BLT in a glass

I like to think that I take a culinary approach to my cocktails. I've always been passionate about good food, and in my opinion, cocktails are just another type of cuisine, albeit a liquid one. One of my obsessions in life is bacon. Here in Portland, every chef in town seems to be trying to sneak it into their desserts. I wanted to try to incorporate its flavor into some cocktails. If you'll remember, I infused some everclear with bacon a couple of months back. I've got plenty of it laying around, and today I thought it was time to get to work on a BLT cocktail. I went to the basement and broke out the juicer, then walked to Whole Foods and bought a head of Green Leaf Lettuce and 2 slicer tomatoes. Now, not every cocktail that I make is succesful, sometimes I end up with something downright awful, but I'm always ok with that AS LONG AS I LEARN SOMETHING. Thats the key for me, experimenting and taking risks is ok, but I have to take something away from the experience.

I had assumed that lettuce, being 99% water, would juice down into little or nothing. I was ready to reduce my lettuce juice by 1/2 over some heat in order to concentrate the flavors. Boy was I wrong. Instead of a light watery juice which is what I expected, I got a dark green and heartily flavored juice. It was pleasant enough to drink by itself, and a real surprise to me.

The tomatoes juiced down quickly into a lightly foamy pink juice. Not much depth, but a nice tomato flavor to the juice anyway.

I then toasted some whole grain bread (Dave's Killer, good stuff) and began to chop it fine to use to rim the glass. It didn't hold terribly well, and if I retry this, I'll have to think about a better way to attach it to the glass because it did add a needed component to this cocktail.

Bear with me (I'm experiencing a HUGE nicotine buzz, see the next post, so I'm feeling a bit off as I write this). But I digress. It was cocktail time.

Since I was using everclear, I decided to only pour 1 1/4 oz rather than the 2oz I would have poured had it been bacon infused vodka.

Next, I added (this is in a shaker, fyi) 2 oz of lettuce juice, followed by 2oz of fresh tomato juice, I added some ice and shook the hell out of the drink before pouring it in a martini glass garnished with toasted breadcrumbs on the rim.

I tasted it and it was there. Its a BLT quite literally in a glass. Proportions are a little off at this point. The everclear makes this drink hot, and I'll redo it with vodka so that I can get more bacon flavor in the drink. I was surprised how assertive the lettuce had become. I had a BLT alright, but it was like eating a sandwich with triple lettuce, just not quite right. It was also a little bland, so I stirred in a pinch of sea salt and it brightened the cocktail right up,

Next time, I'll use half as much lettuce juice to tomato juice, but like an old bartender used to tell my about my experiments when I was a new bartender, "There's a cocktail in there".

Bacon, eggnog and cherry bombs

One of my recent experiments has involved infusing everclear with bacon. I posted the above two photos so that you could see the bacon infusion after approximately three weeks and also what the everclear looked like after straining the bacon off. I have to say, all I did was cook some bacon to the crisp side, let it cool down, and then added it to a fifth of everclear and put it in the basement for three weeks. This is all part of my master plan to make a bacon infused German eggnog, but of course, before I can start the eggnog, I needed to get the bacon flavor into my liquor.

When I went to take the bacon out of the everclear this evening, I was quite surprised to find that the bacon was still crisp. I found it slightly alluring, and I really wanted to try it. One of the lesser establishments where I used to work used to take jars of maraschino cherries and they'd pour out the juice, refill the jar with Bacardi 151, and let them steep for a few days. They called them "Cherry Bombs" and sold them 2 for .50. I don't remember too much about them except that between the staff and all the homeless people we attracted with a .50 buzz we had to make a jar every day or so. I don't think people ate the cherries for the flavor, and unfortunately, the bacon was the same way. The everclear had rendered it tasteless, but it retained its original crispness and I did catch a bit of a buzz off of the piece that I ate. Somehow, I doubt bars will replace cherry bombs with bacon bombs, but who knows?

I've wrapped the strained everclear with plastic wrap and I've currently got it in the freezer overnight. I spotted some fat globules (I think) in the liquid and figured that freezing it will hopefully bring the fat to the surface so that I can skim it off tomorrow. The liquid itself is a lovely pale golden color, and there is a mild aroma of bacon to the liquid. I'm hoping for the best, as I prepare for a very public failure if it doesn't work.

On another note, I was quite flattered to read a blog today by someone who is a cupcake baker. Apparently, my article in the current Imbibe Magazine inspired her to make a cupcake with a similar flavor profile. I was quite thrilled to read it (I'll post a link once I have her permission) and thought that it was so supremely creative that I'm tempted to get in the kitchen this weekend and make a batch of her cupcakes. It completely made my day.

I think I'll sit here for the rest of the evening nursing my Averna and OJ and hope for the best tomorrow. Lets hope the eggnog works itself out.