Rum Punch

Winter got cha down? Yeah, no kidding. Me too. Here's a little ray of sunshine for you in a glass. Pour yourself one of these, turn the heat up and pretend you're in the tropics. Put one part rum, preferably a dark one like Mt. Gay or our personal favorite Ron del Barralito and two parts tropical juice over ice. Obviously you can adjust this to taste but you should be able to taste the rum. The Dole Paradise Blend works great as the juice for this. Another good one is the Ceres juice I used in the Sparkling Passion drink. Squeeze a wedge of fresh lime in the drink. The lime is key. You can try this with a few drops of bitters too.

Sparkling Passion

Hello Everyone and Happy Holidays! In honor of the holiday season I’m offering up a cocktail with a little fizz, just perfect for New Year’s Eve (or anytime for that matter!)
Simply add one part vodka to one part passion fruit juice and shake over ice. Pour into a cocktail glass leaving a bit of room. Top off with some champagne, just enough to get it a little fizzy. We added a raspberry for decoration.

This brand, Ceres, makes a nice passion fruit juice and is what I would recommend the most. If you can’t find this a good substitute would be Dole juices Paradise Blend, but I would add less juice since this one is sweeter and more concentrated. You can find it with other refrigerated juices.

If you don't have cocktail glasses a champagne flute would work as well.

I’m going to attempt individual Beef Wellingtons for New Year’s Eve. Obviously, I won’t be able to post them before NYE but if they come out nicely I'll put them up here and perhaps they’d be good for Valentine’s Day.

ENJOY!!

A Really Delicious Margarita

So, aside from many years in the kitchen I also spent a few behind a bar and have, in my opinion, perfected a few libations.

In a shaker with a lot of ice add 2/3 cup of tequila, 1/3 cup of orange juice, a heaping tablespoon of sugar, and the juice of 1 very juicy lime. Shake like crazy. You’re done. Yup, that’s basically it. If you like things sweeter you can add a couple tablespoons of triple sec, or more sugar. Pour it over lots of ice. Ice is key to a good cocktail. It will be pretty strong but the ice will dilute it (especially if you shake for a couple minutes). This is about two drinks worth.

If you want to salt the rim of the glass you rub a piece of lime along the edge of the rim, only on the outside since you don’t want the salt actually inside the drink. Then just roll the edge in kosher salt. You gotta use kosher, the regular kind just comes out weird.

If you want to make a frozen margarita, or any frozen drink, the trick to a really smooth one is this-
Fill the blender almost to the top with ice and leave about 2 inches at the top. Pour in your alcohol and sugar and blend it until it’s smooth. The liquid should not go further up the ice than half way so if there's more than that hold it aside. If the mix is too solid for the blender to really spin add in a little more liquid at a time. A frozen drink will tend to need more sugar than a rocks one. One trick I've found for Margaritas is to use a coouple tablespoons of frozen concentrated orange juice instead of fresh, which you will need to add in at the same time as the alcohol and sugar. After you have your smoothly blended base, add in the rest of the ingredients and blend for another second just to mix everything in. If you are using whole fruit, like frozen stawberries, then add that in the initial blending with the ice, alcohol and sugar.

By the way, if you have heard that Margaritas are crazy high in calories they are referring to restaurant Margaritas which are usually full of this stuff called LemonX which is chock full of corn syrup and is just pretty gross. If the restaurant is using fresh juices you are much better off both flavor wise and calorie wise.