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.

Enjoy!

...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 ;)

Read more >> Options >>

"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...