It’s amazing what a couple of weeks of sun, showers, and non-freezing temperatures can do for mint. Suzen shrieks, “It’s a weed. We have to cut it back before it takes over the garden.” I reply, “How many drinks can we make?”
I really think I have perfected the mojito: the secret is freshness and sweetness. The standard mojito calls for lime juice but I prefer the sweetness of lemon juice. And for the mint, well, you can’t top the intense scent of fresh mint that five minutes ago was in the ground and now is being muddled. The aroma from a dozen leaves can fill the kitchen.
I’ve experimented making this drink with mint-flavored sugar syrup, but I think it’s better with standard sugar syrup and allowing the mint flavor to come from freshly selected leaves.
Most mojito recipes call for topping the drink off with club soda, and I’ve put that option here. With the club soda, the drink is sobered a tad. And I suppose classier to some palettes. But after a long week spent drinking only Pepsi, I look forward to Friday night and a stiff cocktail strong enough to move barbells. So, I leave the club soda out.
Go hunting in your yard for some mint, grab some rum, and enjoy.
Brian’s Lemon Mojito
Yield: 2 large drinks
Ingredients:
12-15 mint leaves, freshly picked, rinsed clean and patted dry
1 tablespoon sugar
4 ounces plain sugar syrup
3 ounces fresh lemon juice, reserving one of the juiced lemon halves
6 ounces white rum
10 ice cubes
⅓ cup super fine sugar
1 cup shaved ice
2 ounces club soda [optional]
Preparation:
Place the mint leaves in a steel cocktail shaker, add the tablespoon of sugar, and muddle for 2 minutes.
Add the sugar syrup, lemon juice, and rum into the cocktail shaker along with enough ice cubes to fill the shaker. Shake until thoroughly chilled [that’s about 20 vigorous shakes]. Set the cocktail shaker aside.
On a plate, spread the super fine sugar into a circle on a dish; the circle should have the same diameter as your cocktail glasses. Take one of the juice lemon halves and run it around the rim of two cocktail glasses. Immediately dip the rims into the super fine sugar. Do not be delicate here; get a solid coating of sugar on both sides of the rim.
Add the shaved ice to each cocktail glass. Pour in the mojito from the cocktail shaker. Top, if you wish, with club soda. Drink fervently.
Source: Brian O’Rourke
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Here’s a distinctive variation of the mojito cocktail.
To begin, I am the dream customer for product packagers. I see something on the shelf and I’m very likely to grab it without fully understanding what that product really is. But the packaging is so seductive that I succumb.
It can be embarrassing. In a liqueur store, I saw a bottle of something called Tuaca, with a complicated brownish something label, and the name sounded South American to me. This had to be a cousin of Kahlua and I’m always up for a cocktail experiment.
Only when I got home did I read the label. Italian liqueur. A very good liqueur. Mythology has the recipe for this golden substance dating back to the Renaissance. The liqueur is bottled in Livorno Italy by families who, of course, guard their recipe. The base is brandy, augmented with orange and vanilla flavors, plus certainly some herbs and spices. The dominant flavor is said by many to be vanilla but I find it richer than that. Straight up, without ice, you sense a Scotch or Drambuie flavor. Over ice, or over ice cream, it is refreshingly potent.
To increase their sales, the website at www.tuaca.com has added a number of cocktail recipes. Their version of the mojito, dubbed a Tuacito, is presented below. It’s very interesting for multiple reasons. First, I appreciate the honesty of the Tuaca firm. Rather than base the drink strictly on their liqueur, they keep the rum base for the mojito and use Tuaca just to modify the flavor. And the modification is significant. The high mint flavor of the mojito is muted in this drink, not dulled, just pushed into the background. The vanilla and herb overtones of the Tuaca combine with that mint to create a more complex, yet smooth cocktail.
This is a delicious drink and I invite you to give it a try. I’ll be testing other cocktails from the Tuaca website and giving you updates. Here I’ve modified the proportions a bit from the original. Their recipe calls for proportions by “part” which I take to mean “1 ounce.” I consider the club soda to be optional, to be added only if you desire to slightly mute the strength of the cocktail.
Tuaca Tuacito
Yield: 1 cocktail
Ingredients:
1 part Tuaca liqueur
6-8 mint leaves
1part fresh=squeezed lemon juice
1 part simple sugar syrup
2 parts light rum
1 part club soda [optional]
Preparation:
Add the mint, lemon and sugar syrup to a shaker and lightly muddle. Add ice and all the remaining ingredients except for the soda. Shake and strain into a highball glass with fresh ice. Top with club soda if you desire. Garnish with a mint sprig and a lemon wheel
Source: Adopted from www.tuaca.com
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