Cause » cocktails
The Batanga – Tequila, Salt, Coke and Lime
For this month’s Mixology Monday the theme is “Spice,” in the announcement Craig’s definition of spice piqued my interest, “Salt? Go for it.” This challenge coupled with one of my Mexican friend’s favourite drink swhich he described to me as, Tequila, salt and Coke. I got cracking, doing a quick search on Google gave it a name, the Batanga. It all fell into place when the bottle of Mezcal Tequila that I bought had a little sachet of spices and sea salt. According to another brief search apparently this spicey concoction is traditionally imbibed alongside Mezcal. The resulting drink, lime juice, tequila, spicey sea salt and coke, garnished with a lime wedge is very tasty, certainly interesting and quite unique.
Not quite a dark and stormy – Made from Scratch
The theme for MxMo this month is Made from Scratch having never really delved into the homemade ingredients side of things before I wanted to start with something basic. I recalled seeing a post from Stevi at Two At The Most for a recipe of ginger syrup, so I got to work. I actually wanted the syrup to be a little bit more gingerbread-like so I also added a bit of ground cinnamon. That’s what you can see floating in the drink in the photo.
Now it seems like quite an easy thing to make, but I managed to forget it was on the stove and let it reduce down to a very thick treacle like substance. Adding some more water brought the consistency back but the flavour was a little bit more bitter than it probably should have been.
I then decided on some sort of rum based cocktail. I’m not entirely sure what to call it but here is the recipe
- 3/4 oz Mt Gay rum
- 3/4 oz Bombay Sapphire
- Half a lime of lime juice
- 3/4 oz homemade ginger syrup
Shake and strain over ice. Top up with soda.
Entertainingly enough the syrup wasn’t the only thing homemade used while making this, I dropped (and broke) the only boston in the house so I had to use a coffee mug as the other side of the shaker.
You should follow me on Twitter.The Elusive Cheese Cocktail
For quite some time now I have been chasing a crazy cocktail, a cocktail of which one of the main ingredients is Brie. Finally I have finally done it, while it’s not something I will probably ever make again, it was tasty but the process of making it just isn’t that workable.
Brandied Brie
- 45ml Remy VSOP brandy
- 15ml Grand Marnier
- 30ml apple juice
- 2 wedges of Brie, one for garnish
Put the brandy in a brandy glass and set on fire. Using a toothpick or a fork, melt one of the wedges of Brie over the flame letting the melted cheese drop into the brandy. When all the cheese has been melted add the Grand Marnier and the juice and leave to cool. Strain into a champagne flute and garnish with Brie. Optionally replace the apple juice with champagne.
There is a couple of things to note, the glass that you melt the cheese into is not going to be easy to clean. Best bet is to soak it with some detergrent. Secondly, a regular strainer is also going to be really hard to strain, so best off using some sort of disposable filter. These 2 problems and the fact that the fluid itself doesn’t look very appealing kind of make this quirky drink a bit of a let down. Well worth trying once though.
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