Getting the Mojito Right

Peppermint and Applemint Mojito, with Candymint Garnish

Maybe two summers ago, I confidently proclaimed the summer of the Mojito. I'm sure it was. But this simple drink always seems to elude me. The proportions are difficult to fix. Standard recipes use vaguely different recipes. I am usually left adjusting recipes every time I make the drink. Perhaps this is fine--an experimental mojito of sorts--but it gets me down. I'd rather be able, like with almost every other drink I make, to lay out the correct jigger and mix it down fast and accurate and consistent-like.

Alas, it is not to be. The mojito will always be an experiment. Lay out the proportions--3 oz. gin, 2 oz. lime juice, 2 tbsp. sugar syrup--in a boston shaker. Muddle with mint. Good mint is a must. This might seem obvious, but I'm sure that mint comes down to whatever is handy for most, or whatever the store was stocking. This is why I have now planted four kinds of mint in my garden. My mainstay is peppermint. I also have apple mint and candy mint, both of which are spearmint varieties and more sweet than spicy. I prefer the latter in my juleps. Peppermint stands out more in the mojito, which is not a subtle drink and does not showcase the rum the way a good julep showcases the whiskey. Don't over-muddle. The sugar syrup, I find, tends to eat up the mint oils. I add a half dozen cubes of ice to the boston shaker and give it a good hard shake, sixteen or so worth. Then start testing. I use the straw method to avoid any contamination. Adjustments can then be reshaken or stirred in.

Rival this

Once shaken, the mojito can sit in the Boston shaker while the ice is prepared. This is a laborious process, at least for me.  Crushed ice is a must. I have found that the ice must be durable and thick, with as little air content as possible. Even crushed ice must have a backbone or the drink will become flaccid. My Rival Ice-O-Matic Electric Ice Crusher does a nice job, even if it is a little messy.

I prepare the glasses with ice, add an appropriate amount of soda water to the mojito mixture, and stir that up. Then I pour out the mojitos, adding ice if necessary so that it touches the rim. Pop a straw in and serve.

This summer will be beyond the mojito--beyond any one drink, actually--but it is nice to start here and feel utterly comfortable mixing down a classic.

The Summer Blend: Tonic Water #6

Well, a mistake has produced a "noble experiment"

3 cups water (rather than 4)

1/4 cup cinchona bark
1/4 cup citric acid
the rind of three lemons
coriander (tablespoon or so)


2 cup yield. We'll see if the tonic syrup this produces is just ... too much.

I followed it with a simple recipe, 4 cups of water, with a coriander and juniper berry profile.

wine cellar update

Temperatures approached 68 for most of May. In the last week we experienced a big dip in temperature, and the cellar also dropped down about six degrees, to a low of 62. The dip was about one week in length. Temperatures are expected to return to mid-80s by the end of the week, so I anticipate another 68 degree cellar. (temp never exceeded this).

Fear and Loathing in McDonough: the saga of cedar lumber

There is nothing greater than a power drill.

This I learned this past year, when I used a power drill to hang symmetrical picture frames (with the use of a level) as well as build a wine rack. It was like catching a bug of some kind. For an effeminate intellectual who nonetheless feels his family roots in soil and labor, the feel of a power tool and the creation of something beautiful, no matter how small, is exhilarating.

So I decided to build raised garden beds. As projects go, this one was not too difficult, and with a few boards I could build simple 4x4 boxes for placement in the front yard. No problem, right?

Building the boxes would prove easy. What did not was locating cedar boards. I was determined to build my bed out of cedar, both for the aesthetic appeal and the fact that it would repel a certain number of bugs that would destroy whiteboard. Needless to say, I was unwilling to build it out of pressure-treated wood. I don't care how many studies show that it's fine. If I'm going to the trouble to build the damn thing, then I'm building it out of cedar.

Cedar is expensive and thus rare. After a couple of false starts, I made the requisite phone calls to find an obliging retailer All signs pointed to a Home Depot just south of Atlanta. Upon arriving I found the 1x8s I needed, but discovered that the 2x2 posts were not there. Alas! That forced me to drive an additional ten miles south to McDonough to buy the necessary 2zx2 board.

where one buys furniture, in hell

No problem, really, until I tried to leave.

The drive to McDonough is no more than thirty minutes from East Point. Just a smooth sail down the I-75, blowing doors off the tractor-trailers and avoiding the inevitable horseshoe slingers off the I-285 connector.

So I spent thirty minutes driving there, and thirty minutes driving back, roughly. What I did not anticipate was the difficulty in getting out of the parking lot at Home Depot. That took close to thirty minutes.

where one can get dental surgery, and a manicure

The Home Depot sits squat in a huge quad-complex of stores that clearly drew in people from thirty miles square. Getting in is easy--just an exit off the freeway and a quick right turn. Getting out is damned hard. One is forced into a right turn out of the complex (the freeway was to the left), and then one has to meander through traffic to take a left turn into another shopping complex before pulling a U turn to get back the other way.

Where the parking lot ends... (apologies, Shel)

This proved an education all itself. The parking lot of the complex I had to pull into was a kind of faux town square. No megastores, but instead a grouping of family services that one used to find in small office complexes. This itself was no surprise, but then the parking lot abruptly ended. Asphalt gave way to a dull and vacant lot of weeds and mud, stretching off into nothing. In the distance one could see a house-line. Track style homes, built to spec on a planned lot, probably thirty feet below the grade of the mall, and thus thirty feet beneath the vacant lot. Everything looked all new and cheap and earth tones. It was a bare Levittown plastered against the steel gray sky. No trees, no landscaping. Just the dull efficiency of the late capitalist world.

I hooked my U turn, waiting for a line of pretty mid-level cars to pass, including an impatient Mustang that took the brick-laid speed bump at 45, which could not have been pleasant for the driver or the passenger. He hit the 90 degree turn at 30 and peeled off even faster. I felt a kinship, I hate to say. These shopping complexes are fascist buttresses, and the only way to really fight them is to fight them.

Getting back onto the main road was hard. I watched the string of Fords and Chevys make their pass, a procession of fleshy women in steel gray coifs with hard set mouths under square frame glasses, the thin lipped men next to them staring straight ahead, silent and defeated. It was a bleak scene. I entered the procession and took my place, reveling only in the opportunity I had to let three cars pull in from a mall outlet on the way. The drivers looked vaguely surprised at my kindness. The goatied redneck in the Nissan truck behind me revved his engine and bared his teeth, which were so white and large that they shined even in my rearview mirror. Getting onto the I-75 northbound proved a whole other problem. I had to pull one final U-turn because the line to enter the freeway ran three lights back. Better to jump the line by a stoplight, pull a U-ball and join the stream of traffic without excessive pain.

Civic architecture is about efficiency and control. Strapped as we are to the single-family home and the single-family car, the mega-four-corner complex (six or eight corner, in some cases), is probably as efficient as one can get. It is a bleak efficiency. The control it exerts is even bleaker. One might be able to finish all one's shopping there, but one must also drive from parking lot to parking lot, weathering traffic, dealing with the bored masses, who are quick to irritation yet slow to confrontation. It is a slow suburban death one dies, in such places.

I felt even worse for the residents of the adjacent housing complexes. If one's upstairs view was a vacant mall lot, a barren expanse of red Georgia clay and invasive weeds, one's aesthetic sensibilities must be staid and stultified. Not by any coarseness of character, mind you, but by experience. And the fault lies not with the sad family who buys the 2500 square foot home there, because it is affordable, but rather with the developer who was too cheap to hire a serious architect, and too stupid to understand how space and design work to shape human life.

The drive north on the I-75 towards East Point was smooth. Wax Tailor on the stereo. I thought about my power drill, which I would soon be using to make a simple raised bed. It is the simple things, I suppose. That, you know, make life worth it. And beautiful.

wine cellar update

Temperature has held steady between 60 and 62 for April. Our outdoor temperatures have fluctuated from freezing to 80. Median high is likely around 60, or maybe 65.

Building a third rack today. It was a 10$ DIY rack purchased off of the Jefferson Park neighbors page. Holds 30 bottles. Three racks, all of different make, holding the cellar together.

Fertilized the garden again

Round of fertilizer went into the garden. Last weekend I also planted tomatoes and peppers, rounding out the Spring planting. Next up: build a box for strawberries, and figure out how to put another eight pepper plants in the ground. Apparently it is going to be a summer of peppers.

Fertilizing the Spring garden

This last Sunday I applied two gallons of fish fertilizer to the garden. Everything appears to be rockin and rollin despite some unseasonably cold March weather--down to freezing again last night.

The lettuce and kale appear to be growing a little faster than the swiss chard. the peas look delicate. I'm hoping for the first crop within a couple of weekends.

a wine cellar update

primitive, but effective

The wine cellar has sat all winter at a temperature of 55-60 degrees. The fluctuation has not been wild, and most of the time it has been at 56. It's been a cold winter, of course. But as of mid-March, we are still holding steady at 58 degrees.

I have several age worthy pinots and two promising cabernet franc's in the cellar. I'm still setting on a 2004 Pomerol which, someday soon I should probably open. It has not been kept at an ideal temperature for most of its shelf life, so I'm sure it has not aged ... properly. Otherwise, the wine rack I built (at left) has not fallen apart, the rack gets no direct light, and is otherwise stable and undisturbed.

Some facts I had not been aware of when I took inventory the other day.

1) I have a tremendous surplus of whites, particularly Chardonnays. Everything from Mersault to Russian River Valley (or further east--Sonoma Coast).

2) I'm sitting on nearly a case of fine Pinot Noirs, most from Gary Farrell.

3) I have a large number of age-worthy cabernets that I bought at table wine prices. Peters', an Alexander Valley winery, chief among them.

4) After my next shipment, I will be close to running out of space. Time to build another wine rack, and try to push a 100 bottle reserve. At present, I really only have about 30 age worthy wines in the cellar.

Spring Planting #1: Year of the Leaf

Determined this year to get a leg up on planting, we trudged down to the Oakhurst community garden and Gardenhood to pick up early Spring plants. The goal was to get some lettuce and kale and chard in the ground. I was fairly well convinced it would not survive. After all, I was planting a week before the final frost was scheduled and if the past is to be any guide, an unscheduled frost would probably follow. The seedlings all looked tender and the roots limpy and fragile. I immediately bought twice what I thought would survive and determined that a 50% survival rate would be a huge bonus. Given that the seedlings were $2.50 for a four pack, this seemed like a good enough bet.

you'll be a big lettuce someday

I planted almost all of it eight days ago--Sunday the seventh. I prepared the beds minimally, turning the soil, breaking up clumps of black and red earth, and adding a good inch or two of compost to each row, which I worked in. The soil is not nearly sandy enough. At its best it was crumbly, but for the most part it was more like moldable clay. I did my best to break it up. The compost did look great. It was all black gold and brimming with worms even in this cold weather. Most of the soil I broke up in the parallel rows was black and healthy looking. A little less so in Maia's plot, where the soil is older and less well cared for. I got the plants in.

The specific lettuce varieties are all marked outside, and I will not produce them here. But in Maia's plot, I planted 17 lettuce plants (four varieties plus one left over from Fall which never died) in the front row, and 8 in the second row. The second row is flanked by chives (third year strong) on the one side, and four sugar snap pea plants on the other.

the tomato row awaiteth

I've left one of the parallel rows covered. I had added compost to these rows two weeks prior during a nice spell. The idea was to have the soil good and worked over by the worms by the time I laid down the tomato plants, which will likely be in mid-April. The second parallel row (where the tomato plants were last year) took two different varieties of Kale and Chard. A total of eight plants, I believe.

The barrier row got a good working over, and is home to some leftover lettuce and kale, as well as broccoli.

Then the frost came. The plants seemed none the worse for wear, and after a week of minimal watering, they still appeared perky and happy in the soil. I was so motivated that I took the remaining eight plants and put them in the ground, in the third row of Maia's plot.

notice empty third row. no longer.

I will continue to monitor the planting, but at present I have an absurd number of lettuce varieties in the ground. We may be looking at thirty plus leaves and at least five different varieties, provided everything survives. I may cut a second barrier row when it is planting time, as well as extend one of the rows in Maia's plot in order to get early cucumbers and zuchini, or squash, or something else to go with all of this.

Adventures in Coconut Land

coconut purée

My daughter went nuts at the DeKalb Farmers' Market today, insisting we buy a coconut. At a dollar a coconut I was in no mood to argue. One learns to pick one's battles in the eternal death struggle that is parenting. So we came home with a coconut.

I cracked it open, drained it, and we cut out the flesh. I was sure a seven year old child who had never had fresh coconut would find it disconcerting, or perhaps just "not what she was expecting," but instead she quite liked it. She insisted we buy more, and immediately wanted to make a drink from it.

Which immediately fired my interest. If there is anything that fresh ingredients demand, it is a proper glass to be put in with the proper libation. For coconut, the most obvious place to start would be a piña colada. But the proper recipe calls for coconut cream. How to make that?

coconut boil

None of my cookbooks were helpful. Turns out the Italians, French, Julia Child, and those Brooklyn hipsters do not work with fresh coconuts too often. I turned to mr. google, who turned up a mass of dispiritingly dissimilar information. According to several recipes, one needed to puree the flesh and bring to a boil with 1 1/2 cups water, let sit for thirty minutes, strain, then chill. This makes coconut milk, but chilling will separate the cream. Well, okay. But Alton Brown wants you to grate and then cook it up with a certain amount of 2% milk to make either cream or milk (less for the cream, obviously).

coconut sieve

I opted for the former recipe. With some slight modifications.

I cut the flesh up and put it in the blender with a little water. Once it was ... grated, or whatever one might call its state after being pulverized, I combined it with one cup of water and heated it to boiling over the stove. It took almost no time at all. I let it sit for half an hour, and then strained it. This yielded 1 1/4 cups of coconut milk, or cream, or whatever the substance was. I chilled it, and an hour or so later, we made piña coloda. The recipe for that was pretty standard:

2 oz. coconut cream
3 oz. pineapple juice
2 oz. rum
1 tsp confectioner's sugar
a heap of ice.

And blend.

coconut borracho

And enjoy.