Cocktail Sundays: Hondo Ohnaka's Asteroid Belt

 

The most difficult thing I've dealt with so far in cocktail exploration is cherries. Or, I should say, cherry-flavored drinks. I don't like them. They never taste quite right.

Part of this problem is with me, except that I don't think it's just me as my wife acknowledges having the same problem. The problem is that we grew up with cherry flavored... everything. Okay, not everything. But, you know, cherry-flavored medicine, cherry-flavored cough drops (okay, sure, it's sort of medicine, but it's also mostly candy), and, most of all, cherry Life Savers. All of these things have the same chemical cherry flavor, which is completely unrelated to how actual cherries taste. It took me a long time to like real cherries at all because, to me, they didn't taste like cherry oughta taste. There's a conflict between reality, expectation, and, then, what the drinks have tasted like, which weren't like reality or the built-in expectation of artificial cherry flavor.

We got some Luxardo maraschino liqueur, but... I guess it's fine on its own if you just want a taste, but the flavor isn't like cherries or artificial cherry flavoring. And I've never liked maraschino cherries, so I don't even know if that's comparable. It also hasn't worked for me in any cocktails we've added it to to boost the cherry flavor.

At this point, I'm just going to toss in here that I don't really know why I got so invested in making a cherry drink other than that it became some kind of weird challenge.

Here is what has worked: We got some Amarena Fabbri cherries, initially, because we needed the syrup for something. These cherries are amazing! And the syrup is delicious. Actually, this stuff is perfect on vanilla ice cream, not that that is what I've been using them for. They never last that long. We also got some Heering cherry liqueur, which was my last ditch effort at making a worthwhile cherry cocktail. The Heering is much better than the Luxardo, but it still didn't do the trick. I decided that cherry cocktails had defeated me.

Ah... but then I devised Hondo Ohnaka's Space Punch, which is not cherry, but, on a lark (because I wanted to add some cherries to my drink, I decided to try a cherry variation. And, wow!, am I glad I did! Not only is this drink possibly better than the space punch, but, with it, I conquered the cherry cocktail. Or, at least, a cherry cocktail, which is good enough for me.

So after probably too much explanation (but I needed to build some suspense, right?)...
Wait, does this make me like one of those cooking bloggers who writes 10,000 words before telling you that it should only take you three minutes to sauté some onions? Hint: it takes much longer than three minutes to sauté onions.

Here's the recipe:

1oz lemon juice

1oz cinnamon syrup (you can also use demerara syrup, depending on the flavor you want)

1/2oz Curacao

1/4oz Tawny port (regular port will also work and provides a deeper red color to the drink)

1/2oz Velvet Falernum

1/4oz Heering cherry liqueur

1/2oz Licor 43

1/4oz allspice liqueur

2oz rum

2 dashes Angostura bitters

3 Amarena Fabbri cherries

Add ice or however you want to chill the drink.

I've been making this with Mount Gay's Eclipse rum, but I think I also want to try it with a darker rum, maybe their Black Barrel. Once I pick up a new bottle of it.

Just to be clear, the cherries are the asteroids.

Cocktail Sundays: Hondo Ohnaka's Space Punch

 

Before anyone says anything, yes, I have intended to do these cocktail things more frequently. The thing is is that I like to be able to do a whole photo thing of making the cocktail (like in the previous cocktail post), but it's winter so the lighting in my house is shit. No, wait, the lighting in my house is shit but, during the summer, enough light comes in through the skylight for me to be able to take pictures in my dim little cave. During the winter, though... well, it's dim in here all the time. Basically, I haven't been able to take photos, so I have been reluctant to do anymore cocktail posts.

But I have this new cocktail that I've come up with that I really like, so you're getting a picture of Hondo, since that's cocktail appropriate. I suppose you don't really need the pictures of me putting the drink together, anyway.

First, some background:

As I've mentioned, my wife got me this book, Smuggler's Cove, and we've been experimenting with the cocktails. It's been a lot of fun trying the different cocktails and inventing my own. Part one of this cocktail came from one called "Center of the Galaxy," which was inspired by the discovery that a primary chemical compound in the center of our galaxy has a raspberry flavor and the smell of rum. However, I didn't particularly care for the cocktail. Well, it's a fine cocktail; it's not like it was bad; it just didn't really do it for me.

Once we'd tried the "Center of the Galaxy," it just kind of sat around in the back of my head: you know, good concept, poor execution. Then I re-happened upon a cocktail called "Hondo Hattie's Jungle Punch," a cocktail appropriately created for Disney for some party or other related to their jungle ride. As a side note, Hattie's cocktail contains Velvet Falernum, an alcohol I don't really care for except in this particular drink.

I don't think I should need to go into any long explanation about what happened next. Let's just say it was clear to me that Ohnaka needed his own punch, being a space pirate and all -- and you know about pirates and rum -- and I set about to make it.

And I did, too!

I'm pretty sure my wife thought I was crazy through this whole process but, then, she doesn't understand Hondo Ohnaka, one of the best side characters in the Star Wars universe. The drink did take a lot of editing... um, wait... revisions...? Permutations!? I'm going to go with permutations. Here is what I settled on:

Hondo Ohnaka's Space Punch

1oz lemon juice

1oz cinnamon syrup

1/2oz curacao

1/4oz tawny port

1/2oz velvet falernum

1/4oz raspberry liqueur

1/2oz Licor 43

1/4oz allspice liqueur

2oz Eclipse (the rum)

2 dashes of angostura bitters

This is, actually, my favorite drink at the moment, not just some, "Yeah, this is okay," kind of thing. "Yeah, this is okay" drinks are fine and all of that. You have to have some of those just to mix it up some and to remind you why it is you like your favorite drinks. This one is well above that for me and is going to end up being something I keep the ingredients around for all the time.

Which is saying something because, as I stated, I don't care for Velvet Falernum, and I also don't like tawny port. Before I came up with this drink, I had planned to not buy those two things again. Further proof that sometimes things you don't like can work together to make something really good.

Now if my kids would just figure out that vinegar works the same way...

How To Make a Cocktail (not-really-a-book-review book review)

My wife and I have been dabbling with cocktails for a while now. Well, a short while.
Okay, it all started in 2017 when we went on our gold country trip and stayed in Columbia. We had this pair of cocktails:

which, I'm pretty sure, was the first time I'd ever had a cocktail. Maybe I'd had a pina coloda -- I don't really remember when we started making those -- but that would have been about the extent of it.

After or trip, we started trying cocktails when we would go out to places that served cocktails. Sometimes, we even looked for places that served cocktails as part of our decision process. Of course, we don't really go out a lot, so it's not like it was something that happened very often.

So we started making the occasional cocktail at home, especially pina colodas, the family favorite (because you can leave the rum out for the kids). I learned how to make margaritas. But that's where we hit a wall, I guess, because my wife bought me a book, Be Your Own Bartender, and I learned how to make a daiquiri. A real daiquiri, not those slushy monstrosities.

We tried out other things from that book, but it was too all over the place. I'm not saying it's a bad book or anything -- it definitely served a purpose -- but it only had a very limited number of drink options for any given category and it became a hassle trying to get just the various base alcohols for the different drinks. That and we discovered that my wife really just likes rum. Rum for cocktails, not on its own. On its own, I'd much rather have whiskey, which I like straight, but I'm not going to drink rum on its own.

All of which led to my wife buying for me for our anniversary this year the book at the top of the post, Smuggler's Cove, a book all about tiki cocktails, most of which are made from rum. Nearly all, actually. Did you know that cocktails originated with rum? And, kind of, with pirates. This is why pirates beat ninjas. They fucking invented cocktails! That's free information; I don't know if it's in the book or not.

However, the book is full of all kinds of history, which I will get around to reading at some point. I just haven't had a chance yet. My attention has been on the cocktail recipes themselves, over 100 of them. My personal favorite, at least so far, is the Planter's Punch. Which is not exactly accurate, because the recipe in the book is just an example of -a- planter's punch. It was just a catchall name given to a class of drink of which there were endless variations because every plantation owner had their own specific recipe. My wife has discovered that she loves Mai Tais, which, by the way, despite its association with Hawaii, was invented right here in Oakland, California. Also, by the way, the Hawaiian version, which adds pineapple juice, is vastly inferior to the original, basic Mai Tai.

I'm actually a little upset with my book. My wife got me this nice hardcover copy of it, and it's a first edition, and I am going to wear the shit out of it. Not that I think this book will necessarily become valuable, but it ought to. It's that good.

Aside from being chock full of recipes, there is also a section about how to create your own cocktails. I've been fiddling around in there quite a bit and have devised two of my own that I find quite tasty. As I continue to experiment, I'll post my personal recipes here on the blog. However, I'm not going to share recipes from the book unless I've adapted it in some significant way.

None of the cocktails I'm making at the moment are as pretty as the ones in the picture above, but they are very good. At some point, I'll start working on presentation and figure out how to make drinks as pretty as those up top.

Anyway, if you're interested in cocktail making, especially rum and/or tiki drinks, I'd give this book a strong recommendation.

Well, this became more of an actual book review than I'd intended, but I guess that's okay. I'll have some cocktail recipes posted soon.