Bourbon-Soaked Cherries

All good things come to those who wait. Parents, farmers, bread bakers, and economists know this. And in the past couple of years, bartenders across the country have learned that the old adage applies when it comes to making flavored spirits. Take a great tasting fruit like a cultivated cherry, add a favorite liquor, and in just a few weeks you’ll have something completely new.

Cherries, or Prunus avium, are a stone fruit that are high in anthocyanins, the red pigment that gives the berries their color. In recent lab tests, anthocyanins have been shown to reduce pain and inflammation and reduce cholesterol and triglycerides. That’s good news to cherry lovers, who are currently gobbling up all forms of cherries–as a snack, featured dessert filling–during their last few weeks of the season. Right now, trees from Michigan, California, Oregon, and Washington State are heavy with rosy pink, blood red, and sunrise yellow cherries.

Thanks to the juicy fruits of Bing, Brooks, Rainier, and Tulare, it’s a wonderful time of the year to eat and, in my case, make cocktails.

Health benefits aside, cherries are a great flavoring agent in many cocktails (think Maraschino Liqueur, Amarena soaked cherries, etc.). Last year, my wonderful friends Todd and Diane from White on Rice introduced me to the idea of using cherries to enhance the flavors of a favorite liquor. Their gift of cherries soaked in Luxardo (a sweet cherry liqueur made from Marasca cherries and ground up cherry pits) blew my mind. The cherry-infused cherry liquor became a favorite featured cocktail ingredient and the center point of an obsession with the classic cocktail, the Aviation (Gin, Luxardo, and Lemon). Ever since then, I’ve been patiently waiting for cherry season to begin so I could try my hand at making my own cherry-infused spirit.

Continue for a Recipe for Bourbon Infused with Cherries »

On Brooks Cherries, Learning, and the Perfect Lemon Wedge

Bourbon Cherry Cocktail Mixed Drink
Master Cherry Cocktail: Things can get messy when you're the student.

In the ancient tradition of master and student, the student will always get the crap beat out of them. All the abuse aggressive teaching ends the moment the student masters the knowledge they’ve been struggling to learn. Military basic training is like that. Sports teams operate the same way. Even Yoda was no pushover with Padawan learner, Luke. And so it is when you enter a kitchen to become a cook (or in my case, the Service Guru): you’ve got to put up with a lot of shame, frustration, and possibly sharp points (the kitchen is full of polished chefs’ knives) on the way to mastering your station.

Once the ass-beating is done and the grueling hours of study and repetition turn into muscle memory, a kind of zen-like moment of release occurs. The student no longer tries. The student does. All the hard work results in something so graceful it makes the apprentice filled with pleasure (and less pain).

I still have a way to go before I am considered a master at my new job.

“In Japan, we have a saying, you can not make a sword with cold steel, ” my new boss, Chef H said to me before he began my training this week. “It is only when it is very hot and fresh from the fire, that you can pound steel to make it thin and sharp. No matter how hard you hammer cold metal, it will never become a sword.”

I grimaced a little. “So what you’re saying Chef is that right now you’re going to beat the crap out of me while I’m still new and malleable?”

“Yes,” he said with a smile. “Yes, that is it exactly.”

Continue for the Recipe for a delicious Bourbon and Cherry Mixed Drink! »

Vacation Cocktail: A Sangria Recipe

If a vacation back home could be distilled and put into a glass, I think it might taste a lot like sangria.

The simple moments–the naps on the couch, dinner table conversations, picnics, garden time, observing the changes in the landscape, listening to the sound of nature, building sandcastles, catching up with old friends, and walks around the old haunts–all have a kind of essence to them, or flavor.

A homecoming cocktail would have to start with wine, since every dinner in the family dining room requires a toast. After pulling the cork on a bottle of crisp white wine and a floral rosé, I’d add zesty citrus—sun kissed tangerines or juicy oranges—to mimic the blast of sweet excitement I feel whenever I see my beloved friends and family. Of course I’d mix in some plump and ripe strawberries to mark the long ago days of childhood and vacation trips to the Pick Your Own strawberry fields near my home in Massachusetts. I would add fresh mint to commemorate my family’s summer gardens and my great grandmother’s iced tea recipe for a hot summers’ day. I would slice up some mahogany dark cherries—sweet gems from the Ann Arbor farmers market if I got lucky—to show the influence of my husband and his Michigan family on just about every aspect of my life. I spoon in a bit of Cointreau to sweeten things up and tip my hat to the sophistication of my family’s palate.

Continue to get my Homecoming Sangria Recipe »