tamarindOF

To end up this month I’ll wrap up my journey into the Old Fashioned cocktail Template and also make a MxMo post.

My friend Chris, from A Bar Above (go check his blog!), is inviting us this month to explore the unknown and I think that is very related to my Cocktail Templates journey, even though I’m exploring the “known”.

We’ve discovered what makes a goddamn good OF and how we can make easy substitutions and additions to suit it best to our guests liking, be it in the spiritual or in the hard world.

I’ll use an ingredient that I didn’t got the chance to work with until recently, the Tamarind. This fruit is very common in the Cerrado vegetation of Brazil, it’s a pod with a hard shell and a paste like pulp around the seeds. It tastes very sour with hints of orange and acidc-bite of lime, the juice is very earthy and cloudy.

I think it pairs very well with an aged Cachaça, for its bright and tropical taste. It also makes a great Margarita and may pair well with a Scotch whisky.

tamarindo

To get the juices out of the hard pulp you’ll have to

  1. Take the shell and strings out of 8~12 pods (a scale would have been helpful);
  2. Boil some water;
  3. Put the pulp in;
  4. Wait the water to cool;
  5. Separate the pulp from the seeds
  6. Strain and bottle;

Since the juice is cloudy it will decante, the “clear” juice have more bite and it would make better use in a Sour style cocktail.

You can sweeten it with sugar, but I think agave, honey or maple are best. It is a very strong juice the way it is presented, dilute to taste.

CERRADO

3ds Angostura

1½oz Aged Cachaça (Oak)

1½oz Tamarind Juice

1 tsp Maple Syrup

1ds Absinthe

Stir and strain into an ice filled rocks glass. Garnish with Rangpur or orange twist.

Since cachaça has a strong flavor of its own I used less of it and a touch more juice. Even though, the tamarind just makes a nice compliment to the vegetal and funky notes of our base spirit without disturbing it, making for a great “diluter”.

The rangpur is also another cerrado fruit with has a great aroma and helps to bring the tamarind flavors out, the absinthe gives a nice refreshing touch.

Thanks Chris for hosting this MxMo and giving me motivation to get out of the tried and true, this Template Project is somewhat based on your advice to perfect my classic recipes.

Also many thanks to Fred Yarm for keeping the MxMo flame alive.

mxmologo

Saúde!