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Nuoc Mau: Vietnamese Caramel Sauce

Vietnamese Caramel Recipe

It takes a lot of faith and trust to let something—or someone—change before your eyes. It takes a lot to stand by and watch the process happen, even if you know the final outcome. You can observe, be ready to assist, and offer positive thoughts and well wishes, but ultimately the changing process is up to that person or thing. Some things are just out of your hands.

Take for example Vietnamese Caramel Sauce, or Nuoc Mau. This is a simple syrup made from sugar and water that requires a few seconds of stirring and then fifteen minutes of mindful watching.

What? No stirring? No touching? No manipulation of outcome? Gasp!

Vietnamese Caramel
This is the only time you can control the sauce

It took several failures to learn my lesson in resisting the urge to control the sauce. I had no idea how hard it would be for me to stare at a bubbling pot of hot sugar without manipulating it. I mean, one stir of a spoon and you can ruin the whole thing. An entire batch, ruined because of the need to control the cooking process of sugar and water?

Making Nuoc Mau opened my eyes to just how far my control issues go.

Continue for my Vietnamese Caramel Recipe »

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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 »