Our friend Yuki lives by herself in a small house with a big garden. In the summer, she spends a lot of time there, tending her flowers, herbs and vegetables. Because we love mojitos, she once gave us a huge bunch of mint. No matter how fast we drank, we still couldn't use it all, so I dried the rest.
Now I don't have a lot of uses for dried mint, so I soaked a handful in some Whaler's Dark Rum (which, by the way, is not a good drinking rum in general. Just saying). I strained the result for a black minty concoction, with green grassy herbal overtones.
My cocktail in her honor: Yuki's Midnight Garden
1 shot of mint-infused very dark rum (see above)
1 oz. dark creme de cacao
Shake with ice and serve up or over crushed ice.
A variation is Yuki's Moonlit Garden
1 shot of mint-infused light rum
1 oz white creme de cacao
1 oz cream
Shake with ice and serve over crushed ice or up.
On your inspiration, I've been infusing a few things:
ReplyDelete* mango in vodka (new),
* ginger in tequila (or maybe it's cachaca - overwhelming, maybe I left the ginger in too long?)
* peaches and all kinds of random fruit in a random mixture of clear spirits (surprisingly good),
* figs in god knows what - brandy? bourbon? (syrupy)
So now I want to try 2 more:
* fresh mint
* 3-citrus mix - key limes, lemon and mandarins.
My questions are:
1. What liquor do you recommend?
2. How long do you leave the stuff in there?
BTW, I'm going to try genever for the citrus, just because it's bound to be a taste I've never had, but I want to hear what a more sociable drink=maker would do.
Please advise.