Yet another cooking blog

This is mostly a way for me to keep an electronic copy of a project I started a couple of months ago.  I started recording recipes that we consider to be our "repertoire" - though it has turned out to include both tried-and-true recipes that I have cooked for years, and a few things that we have tried and immediately decided to include in journal.  These are not original recipes, by any means, and when I know where they came from, and when I first made them, I have been including that information in the notes.  I'm only up to 18 recipe pages so far, partly because many of my go-to dishes are not really practical for preparing on Raconteur, and that's where I am now.  I suppose fittingly, the first two recipes are tropical cocktails, but the next one will be a French classic that I prepared last summer in Monaco.  These will have no particular order; I include things in the book as they occur to me, or as we prepare them.

Recipe: "Super Tyng"

First prepared: Somewhere in the Caribbean (probably Grenada) in early 2012

This is a new favorite of ours, after preparing many, many variations on many, many rum punches.  We like most of them, but this one really stood out because of the grapefruit.  I found it somewhere on the web, but I no longer know where.  By the way, Tyng is a (non-alcoholic) bottled soda that we find in Trinidad and in Grenada and try always to keep on hand.  For a no-labor cocktail, we drink rum and Tyng.  For this drink, all juices are fresh-squeezed; I have often said that the tool that gets the most use on Raconteur is the juicer; the thing I make most often is sugar syrup for our cocktails.

2 ounces dark rum

1/2 ounce lime juice

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1 ounce orange juice

2 ounces grapefruit juice

n.b. the first time I made it I used 4 ounces of a grapefruit/orange combination that was probably about 60% grapefruit; I have since made it with some lime and lemon juice thrown in, but be sure that it's a bit more than half grapefruit.

2 dashes Angostura bitters

2 Dashes Peychaud's bitters

n.b. I used 4 dashes of orange bitters instead.

pinch of nutmeg, freshly grated.
The original recipe says "shake - strain - serve over rocks in a Collins glass" and garnish with a wedge of lime.  I skip the straining part, and serve it on ice, but in our handy-dandy all purpose short glasses (which we now also use for wine, having ditched the stemmed glasses a while back).

Serves: 1 drink

Recipe: 'ti Punch
First prepared: Hmmm...in the Caribbean for sure, but I don't really know where or when.  We had our first one at Pointe Noire in Guadeloupe on our way south, in May or maybe early June of 2011.

On the same page in the journal, I also include the following, a recipe for 'ti punch - short for petit punch, a classic that uses rhum agricole, sugar and lime.  The proportions in this one are courtesy of Ann VanderHoof and her husband Steve Manley on s/v Receta, from (I think) her first book, An Embarrassment of Mangoes.

2 parts rhum agricole
1 part fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 part sugar syrup*
4-5 dashes Angostura bitters
pinch of nutmeg, freshly grated

Combine the rhum, the lime juice and the sugar syrup over ice, then sprinkle with the bitters and the nutmeg; sometimes we skip the sprinkled ingredients all together.

And here is some information about rhum agricole, on Ed Hamilton's Ministry of Rum site:


http://www.ministryofrum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39


*To make sugar syrup, combine a cup of water and a cup of sugar, and bring to a boil.  Once the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is clear, cool and store in the fridge for up to two weeks.