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Pickled Grapes Make Great Garnish

In today's post at FineCooking.com, I've printed the recipe for pickled grapes from Karen Solomon, author of Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It: And Other Kitchen Projects. 

They are really delicious. I had some for breakfast. 

The recipe is here.

A Whipped Cream Frenzy

Though dessert and pastry-flavored liqueurs are all the rage these days, I am amazed at the amount of alcoholic whipped cream products coming out.

There are now at least two brands of whipped cream flavored vodka (Burnett's Whipped Cream flavored vodka and Pinnacle Whipped Vodka) and two brands of alcoholic whipped cream (Whipped Lightning and Cream Alcoholic Whipped Cream).

I can imagine college bars will soon start serving shots of the whipped cream vodka with alcoholic whipped cream on top. Woooot!

 

 

Great Garnish (And Ice) With Alex Kratena of the Artesian Bar in London

As part of the Bacardi Global Legacy Cocktail Competition, the ten competing bartenders underwent three days of education in London before flying to Barcelona for the big event. I was along for the ride.

On our first day, Alex Kratena of the Artesian Bar at the Langham Hotel gave a talk on garnish. They have an extraordinary program that he shared with us.

But since we all love ice here on Alcademics, we'll start with that geekery first. At the Artesian they have two kinds of ice that are carved by an industrial CNC machine (Computer Numerical Control). The machine is located outside of the hotel and the ice is delivered to them.

The first are ice pucks with the bar's logo cut into one side of them. These are used in cocktail glasses to keep the drinks cold while consumed. You can sort of make out the script lowercase "a" in white in the Spanish Martini below (also garnished with a fish). 

The second type is ice balls. In the picture below you can see the lines on the ice where it was carved.

 

In the video below you can see one of the machines in action. The video is carving a head out of metal.

There is another video of one of these machines carving a car out of ice here.

Okay that's enough for the ice pr0n. Now onto the rest of the garnish.

In that Barrel Aged Mai Tai in the picture above, we can also see a couple of other garnish tricks used at The Artesian. They dehydrate their pineapple slices (and some other fruit garnishes) for this drink. I thought it was an odd decision, but Kratena made the good point that dehydrated fruit lasts a long time so you don't waste all the rest of the pineapple if you don't use it during your shift.

Also on the Mai Tai are candy diamonds and silver beads. They don't seem to do anything for the flavor but they look nice.

They also make one drink with an aromatic steam. If I understand correctly, they make a soda from botanicals that are in gin, then dump this over dry ice in a tea kettle. This makes it "steam" in a really cool way.

The actual drink is served separately in a glass onto which is placed a strainer of more botanicals. I think they pour the tea kettle soda over the strainer on the drink (we didn't see this part so I'm not positive).

He also made some lovely improvements to the citrus peels used as garnishes on glasses. This is a small thing that costs no money that any bar could do.

 It didn't take long to realize that every drink on the menu at the Artesian Bar is put there after much thought and planning. Quite an amazing beverage program from start to finish.

Also, the drinks were delicious.

A Better Use for Peeps Than Eating Them

A couple years ago I made Peep straws. Here's the original post.

It's Easter Egg (Ice) Time Again

Here's the Easter Ice project from a couple years ago that I'm reposting. Go here to learn how to make it.

Is This The Best Blue Cocktail Ever?

The Children's Wine List

I was researching some cocktail bars and came across the website for Scoma's, an old San Francisco seafood restaurant near Fisherman's Wharf. Looking for the cocktail menu I found the page below (click to enlarge).

 

And I saw the Children's Wine List. 

"CHILDREN'S WINE LIST? THAT'S FANTASTIC!" I said to myself. (I always talk to myself in capslock.)

But it turns out that those are two different links for the children's menu and the wine list. Oh well. 

Still I love the idea of having a children's wine list (purple grape juice, white grape juice), a kids' beer list (root beer, ginger beer), or a children's cocktail menu with pictures and descriptions of non-alcoholic juice and fizzy drinks served in wacky vessels with elaborate garnishes.

It would be a bit like the Friendly's sundae menu or a tiki bar menu. Or it could even work as a modern day soda fountain. 

But for now we should start with a children's drink menu at a kid-friendly restaurant. Who's in? 

Molecular Garnish Fail

For some reason I thought it would be fun and interesting to make dehydrated olives. 

It turns out that not only are they ugly, they also taste disgusting, like a savory salt lick. 

And they don't get any prettier when you put them in a drink.

I also dehydrated some maraschino cherries and they came out sort of okay. 

They taste like candy, basically, and are very sticky.

So now I just have to figure out what to do with them. Ideas?