Mixology Monday: Road to Mandalay

Is it already that time again? Nothing like a Mixology Monday cocktail recipe challenge to shake things up! 
This month's theme comes from Scott Diaz of Shake, Strain & Sip, challenging the pretense of today's über-craft bar scene: 
"The evolution of the cocktail has been a wondrous, and sometimes, frightful journey... But with all this focus on 'craft' ingredients and classic tools & form, it seems we have become somewhat pretentious... As such, this month's MxMo LXXI theme, From Crass to Craft, will focus on concocting a craft cocktail worthy of not only MxMo but any trendy bar, using dubious and otherwise shunned ingredients to sprout forth a craft cocktail that no one could deny is anything less."

In the back of every liquor cabinet lives a dark secret. It is usually very old, always sticky to the touch, and often times... Blue. Oh yes. Blue Curaçao. More commonly found in the tenure of tiki-philes like myself,  the blue devil still causes a blush (or excuse) upon discovery. Unfortunate really, as the liqueur flavored with the dried peel of the laraha citrus fruit, from the island of Curaçao, is not completely untasteful. Yet it is often unnecessarily dyed the most unnatural shade of blue. Craft? We'll see...

Burma's Pegu Club, set just outside of Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar), is probably best remembered by its legacy, the Pegu Club Cocktail. This ginny signature drink was sipped by its exclusive ex-pat members, mostly wealthy businessmen and military officials, as far back as 1866. First printed in "Barflies and Cocktails" by Harry McElhone in 1927, the recipe has only more recently resurged from obsolescence in Myanmar, now served in several historic colonial hotels in Yangon, as well as on the Road to Mandalay, an Orient Express cruise boat on the Irrawaddy River.

The latter is the namesake for my cerulean adaptation (the original Pegu Club calls for unvaried Curaçao). And given the fact that the cocktail was originally named after the Pegu River, I actually find blue befitting for the cocktail. 

Road to Mandalay

2 oz Gin
3/4 oz Blue Curaçao
1/2 oz Lime
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1 dash Orange Bitters

Add all ingredients to a shaker, fill with ice, and shake well.
Strain into a chilled coupe. If desired, garnish with a grapefruit peel.

A tart refreshing cocktail best sipped out of doors, there is hardly a cloying note to be found. Lick it up, haters. Lick. It. Up.

Thank you Scott for an entertaining Mixology Monday challenge! Check out the round up of submissions here, and visit the original MxMo LXXI announcement post here.

Mixology Monday: The Tigress

It blows my mind that it has taken my this long this participate in the renowned Mixology Monday. However, in light of the kooky cocktail hijinks I have been up to lately, I am happy that my first is this month's theme dreamt up by Stewart Putney of Putney Farm: "Inverted."
Inspired by Julia Child's upside-down or "inverted" Martini preference, Stewart wrote "What does 'inverted' really mean? Well, here is the definition, 'To turn inside out or upside down; to reverse the position, order, or condition of.' Hmm... It seems that 'inverted' really just means something 'flipped on its head'. And that can mean almost anything, and leaves plenty of room for creativity... You can invert the ratios of spirits, liqueurs or bitters in a cocktail, but we suggest you go beyond that and 'invert' whatever you want."

Refined. Elegant. Subtle.
Not words generally associated with what we lovingly call tiki.
But why not? Tiki's fine aged rums, specialty liqueurs and complex flavor profiles are every bit considered as a perfectly balanced Martinez or Sazerac, and in their heyday, just as glamorous. As winter tiki has been on my mind a lot lately (and not just because it was 82 degrees this February day), my task was plain. So I looked to the boozy classics, the Mai Tai, Zombie, Scorpion, Planter's Punch, Test Pilot, Sunakora and Three Dots and a Dash to cull a deeply flavorful aromatic tiki cocktail. That's right - no fruit, no juice, no freaky garnish. And by golly, it was easier than I expected.

The Tigress

1 oz Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
3/4 oz Lemon Hart Demerara rum
1/2 oz pineapple cordial*
1/4 oz St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
2 dashes Bittercube blackstrap bitters

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass over ice and stir well.
Strain into a chilled coupe and express oils from an orange peel over top, adding it to the glass as a garnish.

*For the pineapple cordial:
Fill a pint canning jar with freshly cut pineapple pieces. Pour in an ounce of Amaretto, and fill the remaining space with gold Barbados rum (such as Mount Gay). Seal and keep in a cool dark place for at least a week, agitating every day or so. Strain through a fine mesh sieve to extract any and all fruit pulp before use.

Fruity and rummy on the nose, smooth drinking, with a mellow spicy aftertaste. It's totally tiki, but fit for a speakeasy. Of course, as with all tiki recipes, the ingredients are key. Substituting rums will yield considerably different results, and in this case, the bold flavors of the Smith & Cross and Lemon Hart carry more than their weight (especially considering this cocktail is 100% liquor). So enjoy! And thank you Stewart for a fun and inviting first Mixology Monday!

Visit the original announcement post here, and the full Mixology Monday LXX Roundup: Inverted here! So many awesome and creative submissions I will be trying out...

For further inversion of winter tiki, check out my Hot Grog recipe from the Winter Warmer episode of my podcast, The Table Set. (Hot tiki? You bet!)