I've been couped up in the pantry all through winter making do with whatever I could find - dried leaves, marmalades, vegetables... well, no more: spring is upon us, everything is coming into life.
So far no real berries of fruits have come up, still waiting on pins and needles for that.
No need to lay idly by, though, where there is life and something is growing there is something you can put in a shaker and make into a delicious beverage.
And so, in April I've sought out three flavours I wanted to explore: Birch water, stinging nettle and dandelion... and I have cheated a little: I've already made a few cocktails from these, with great success, I'm happy to tell. In this entry I'll tell you more about my experience with birch water, saving till the next one a recipe for a really amazing cocktail using stinging nettles, Chivas Regal and pink grapefruit among other things... (haven't really found a name for it yet, so I'll save it for later and use it as a cliff hanger.
...is it working, are you getting anxious to know more?, are you? well, well, are you?...)
Introducing: Jørgen, my link to nature
Before I tell you more about the cocktail in itself, I feel it's only right that I introduce to you my pusher, Jørgen, father of Lærke and Jeppe who are the owners and creators of Karriere. Now, Jørgen, apart from being the general fixer-upper at Karriere, runs a small organic farm somewhere far, far, far from civilisation, which makes him perfect in my eyes...
But there is more. You see -for those of you who are not Danish- in Denmark we have a long tradition of doing snaps at home. Originally, of course, it was thought to have healing powers, as almost all other spirits and potions originally was construed for medicinal purposes.
The way that you make snaps is basically you get hold of a neutral spirit or an akvavit, depending on what you want it to taste like, to which you add flavouring agents - usually botanicals of some sort, but really anything goes... ( I once saw a snaps made on granit! ...as I said: anything goes!)
Now it's becoming a more and more forgotten craft even though some are still toying around with it and my generation and the younger generation generally have very little knowledge on the subject. Jørgen, fortunately, belongs to a generation that went out and picked herbs and leaves and did fun stuff with it. Yes, Jørgen has definately made a snaps or two in his lifetime.
This makes him the perfect supplier of botanicals for my experiments: If he doesn't have in the immediate surroundings of the farm he knows where we can find it, and when I tell him about my plans for using this-or-that leaf for such-and-such, sometimes it turns out he's done something similar once... Of course, other times he just grins like he thinks I'm out of my mind, tells me he'll get it for me and gets on with his business.
Bleeding Birch Trees
So, a few weeks ago I asked Jørgen if he could get me birch water:
For those of you who don't know - the birch tree will suck up water during the winter and store it for use in the spring when it needs the extra power to bloom. The water is very high on nutrients and vitamins good for all kinds of things, which is nice if you are very much into that sort of thing. Come April you can tap the water by cutting off a twig about a finger thick. The tree will slowly bleed a pint or two through the following day, all you need is to collect it. You have to take great care when you tap it, though: The water is extreme sensitive: It must not be exposed to light and will go bad almost immediately if you don't keep it cold . Kept in a 5 〫c environment it'll keep for about 4 days.
Jørgen, being a thorough kinda guy, came hauling a container of 15 litres of the precious tree-blood just a few days after...
The water itself has a slightly sweet taste with a hint of 'green' and minerals - don't know how to explain it, I'll just say it's very refreshing when served really cold.
I wanted to do as little to it as I possibly could, first trying out just adding the water to a Bombay Sapphire sour - Bombay Sapphire for obvious reasons: its mild flavours will not overpower the flavour the of the birch water, but still I liked the hint of the gin botanicals to help support the drink, add a little depth to the delight.
The flavour was really nice but the overall experience was a little 'flat': A nice soda Sipphon is a beautiful thing:
::BIRCH WATER COLLINS
40 ml Bombay Sapphire gin
20 ml lemon juice
20 ml sugar syrup
carbonated birch water
::in a shaker with ice shake all but the carbonated birch water for about 5 seconds, strain into a Collins glass. Add cubed ice and top up with carbonated birch tree water. Garnish with a lemon zest and -if they're in bloom yet- a nice baby birch leaf.
Probably my favourite summer cocktail so far! Too bad the trees are not giving water very much longer. In about a week or so I'll have to take it of the menu...
torsdag den 30. april 2009
tirsdag den 21. april 2009
Monster's Ball
For a very long time I've been playing with garnish as a 'taste modifier' I guess you could call it. The concept is a simple one - serving the drink with a snack of some sort that somehow compliments or changes the drink, either by adding more flavours, by enhancing certain tastes or by effecting the flavours in the drink. In its simplest form it could be serving a nice piece of chocolate with a specific cognac or serving a Tommy's Margarita with a bite of apple instead of the usual lime wedge.
Not in any way revolutionary, I know, but daaamn it can make for some exciting drinks. See, here's the problem with cocktails: there is a very real limit to how many flavours you can put in a single drink before the drink just tastes a mess; before the different tastes drown each other out and everything becomes undistinguishable, muddy and boring. More often than not simple is better. Here the garnish can help us out, though, in as much as it allows us to further add to or manipulate the layers of taste but still maintaining a simplicity and balance in the actual drink. We can do this because the different flavours are served independently.
One good example of this is the Monster's Ball. The Monster's Ball was born out of a strong need for something healthy... not really sure that's what I ended up with but who's counting!: It was winter, I was coming down with something, I could feel it coming. But I had no time to be sick so I did the only thing I knew how to: pulled out my inner witch doctor and started working on a miracle cure.
This recipe calls for large quantities of honey, ginger, Myers rum and fresh lemon juice, all ingredients that supposedly have a positive effect on the body... granted, my mum remains sceptic of my overall faith in the healing powers of rum. I maintain it's a matter of faith! -and seeing that I believe it so strongly I further added to the recipe a splash of Wray and Nephew over proof rum, just in case the illness sneaking up on me was in any way caused by evil spirits having negative hold on my body. Finally, I gave it a splash of ginger beer to make the mixture palatable. That was the Monster's Ball; A big, potent drink with power to breathe life in the sick and kill the living, packed with just as much flavour as it possibly could have without imploding, taste wise. And yet, the Monster's Ball wasn't really complete, taste wise - oh yes, it's a nice enough drink but nothing truly exceptional without the garnish which dawned on me several months later: a spear made from thick liquorice syrup dipped in freeze dried raspberries!
Monster's Ball
50 ml Myers rum
10 ml Wray and Nephew Over proof
15 ml lemon juice
15 ml ginger juice (I just run ginger through a juicer!- you might need to cut it with a little sugar and water)
20 ml honey syrup (honey cut with hot water, 1:1 ratio)
Jamaican ginger beer
- in a shaker and shake with ice. Strain into a double rocks glass. Fill with ice cubes, top with ginger beer (Old Jamaican) - about 40 ml
Garnish: Johan Bülow salmiak liquorice syrup - dip a straw in there. By chilling the paste against an ice cube it will solidify a little and that'll keep it from running. Now, dip it in freeze dried raspberries and put on the drink as garnish.
Not in any way revolutionary, I know, but daaamn it can make for some exciting drinks. See, here's the problem with cocktails: there is a very real limit to how many flavours you can put in a single drink before the drink just tastes a mess; before the different tastes drown each other out and everything becomes undistinguishable, muddy and boring. More often than not simple is better. Here the garnish can help us out, though, in as much as it allows us to further add to or manipulate the layers of taste but still maintaining a simplicity and balance in the actual drink. We can do this because the different flavours are served independently.
One good example of this is the Monster's Ball. The Monster's Ball was born out of a strong need for something healthy... not really sure that's what I ended up with but who's counting!: It was winter, I was coming down with something, I could feel it coming. But I had no time to be sick so I did the only thing I knew how to: pulled out my inner witch doctor and started working on a miracle cure.
This recipe calls for large quantities of honey, ginger, Myers rum and fresh lemon juice, all ingredients that supposedly have a positive effect on the body... granted, my mum remains sceptic of my overall faith in the healing powers of rum. I maintain it's a matter of faith! -and seeing that I believe it so strongly I further added to the recipe a splash of Wray and Nephew over proof rum, just in case the illness sneaking up on me was in any way caused by evil spirits having negative hold on my body. Finally, I gave it a splash of ginger beer to make the mixture palatable. That was the Monster's Ball; A big, potent drink with power to breathe life in the sick and kill the living, packed with just as much flavour as it possibly could have without imploding, taste wise. And yet, the Monster's Ball wasn't really complete, taste wise - oh yes, it's a nice enough drink but nothing truly exceptional without the garnish which dawned on me several months later: a spear made from thick liquorice syrup dipped in freeze dried raspberries!
Monster's Ball
50 ml Myers rum
10 ml Wray and Nephew Over proof
15 ml lemon juice
15 ml ginger juice (I just run ginger through a juicer!- you might need to cut it with a little sugar and water)
20 ml honey syrup (honey cut with hot water, 1:1 ratio)
Jamaican ginger beer
- in a shaker and shake with ice. Strain into a double rocks glass. Fill with ice cubes, top with ginger beer (Old Jamaican) - about 40 ml
Garnish: Johan Bülow salmiak liquorice syrup - dip a straw in there. By chilling the paste against an ice cube it will solidify a little and that'll keep it from running. Now, dip it in freeze dried raspberries and put on the drink as garnish.
Enjoy!
torsdag den 16. april 2009
...before you go-go; have a red cow
Akvavit can be a very crude product. It is, basically, a neutral spirit flavoured with different herbs and spices like cumin, araway seeds, anise, dill, fennel and coriander seeds. It's a somewhat nice thing to drink with rich food, especially fatty fish ...or you can just drink it as shots, although much less enjoyable - an aqquired taste, to say the least.
I recently had to explain the phenomenon to a british reporter and -to try and give him a sort of idea of what kind of spirit akvavit is- parallelled it with gin, in as much as it is a neutral spirit flavoured with different botanicals. Of course, I know that the two products are only distant cousins: granted, both are in some form neutral spirit flavoured with botanicals of some sort, but the botanicals are very different, the flavouring process is different, the after-flavouring treatment is different, the overall result is different... Never the less, for the sake of giving him a direction, I decided to go with this comparison.
Anyways, reason why I brought up this british reporter - oh yes, there was a reason!- is that I wanted him to try a cocktail of mine, the '...before you go go'; a rich combination of akvavit, espresso, sugar syrup and baileys, with some tricks and trinckets on the side. Now, he had never heard of this 'akvavit'-thing. An explanation was required and the only parallel I could think of was 'gin, only with cummin as main ingredient.' Oddly enough, the combination of espresso and cumin didn't really strike him as a winning one, I could tell from him facial expression. I figure d I could win him over, but the more I revealed of the ingredients, the more he decided he propably wouldn't like it... I finally destroyed all hope of getting him to actually order one when I told him that I garnish the drink with liquorice crystals. In restrospect definately a bad idea, then again, how could I have known that, earlier, he had tried some danish liquorice( 'piratos'! - really harsch stuff! ) that had nearly killed him. In his mind he kind of just put one of those on top of a drink that couldn't possibly work as it where. No way was he ever going for that one!
He did, however, let me make the drink for him just as a taster. He told me afterwards he was really glad he did :D
'...Before you go go'
20 ml Aalborg jubilæums akvavit ( one that's not too heavy on the cumin! jubilæum is nice and mild)
20 ml Bailey's
35 ml cold espresso
20 sugar syrup
- start by chilling your cocktail glass: leave it in a freezer for half an hour before use, or second-best: fill it with crushed ice and a little water and leave it while you make you drink. Now, everything goes in the shaker, shake with ice for about 5-7 seconds. Empty the glass of ice before straining the drink into it. As garnish I use high quality liquorice crystals from Johan Bülow Liquorice which really brings it all together and emphazises the different flavours more than just adding a layer of liquorice.
I have different reactions when I serve this but non of them have been negative, I'm happy to say. It has taken me by surprise the times that a guest has asked for more akvavit in it - some find that the akvavit is too masked; If it's an akvavit drink they're having then akvavit should more or less stand up out of the glass and punch them straight in the mouth. Should that be the case with you just add another 5 or 10 ml ( or more!) to the recipe, or trade in the Jubilæum for a heavier flavoured akvavit.
...
... while we're on the subject: here's a cocktail using a much more heavily flavored, cummin based akvavit:
Basically, it's a danish mutation of the 'gin gin mule', a contemporary classic cocktail made by the libation goddess Audrey Saunders from New York's Pegu Club. ...Except, it's not a mule, as the name reveals: it's a cow! A danish cow, and an angry one at that - kicking, and breathing with gingery fire.
'Red Cow'
6 mint leaves
50 ml Rød Aalborg Taffel akvavit
15 ml lime juice
15 ml sugar syrup
10 ml unsweetened, uncut ginger juice ( ginger - put through a juicer)
'Fever Tree' ginger ale
-Shake, not too roughly or you'll kill the mint!, for about 5-7 seconds, close the strainer tight ( or finestrain) and strain into a highball glass/ double rocks. Fill with ice cubes and top off with ginger ale ( I now use fever tree). Served with a mint sprig in your face and a lime wedge on the side.
Two very different, but very nice cocktails using akvavit... enjoy!
Easy Jack'o
The 'Easy Jack'o' was my attempt at creating something that would chance my view on pumpkin - I really dislike... or actually, I don't; I just really find the whole experience really bland and boring. I'm glad to report that pumpkin in cocktails can actually be a surprisingly nice experience, indeed.
Now, as we are approaching May, I have had to take the 'Easy Jack'o' of the Karriere menu on account of pumpkins being out of season. But it was a perfect ingredient for the season, and for a winter-ish kind of cocktail that baked pumpkin-flavor worked beautifully. I'm really sorry to see it go.
The way forward was a bit strange with this cocktail because I knew in my heart that this would never work ( because I really don't like pumkin). It couldn't! I had, however, read something about someone using pumpkin in 'Imbibe' magazine, I think it was, and as it turned out the kitchen at Karriere was planning to use it in one of their dishes. Now that it was readily available I decided to give it a shot.
To even get it ready for human consumption pumpkin has to be prepared, either cooked or baked. I figured I wanted as much of the flavour still in the pumpkin so I baked the thing. - cooking it in water kinda wash out the flavours a little. I had different types of pumpkins that I tried, some tasted exactly as bland and boring as I had imagined. Others, one in particular, kinda surprised me: nice, honey-like sweetness to it that was easy to translate into something drinkable. Finally, settling on Hokkaido ( -not at all scandinavian, I know!), I started out playing with bubbly - had an idea for a champagne cocktail that in my mind just sounded so much better than the actual results I got... (I must just say at this point that I'm not a huge fan of champagne cocktails either - I have tasted very few that really spoke to me so maybe I was just doomed to fail in this endeaveour). I got one decent drink out of it which tasted remarkably like a mimosa -very much orange flavour in it, despite the fact that no orange what-so-ever had been used- but nothing spectacular. The orange'y flavours combined with the inert honey-sweetness kinda got me thinking, though, got me thinking of tequila. I changed goals, going for a margarita-style drink instead...
I had, however, decided on this drink to be one of two sparkling cocktail on the winter menu- the sparkles and the velvety feel of the hokkaido worked nicely and was worthy of an exploration. Beer would be my solution:
::
'Easy Jack'o'
Hokkaido Puré:
1 hokkaido ( ca 250 g after baked)
120 ml agave syrup
60 ml tequila
60 ml water
a pinch of salt
-peel and cut the hokkaido in cubes and bake until good and tender - about 20 minutes at 160 〫c. Puré it with the other ingredients. The hokkaidos I got gave very different results, both in the texture of the puré and flavour so you'll maybe not get it right right away. The only real test is using it in a cocktail - see if it give a nice balance... sorry I can't be more helpfull.
the drink:
40 ml 100 % agave tequila blanco
20 ml lime juice
50 ml puré
30 ml pilsner (I used Carlsberg - worked fine)
::In a shaker, combine the first three ingrediens and shake for about 5 seconds. Over dilution is you enemy here. You need to strain and fine strain it on account that the pumpkin has a weird texture, kinda feel like tiny little pieces of fibers in your mouth... which it probably is. Fine straining it takes that away. Top off with beer and serve on the rocks. Straws, in this case, optional, with a lime wedge on the side.
If you really want to be ambitious - I was planning to be, but never really had the time to effectuate - take the seeds from the pumpkin, roast it lightly. When it's almost done pour a little salted water on there and keep heating until the water has evaporated. Apparently that little trick brings out that pumpkin-flavour from the seeds, and ( as an added bonus) when the water evaporates it leaves the seeds nicely salted. Original plan was to serve a couple of these with the drink. We'll do that next year ;)
Now, as we are approaching May, I have had to take the 'Easy Jack'o' of the Karriere menu on account of pumpkins being out of season. But it was a perfect ingredient for the season, and for a winter-ish kind of cocktail that baked pumpkin-flavor worked beautifully. I'm really sorry to see it go.
The way forward was a bit strange with this cocktail because I knew in my heart that this would never work ( because I really don't like pumkin). It couldn't! I had, however, read something about someone using pumpkin in 'Imbibe' magazine, I think it was, and as it turned out the kitchen at Karriere was planning to use it in one of their dishes. Now that it was readily available I decided to give it a shot.
To even get it ready for human consumption pumpkin has to be prepared, either cooked or baked. I figured I wanted as much of the flavour still in the pumpkin so I baked the thing. - cooking it in water kinda wash out the flavours a little. I had different types of pumpkins that I tried, some tasted exactly as bland and boring as I had imagined. Others, one in particular, kinda surprised me: nice, honey-like sweetness to it that was easy to translate into something drinkable. Finally, settling on Hokkaido ( -not at all scandinavian, I know!), I started out playing with bubbly - had an idea for a champagne cocktail that in my mind just sounded so much better than the actual results I got... (I must just say at this point that I'm not a huge fan of champagne cocktails either - I have tasted very few that really spoke to me so maybe I was just doomed to fail in this endeaveour). I got one decent drink out of it which tasted remarkably like a mimosa -very much orange flavour in it, despite the fact that no orange what-so-ever had been used- but nothing spectacular. The orange'y flavours combined with the inert honey-sweetness kinda got me thinking, though, got me thinking of tequila. I changed goals, going for a margarita-style drink instead...
I had, however, decided on this drink to be one of two sparkling cocktail on the winter menu- the sparkles and the velvety feel of the hokkaido worked nicely and was worthy of an exploration. Beer would be my solution:
::
'Easy Jack'o'
Hokkaido Puré:
1 hokkaido ( ca 250 g after baked)
120 ml agave syrup
60 ml tequila
60 ml water
a pinch of salt
-peel and cut the hokkaido in cubes and bake until good and tender - about 20 minutes at 160 〫c. Puré it with the other ingredients. The hokkaidos I got gave very different results, both in the texture of the puré and flavour so you'll maybe not get it right right away. The only real test is using it in a cocktail - see if it give a nice balance... sorry I can't be more helpfull.
the drink:
40 ml 100 % agave tequila blanco
20 ml lime juice
50 ml puré
30 ml pilsner (I used Carlsberg - worked fine)
::In a shaker, combine the first three ingrediens and shake for about 5 seconds. Over dilution is you enemy here. You need to strain and fine strain it on account that the pumpkin has a weird texture, kinda feel like tiny little pieces of fibers in your mouth... which it probably is. Fine straining it takes that away. Top off with beer and serve on the rocks. Straws, in this case, optional, with a lime wedge on the side.
If you really want to be ambitious - I was planning to be, but never really had the time to effectuate - take the seeds from the pumpkin, roast it lightly. When it's almost done pour a little salted water on there and keep heating until the water has evaporated. Apparently that little trick brings out that pumpkin-flavour from the seeds, and ( as an added bonus) when the water evaporates it leaves the seeds nicely salted. Original plan was to serve a couple of these with the drink. We'll do that next year ;)
"voyeur baby"
ooh, I love this drink. It was the first one I created at karriere and one that I am very proud of indeed. Perfect for all seasons, fresh but with depth so even the most demanding palate will find something in here... Or at least I do...
The start out was a cilantro granité that the kitchen used at one point ( for those who don't know, granité is basically flavoured shaved ice or sherbet, more or less...). Really nice flavor, very sweet with a hint of cilantro. Of course, I wouldn't eat a lot of it on its own, but as an ingredient I could easily imagine it work in a cocktail, and the granité as such appealed to me in big way: I basically wanted to make a drink that you would have to drink through the layer of granité to get a nice and balanced drink - my rebellion against everybody drinking everything with straws, you could say...
I had previously made a cilantro-based non alcoholic drink using apple which worked beautifully - if I ever recover the recipe for it I'll post it ;) - so that seemed like a good place to start.
From there it took me about a half a minute to figure out the remaining ingredients: I wanted the herbaciousness, that green taste that originally caught my attention in the granité... green and herby, oh, what could it be...
...
'Voyeur Baby'
the drink
20 ml fresh lime juice
15 ml sugar syrup ( ratio: 1:1)
4 mint leaves
35 ml fresh apple juice
30 green chartreuse
a splash of soda
Granité:
1 stalk of cilantro
1 litre of sugar syrup
1/2 tsp salt
33cl sparkling water
- run the cilantro through a juicer, mix the juice with the rest of the ingredients. Have no juicer? no worries; blend everything - just remember to filter it thoroughly. Put it in the freezer for a few hours, stir in it occasionally. Then, just scrape/ shave off the amount that you need...
...
::build the drink in a highball, just bruising the mint ( don't muddle the hell out of it! please...), add crushed ice and swizzle. Finally, put about a 1cm-thick layer of the granité on top, garnish with a sprig of mint and a bite of apple and NO STRAWS.
-what with the name?: it's named after a work of art made by Janett Cardiff and George Miller called 'I'm a voyeur, baby'. This is basically an installation in one of the tables at Karriere, that constantly records sounds and stream it to the Karriere web page, allowing you to listen in on what's going on at that table at all times (mind you, we're only open fridays and saturdays at the moment, so listening in on a monday will be kind of a lame experience). The drink is kinda lurking from under the cover of the granité, it seemed appropriate...
Perfect, drink done... almost:
- the recipe above is the original design. Unfortunately ( hopefully, some professionals out are reading this, some of which will recognize a fatal flaw in my planning), the whole 'scraping of the ice'-bit takes a wee bit longer than I was willing to spend on a busy saturday night at Karriere. Besides, we have no fancy equipment like freezeers in the bar so you'd have to run to basement to get the granité... When I was thinking of how to do the drink I was hoping that a couple of bar-sized freezers would come flying through the window saving my brilliant plan, that would have been neat. Alas, no such luck yet. But that would made it possible to use the granité - just crush the ice beforehand and keep on frost.
Instead, I just sprinkle about 10 ml of the non frozen cilantro-sugar syrup over the drink. Being that it's made on crush ice it creates a similar effect. Funny, though, that what initially made me do the drink had to go in the final scheme of things...
The start out was a cilantro granité that the kitchen used at one point ( for those who don't know, granité is basically flavoured shaved ice or sherbet, more or less...). Really nice flavor, very sweet with a hint of cilantro. Of course, I wouldn't eat a lot of it on its own, but as an ingredient I could easily imagine it work in a cocktail, and the granité as such appealed to me in big way: I basically wanted to make a drink that you would have to drink through the layer of granité to get a nice and balanced drink - my rebellion against everybody drinking everything with straws, you could say...
I had previously made a cilantro-based non alcoholic drink using apple which worked beautifully - if I ever recover the recipe for it I'll post it ;) - so that seemed like a good place to start.
From there it took me about a half a minute to figure out the remaining ingredients: I wanted the herbaciousness, that green taste that originally caught my attention in the granité... green and herby, oh, what could it be...
'Voyeur Baby'
the drink
20 ml fresh lime juice
15 ml sugar syrup ( ratio: 1:1)
4 mint leaves
35 ml fresh apple juice
30 green chartreuse
a splash of soda
Granité:
1 stalk of cilantro
1 litre of sugar syrup
1/2 tsp salt
33cl sparkling water
- run the cilantro through a juicer, mix the juice with the rest of the ingredients. Have no juicer? no worries; blend everything - just remember to filter it thoroughly. Put it in the freezer for a few hours, stir in it occasionally. Then, just scrape/ shave off the amount that you need...
...
::build the drink in a highball, just bruising the mint ( don't muddle the hell out of it! please...), add crushed ice and swizzle. Finally, put about a 1cm-thick layer of the granité on top, garnish with a sprig of mint and a bite of apple and NO STRAWS.
-what with the name?: it's named after a work of art made by Janett Cardiff and George Miller called 'I'm a voyeur, baby'. This is basically an installation in one of the tables at Karriere, that constantly records sounds and stream it to the Karriere web page, allowing you to listen in on what's going on at that table at all times (mind you, we're only open fridays and saturdays at the moment, so listening in on a monday will be kind of a lame experience). The drink is kinda lurking from under the cover of the granité, it seemed appropriate...
Perfect, drink done... almost:
- the recipe above is the original design. Unfortunately ( hopefully, some professionals out are reading this, some of which will recognize a fatal flaw in my planning), the whole 'scraping of the ice'-bit takes a wee bit longer than I was willing to spend on a busy saturday night at Karriere. Besides, we have no fancy equipment like freezeers in the bar so you'd have to run to basement to get the granité... When I was thinking of how to do the drink I was hoping that a couple of bar-sized freezers would come flying through the window saving my brilliant plan, that would have been neat. Alas, no such luck yet. But that would made it possible to use the granité - just crush the ice beforehand and keep on frost.
Instead, I just sprinkle about 10 ml of the non frozen cilantro-sugar syrup over the drink. Being that it's made on crush ice it creates a similar effect. Funny, though, that what initially made me do the drink had to go in the final scheme of things...
welcome to karriere
First and foremost, this is my blog. I will use it to write about the things that I make for and at karriere bar. As such it is in no way affiliated with Karriere in any meaningful way - I just write about cocktails and drinks. If you want to praise, complaint, make reservations etc this is not the forum. With that said:Welcome to the karriere universe of drinks and cocktails. This blog is inteded to give you a glimpse of what I am doing behind the bar at karriere bar.
For those of you who do not know about karriere, it's a bar (also serving food and coffees) situated in the meat packing district in Copenhagen, Denmark.
::ART
In my perception Karriere is an extremely exciting and vibrant venue both to visit and to inhabit ( I kinda live here now ;) ): the list of world class artists that have participated in the overall visual and functional design of the place is enough to take your breath away - they and their individual contributions and their functionality and meaning have constructed this quite unique social space where art both surround you and participates in everything you do - sometimes the art even takes over and controls you through the night. Best part - you don't even really know it's there, untill you find yourself going "...hmmmmm?!". Fun stuff.
::FOOD
The other big thing is - well, was! - the kitchen, up until recently run by two very brilliant young chefs, Lena and Astrid. Their big idea was very closely related to Denmark and the produce that we have here. Ofcourse it was organic! And it was all about seasonal ingredients - they even whent out to a farm somewhere and picked their own vegetables. It made for some fantastic food, I can tell you. Unfortunately we had to close down the kitchen - at that time I had already conformed the bar concept to these two influences: the art and the danish ingredients.
::DANISH
A quick word on the whole 'danish ingredients'-thing: The kitchen at Karriere went all the way - everything Danish! In the bar I do not! First of all, I understand perfectly well that the whole 'locally produced ingredients' mantra is a very weird construction seeing that everybody, everywhere in the world can more or less get anything all year around by now. Even speaking of a such division in regards to cocktails and Denmark is kind of stupid as modern cocktails are more or less depending on citrus fruit, not remotely close to ever having been grown in Denmark. I have not even touched on the vast amount of quality products -spirits - I would have to exclude on account of not being from Denmark; I would only have akvavit and Heering left?!
Still, there is something fundamentally wrong in making ( and even more so: drinking!) a strawberry daiquiri in the middle of winter. Don't know what rubs me worse; the fact that we instead of waiting for the good stuff use both synthetic flavours and watery strawberries flown in from southern parts of europe as substitute for the supreme taste of ripe, scandinavian berries; or the fact that after you have that last sip of your if-summer-was-a-cocktail drink you put on snowboots and thirty layers of clothes to keep you from freezing to death on your way home. In either case I'd rather just wait for the right time and ingredients, and find something else to play with in the meantime. Trust me, once I got a look inside the local pantry I realized there is plenty of stuff to throw in that shaker even during winter. As an extra bonus to following the seasons : they more or less provide me with what taste great in that particular season.
::THE PARTY
A third factor in play at Karriere that has a huge say in what I do and can ( read: must!) do in regards to the drinks and cocktails is the sheer number of guests: Today, a year-and-a-half after opening, we still get between 1100 and 1500 guests coming through on both a friday and saturday. And most of these people come to jump like spastic-gymnastics on speed. As a result the guests are thirsty, they crave easily drunk, refreshing drinks - the mojito, in particular! And the sheer number puts a massive presure on the bar to produce ( produce!).
::SO...
All drinks have to be easily made for the bartender and be able to substitute, let's say, a mojito for that refreshing feel, still without straying from that golden rule of thumb: nordic twists and inspiration. And at all times the menu must include a drink that, for this reason or another, can make the guest go "..hmmmmm?!"...
So there you have it, that's the mission and this is where you can read all about it...
cheers,
Abonner på:
Opslag (Atom)
