The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern_ Knockout Dishes With Down-Home Flavor - Matt Lee [9]
Don’t break the bank on fine champagne for the Lowcountry pousse-rapière—after all, you’ll be doctoring the champagne with plum brandy. What’s required is a lively sparkling wine, and there are plenty of inexpensive ones in the marketplace—for delicious deals, look for cavas from Spain, proseccos from Italy, or mousseux from France’s Loire Valley. We’ve found the excellent Italian prosecco Zardetto on sale for $3.99 a bottle!
¼ cup Brandied Plum syrup
1 whole Brandied Plum, cut into slender wedges, for garnish
One 750 ml bottle dry sparkling white wine
Pour the plum syrup into 4 champagne flutes or wineglasses, and add a wedge or two of brandied plum to each. Top up with the sparkling wine, and serve.
SPICED RUM-N-COKES
serves 8, with some spiced rum left over • TIME: 5 minutes preparation, 2 hours marination
A little spice and citrus (and a really rumsy, caramel-tinted rum, like Mount Gay) make all the difference in our amped-up version of rum and coke—or Cuba Libre, if you prefer. Many colas seem to hint at clove flavor already, so we make it explicit by marinating 25 of the dried flower buds known as cloves (Syzigium aromaticum, native to Indonesia), and some strips of orange peel in the rum. After a couple hours, the alcohol dissolves the clove and orange oils, liberating them for deployment in this awesome tropical cocktail. The effect is subtle, elegant, and worth the tiny bit of effort.
1 navel orange
25 whole cloves, selected for the longest stems
One 750 ml bottle wood-aged 80- to 90-proof rum, such as Mount Gay or Barbancourt 8-year
Two 12-ounce cans cola
2 limes, cut into wedges, for garnish (optional)
1 Slice the orange crosswise into ¾-inch-thick disks. Then, using a paring knife, remove the peel in a single strip from the three largest disks. Stud each peel down its center line with cloves, every ¾ inch or so, until it resembles a punk wristband. Eat the orange, and then trim a few curls of spare orange peel to use as garnish.
2 Place the clove-studded peels in the bottom of a carafe or pitcher, and decant the rum into the carafe, reserving the bottle and its cap for later. Allow the rum to marinate for 2 hours.
3 Decant the contents of the carafe back into the bottle. Discard the orange peels.
4 To serve, fill tall slender glasses or faceted cocktail tumblers with ice cubes, and add 2 or 3 ounces of the seasoned rum to each glass. Top with cola, and garnish with a curl of orange peel and a lime wedge. (The leftover seasoned rum will keep for a year or more.)
PURPLE JESUS (“PJ”)
serves 8 • TIME: 10 minutes preparation, overnight marination
Ah, where to begin? In the South, and especially on college campuses, a popular party trick is to fill a bathtub or plastic garbage can with “Purple Jesus,” a blend of rotgut liquor, citrus fruit, and grape Kool-Aid. It’s a colorful tradition, which begins festively enough and rarely ends well. There are many variations on the formula—adding a high-top sneaker to the brew is customary in certain subregions.
Our version embraces the basic flavor profile of Purple Jesus but brings it out of the frat house and into the faculty club. We like to compare the flavor of our vodka-based PJ to a homemade Campari, with deep and bold black-fruit flavors, an appetizingly bitter edge, and an affinity for blending with sparkling water.
8 ounces cherries, preferably black
1 navel orange
½ grapefruit
1 pint blackberries, rinsed and shaken dry
One 750 ml bottle vodka
Seltzer water or club soda, for serving
1 Keep 8 cherries, stems on, aside for garnish. Stem, halve, and pit the rest. Put the pitted cherry halves in a large carafe or pitcher. Cut 8 thin curls of orange peel from the orange, and set them aside in a small covered dish in the refrigerator. Peel the orange and the grapefruit; slice the fruits crosswise, and add to the pitcher along with the blackberries. Pour in the vodka. Cover, and refrigerate overnight.
2 Strain the vodka and discard the fruit. Fill cocktail glasses