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!