Just taking the time to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Stay safe, eat some good food, and have a good time.
Best,
Brian
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Habanero Infused Vodka for The Molotov Mule
A “hot” new take on a classic cocktail
Sometimes you experiment in cooking, and the results are not so good. Other times, you experiment, and you make something fantastic. This is one of those latter examples.
For roughly a year now, I’ve been absolutely in love with the Moscow Mule. I discovered it in the Bartender manga and was entranced by the idea of ginger beer, having been used to ginger ale, which I do quite enjoy. The idea of an even more potent ginger beverage being used in a cocktail was quite appealing.
When I saw it on the menu at a classic bar, I had to order it immediately. I was quite impressed, and made it my drink of choice to make at home. But then I thought, what can I do to really make it my own?
I decided to bring the heat, and replaced the “plain” vodka with habanero infused vodka. With the spiciness of the ginger beer and the slow burn of the peppered up vodka, I dubbed it the Molotov Mule.
So are you sold yet? Well you’ll need some habanero vodka, so let’s get to that part first.
There are various suggested manners to infusing spirits with peppers. Some people simply prick the skin of the peppers with toothpicks before submerging them whole in the booze. Others remove the seeds and halve them, others go full barrel and cut up the peppers and leave the seeds in.
By the way, this is Crystal Head Vodka, in case that wasn’t obvious enough. Super thanks to my friend Mike for gifting it to me. 750 mils of vodka is in there. For this application, one habanero pepper.
Cauliflower and Yam Curry for Lunch!
Before getting to the food business, I wanted to plug the JP DasBrew Kickstarter. It’s met it’s goal, but getting some more help is always welcome! Now back to business.
I visited good friend Jeremy (of Mighty Nightgaunt fame) last weekend, and made a variety of tasty treats to celebrate hanging out with him. I’ve been in the mood for something vegetarian lately because of my watching of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg Every Day series, so it seemed like a great day to make some curry.
That and Essen23, my reddit Secret Santa, requested that I would make something Indian for the lunch week of 52 Weeks of Cooking. Well, better late than never. Unfortunately, the recipes from the book he bought me, while wonderful, involved lots of spices which I happened to have left at home, and I wasn’t going to buy duplicates, at least not from the supermarket. That gets expensive quick.
So I trolled my memory for a curry I’ve made a few times before, after learning the recipe from Addicted to Curry.
Yes, a manga about curry. It’s actually pretty good.
I omitted a number of ingredients such as fresh cilantro, and replaced the green chili peppers with some dried red ones I scooped up at the farmer’s market. The result was still quite delicious.
I served it up with some fresh naan, and everyone was happy.
Strawberry Basil Sorbet
I mentioned in an earlier post that I actually had the pleasure of performing my first “solo” catering gig, that is one where it was not part of some other promotion, and very much beyond simply cooking for friends, and as a bonus, it actually tied in pretty neatly with one of the purposes of this blog, that is being a cook for geeks.
I didn’t go too much into it last time, but I’ll rectify it with this post.
When my host, Steve, described the campaign, which placed a large focus on both human hegemony and an elven rebellion. While he wasn’t sure that I would be able to tie in the campaign content with the menu content, I think I did a pretty good matching up food to themes.
Between what I’d consider hearty human food and a slightly more exotic leanings from what I would surmise to be in elven cuisine I detailed the following menu (which admittedly pulls quite a bit from tried and true standards):
- Wild Mushroom Pancakes
- Serrano Pepper Hummus
- Two batches of No Knead Bread, one with dried cherries and roasted almonds
- Curried Lentil Soup
- Fry Bread Tacos, with fajita style beef or spicy marinated tofu and pico de gallo
- Sweet Yam Curry and Naan
To provide an interesting finish, I thought that a slightly exotic twist on a straightforward dessert would really do the trick, and so I opted to make a strawberry sorbet, augmented with basil from my garden.
Had I known Steve was such an aficionado of spicy things I might have went with the white pepper variant instead! But then again for some reason the thought of basil in dessert seemed to mesh better with my perception of “elven” sensibilities.
Maybe I’m totally wrong there.
