail (it wasn't very good).
All of that exploration led to some really good cocktails, and one of the big stars was a complicated twist on one of my favorites, the Caipirinha cocktail. I've already explained how much I love the simplicity and jungle funk of the classic Caipirinha, one of the best 3-ingredient cocktails I know, but I recently found a recipe for a middle-eastern take on the drink and decided I would invest the time necessary to try it out. Not a small investment, either, since this was easily the most time-consuming libation I've ever mixed up. From finding the necessary ingredients to preparing all of the components for mixing, this cocktail was a multi-day endeavor.
The Drink: Caspian Caipirinha
Ingredients Used:
- Fenugreek-infused Cachaça - 2 oz
- 3 Lime Wedges
- Dried Persian Lime Cordial - 0.5 oz
- Gilka Kümmel - splash
So, okay. For starters, just look at that ingredient list. If you're feeling adventurous, that is exactly the kind of ingredient list you want to see, right? I mean, first off, there's Cachaça, which is not the most common base spirit for cocktails. And then it's infused? With fenugreek? Aside from being enchanted by the idea of middle-eastern flavors in a cocktail, I instantly knew I had to try "Fenugreek-infused Cachaça" -- even though I had no idea what fenugreek was. (I was later reminded by my wife that she took fenugreek as a supplement while breastfeeding, which made her smell like maple syrup. Maybe that's too much information, but trust me--a wife who smells like a delicious waffle is just as awesome as it sounds.)
Having an opportunity to infuse alcohol for the first time was a big draw, of course, but the rest of the ingredient list was equally compelling. Sure, lime wedges are old hat, but how about Persian limes? They sounded exotic and delicious, and the word "cordial" has a nice, fancy ring to it. And Kümmel? What on Earth is Kümmel??
The Prep:
Fenugreek was first up on the shopping list, and it wasn't very difficult to find. Wikipedia says dried fenugreek leaves are common in southern Asian and Indian cuisines, and I had no trouble locating a bag of the stuff at a Mediterranean market near my office. I also swung by the liquor store and picked up an extra bottle of Cachaça, taking this opportunity to try out a new-to-me brand (Leblon), which I did not like quite as much as Novo Fogo.
Infusing the Cachaça with the fenugreek was a simple, if time-consuming, process, involving steeping the leaves in the alcohol for 15 minutes and then straining the liquid back into the bottle. It took multiple passes through a coffee filter to remove all of the small particles, and the end result was a murky, piney green bottle of Cachaça, as well as a kitchen that smelled a lot like waffles.
The Persian limes were also available in the Mediterranean market, but they were not quite as easy to find. No one knew what I was talking about when I asked for them, so it took about a half hour of scouring the shelves to find a bag of whole limes. This was partly due to the fact that I had a very inaccurate picture in my head while searching. Remember when I said Persian limes sounded exotic and delicious? Well... exotic, maybe, but they were certainly not what I envisioned:
A bit on the drier, browner, and hard-as-a-rock side, really. Though I will admit they smell pretty nice. To make the lime cordial, I needed to pulverize these things into powder, add a bunch of sugar, and boil with water. It was basically a rich simple syrup (2 parts sugar : 1 part water), with 6 tbsp of lime powder added. Unfortunately, pulverizing dried, whole limes is more difficult than it sounds. My first thought was to drop them in our cuisinart and let 'er rip:
That picture is after "letting 'er rip," btw. Turns out that, aside from making a horrible squealing sound, smoking a tiny bit, and emitting a smell like burned citrus, cuisinarts are not very effective at making lime powder. So, discouraged but not defeated, I decided to break out the big guns:
I don't know that my Ninja blender is any more powerful than a cuisinart, but it has more blades (like any good ninja), and I also took the added precaution of hand-splitting each of the limes before adding them to the blender. That gave me the opportunity to take a look inside, which did not really improve my opinion regarding the visual appeal of Persian limes. Have you ever looked at something people eat and wondered how it caught on as food in the first place? I think the desiccated corpses of tiny limes fit in that category rather well. Luckily, though, chopping them up and employing industrial ninjutsu produced a damn fine Persian lime powder, which improves their looks.
Boiling the powder for a while with the aforementioned quantities of sugar and water resulted in a nice, thick syrup. About 2.5 cups of Dried Persian Lime Cordial. Of which I needed half an ounce. The PDT app tends to recommend quantities as if you are running a commercial bar, which is fine for most ingredients, but I'm finding precious few uses for this one. Lime Cordial, sweet and translucent, pale green, is called for in a number of cocktails, but Persian Lime Cordial is not high in demand. Thick, brown, and viscous, it has a home in the Caspian Caipirinha, but nowhere else that I've found.
After the hours spent preparing ingredients for this cocktail, the rest of the prep was ridiculously straightforward. Like the original Caipirinha, the lime wedges are muddled in the bottom of a cocktail shaker (this time with the Persian Lime Cordial instead of demerara sugar), then the fenugreek-infused Cachaça is added and the whole thing is shaken with ice.
What about the Kümmel, you ask? Well, it turns out Kümmel is a caraway-based liqueur, sweet and mostly colorless, also tasting a bit like cumin and fennel. For the Caspian Caipirinha, it plays a very modest support role: after shaking the cocktail mixture but before pouring, the cocktail glass (a standard rocks glass) should be rinsed with the Kümmel. Rinsing a glass with alcohol seems kind of like a waste of time, since very little of the alcohol makes it into the drink, but cocktails using this technique almost always employ a very distinctive spirit for the rinse. Absinthe is a popular rinsing agent for a lot of drinks, and the Kümmel performs similarly in this role--the hint of caraway and cumin is strong enough to be noticed, but limited enough to avoid overpowering the rest of the drink.
With the glass prepped, the shaken cocktail is poured in, ice and all, and served without a garnish.
The Verdict:
It is probably important to note that, after so much effort preparing this cocktail, I was kind of predisposed to like it. As in, even if I didn't like it, I sort of felt like I needed to pretend that I did. Otherwise, what a colossal waste of time.
Fortunately, I didn't really have to pretend. I will admit it wasn't love at first sip, and I think my first comment to my wife was, "You're so not going to like this one," but I began to enjoy it more and more with each taste. The caraway, fenugreek, and aggressively dark lime notes give it a powerful, herbal and savory edge, but it is also distinctly appealing. I don't know how authentically middle-eastern it is, but it is very reminiscent of the types of flavors I think of when I think of Indian or Mediterranean food.
Even better news: my wife actually liked it a lot.
Is it better than a classic Caipirinha? Not in my book, but that shouldn't detract from this cocktail on its own merits. Since we have more Persian Lime Cordial than we know what to do with, the Caspian Caipirinha continues to make occasional appearances on the weekend, and I like it a little bit more each time. It is unique, interesting, and delicious in its own way. I'm running a bit low on fenugreek Cachaça at this point, but I can see myself restocking everything as needed to facilitate this cocktail. It's a keeper.
Rating:
 |
| 4 out of 5 |
