Holiday Manhattan

Hurrah for the Holidays!

We had friends visit earlier this week, and we discovered that our youngest guest had a real knack for finding sea glass. 

Take a five-year-old to the beach at Harkness if you want to find the good stuff!

Also good? The Holiday Manhattan that DP stirred up. 

A variation on the Wakeman's Air, it's delicious...

Ingredients:

2 parts Bourbon

1 part Punt e Mes

1 heavy splash of Becherovka
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Directions:

Shake with ice (I know, you think it should be stirred, but sometimes a little extra ice water in the drink is just fine), garnish with a cherry (Luxardo Maraschinos, if you have them), and serve to everyone who has been worn out by running around with children all day long.

The Becherovka provides all the flavors of Christmas, and you know you can't go wrong with the other ingredients. Enjoy!

Kentucky Cocktail

Pineapple juice! I still haven't figured out a great way to get the juice out of the pineapple and into the cocktail, but I'm working on it. I've tried the blender (mostly pulp / best for frozen drinks) and the garlic press (thinking outside the box!), but my most successful method is the one I used with the Kentucky Cocktail...  

Chop the pineapple into chunks, put them into a sieve over a bowl, and press with a big ol' spoon. Juice comes out, pulp stays in the sieve, and everyone is happy as long as the sieve's mesh stays in place.

Ingredients:

2 parts Bourbon

1 part Pineapple Juice

Directions:

Shake with ice (because it has fruit juice) and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

It's a sweet cocktail, just as you'd expect with bourbon and pineapple juice. Sweet, and tasty, but not very complex. We polished it off, and then DP decided to try to elevate the drink. He came up with a variation he's calling the Montenegro Mash...

Ingredients:

1.5 oz Bourbon

1 oz Pineapple Juice

1 oz Amaro Montenegro

2 dashes Orange Bitters

Directions:

Shake with ice, strain into your chilled cocktail glass, and enjoy!

The Amaro Montenegro has a not-quite-bitter orange thing going on that really enhances the pineapple by bringing out the flavor while cutting the sugar. If you're going to the trouble of squeezing your own pineapple juice you want to make sure to use it wisely, and with DP's Montenegro Mash you won't regret a thing!

In other news, all of the lilacs are planted, and most of our leaves are raked, and our cold weather lifted just in time for us to spend the afternoon at Harkness Memorial State Park. Five minutes from our front door, and this was our first visit. There's so much of Connecticut to explore!

 

Kempinski Cocktail

According to the Guide, this one "probably originated at the Hotel Kempinski in Berlin." I'll need to see if our friend Snappy can confirm that. She's my Berlin expert.

The drink itself is a blast of Bacardi and grapefruit. "Serves Two!" says the Guide. Well, sure, if your inclined to share. If not, you're all set to enjoy a tasty treat, a bit of summer sunshine on a wintery day.

Ingredients:

1 part Bacardi rum
1 part Cointreau (we used Triple Sec, because we're Cointreau-less at the moment)
2 parts Grapefruit Juice

Directions:

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a cherry.

And speaking of cherries, the cherry tree we'll be putting in the back yard hasn't arrived yet, but our lilac bushes have!

Well, 'bushes' is more of a future descriptive... Right now we have 25 little bare root sticks to plunk into the ground. But lilacs! I should make up a lilac colored cocktail to celebrate.

Kangaroo Cocktail

It's a vodka martini. That's all. Just a vodka martini. 

Why is it called a Kangaroo Cocktail? Well, if the folks at Serious Eats (thanks, Grey!) don't know, no one knows.

The recipe in the Guide is as straightforward as it gets.

Ingredients:

2 parts Vodka

1 part Dry Vermouth

Directions:

Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.

The lemon twist gives the drink a limoncello nose, but then it's vodka and vermouth all the way. And I'm not opposed to that! It's a different flavor profile than we're used to around here, and sometimes it's nice to stir things up.

Speaking of chilly things...  We finally got our first freeze a few days ago. Nothing compared to the icy temps everywhere else (it's crazy in Idaho!), but still - our first freeze!