Superstar Daiquiri

Honestly, sometimes I come up with a cocktail and just wait for a particular Pittsburgh Penguins player (say that five times fast!) to "earn" it. So it was with this one. I fixed it over a month ago right before a game, just because I thought it would look cool, and it tasted good, too. I immediately thought of Max Talbot. But it wasn't the playoffs yet, so it had to wait a bit. He's been awesome against the Ottawa Senators in this first round, though, hasn't he? Last night, when he scored that shorthanded goal, there was no doubt that the Superstar was back and in fine postseason form.

Longtime (and unusually attentive) readers may have seen me post things about how I like to take advantage of in-season fruit, how I understand that nobody wants to go chasing all over town for ingredients, how I like to keep things easy, and how I hate garnishes. But as Talbot would no doubt tell you himself, he's a special case and worth a bit of extra effort during the playoffs. We're at the tail end of kiwi season. Fresh starfruit's pretty hard to find--what you'll get right now is grown in hothouses, and can probably only be found in Asian markets and/or stores in larger cities. Starfruit's pretty bland-tasting and is basically only there so I could get the "super star" garnish, so two kiwis would actually be better if you want to save time and money. Either way, it has a cool, almost poisonous-looking yellowish-green color that Talbot would probably love in a shirt.

Superstar Daiquiri

1 1/2 ounce light (a/k/a "white") rum
1 ounce Midori melon liqueur
1 kiwifruit, peeled and sliced in half
1 starfruit, sliced horizontally and peeled. (Save biggest piece for garnish.)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar

Pulse all ingredients in a blender until they're thoroughly mixed. Add a handful of ice cubes; blend until the drink's cold and frothy. Pour into a tall glass. Garnish with starfruit slice on the rim. Don't wait too long to drink it!

The Annual Goal

My basil's coming up next week, I'm sure of it! Hopefully I'll be drinking this cocktail with some of those leaves as the Penguins continue in the playoffs. I have faith that they will, though, as much faith as I do in my basil, despite the fact that they lost Game 1 of the first round to the Ottawa Senators last night.

One of the reasons why I have faith is the fact that Craig Adams scored his annual goal. What a wonderfully well-timed goal it was, too. It brought the Penguins back from the 2-4 brink and energized the fans at Mellon Arena. I might have been bouncing on the couch shrieking, "Hell yeah, we can DO THIS!" I may be a bit late by my own standards, but I'm not letting that go unnoticed.

I put this together last summer. It's prepared like a mojito, but...well, not exactly. My decision to try basil because it was ready and the mint wasn't led me to a few other substitutions, though the end result *looked* like a mojito. The flavor, however, is refreshingly different. Enjoy!

The Annual Goal

2 ounces gin
handful of fresh basil leaves
1 scant tablespoon sugar
About 1/2 ounce lemon juice
2 ounces club soda

Put basil leaves in the bottom of a large glass. Fill halfway with crushed ice. Add gin, sugar, and lemon juice, then muddle the basil. (I like a wooden spoon best for this.) Top with soda water.

Note on ingredients: I usually use Sugar in the Raw, a/k/a demerara, for a regular mojito with mint, lime and rum. It'll be distractingly, jarringly sweet here. Plain white sugar works best.

Best Decision

Okay, the Washington Capitals have officially swept the Penguins. (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that.) There were a couple good things about last night's game, though. Really. The first is that, as so often happens when he plays the Capitals, Sidney Crosby went from "cute kid, great butt, super-awesome hockey player" to "oh, my, sexy as hell!" for the night. The second is that one of the two new guys, defenseman Jordan Leopold, scored not one but two goals for the Penguins last night. Leopold is a very capable defenseman, but not exactly a goal-scoring machine--these two goals brought him up to ten for the season. I find his attempts at Capitals-killing really charming. So does a Penguins fan I follow on Twitter, who described him as "BEST DECISION WE MADE ALL YEAR" last night. She gave the cocktail I fixed myself last night its name.

I'm warning y'all, this is gonna look *so* gross on the page. But it's pretty decent in the glass. My beloved L'Ailee thought she wanted grape juice this weekend, so she bought a big bottle. She enjoyed a couple of glasses, then got sick of it. I got sick of that bottle taking up valuable real estate in my refrigerator, so decided to try it as a mixer.

I love to, as a cooking mentor of mine put it, "echo" a flavor in multiple ways within the same dish or drink, so I bought myself an airplane bottle of Ciroc grape vodka. As you can imagine, Ciroc stirred into grape juice was awfully sweet, so much so I wanted to pour it down the sink. But I don't want to be wasteful, so what could I cut that grapey sweetness with? Why, grapefruit soda, of course. I got out a can of Fresca. I took a sip. I settled down with the resulting cocktail. Much like Leopold, it worked out pretty well after I gave it a chance.

Best Decision

4 ounces chilled Concord grape juice
1 1/2 ounce Ciroc vodka
2 ounces Fresca

Pour grape juice into a tall glass. Stir Ciroc into it. Float Fresca on top. Stir lightly.

Out of the Penalty Box!

I have got to be more careful when I pride-bet. But the 24 hours with that awful, awful red-and-white color scheme are OVER! So, I hope, are the Washington Capitals tomorrow night. The Caps may be a bit distracted--wonder why?

As I said, I'll be drinking Crosby Sucks in honor of the chants we'll be hearing all week. However, I thought of what I want to be chanting at my TV. This isn't my recipe--it's a classic cocktail that I enjoyed in my early twenties on the rare occasions when I really, really wanted to get hammered. Basically, it's jungle juice, but since it's blue and tastes citrusy, I loved it.

Adios Motherfucker

1 ounce gin
1 ounce light rum
1 ounce tequila
1 ounce vodka
1 1/2 ounce blue curacao liqueur
2 ounces sweet-and-sour mix
1 ounce lemon-lime soda

Shake all the alcohol plus sweet-and-sour mix in a shaker. Pour into tall glass with ice. Float lemon-lime soda on top.

Sometimes I bet pride.

You'll notice the blog looks disturbingly different. Well, once again I pride-bet L'Ailee's best friend A., who is a rabid Detroit Red Wings fan like her. This time, the Penguins and I lost. I must maintain this disgusting color scheme for 24 hours. I have my beloved wife's ugly-ass Winged Wheel earrings in my earlobes, also for 24 hours. (This is the kind of fun two-woman couples can have!) I must put up a Red Wings screensaver on my work computer for the day tomorrow, and not change it until Wednesday morning. And I need to post this drink which would be good, except for the name. This was first created and named years ago.

The Detroit Red Wing

6 ounces Vernor's Ginger Ale
2 ounces cinnamon schnapps

Combine ingredients with ice in a tall glass. The Vernor's is important--it's very Detroit, and is the only good thing to come out of Detroit lately. My Michigander mother believes it has medicinal properties.

You can make that if you wanna, but I'll be making Crosby Sucks for the upcoming Capitals and Flyers games. Hopefully our captain will give them something to really complain about once again.

The Stupid Shutout

It happened. Marc-Andre Fleury finally got his first shutout of the season against the Boston Bruins tonight! I have already named a cocktail after MAF, but so what? After all the hype about the asswhoopings about to be given and received, this is what I think needs to be remembered, especially since Fleury and our defenders had an awful performance against the New Jersey Devils just the night before.

I just put this together tonight out of things that looked appealing to me. Boy, I was craving strawberries. It's a bit girly and faintly pink, but hell, we *are* talking about a guy who allows people to nickname him "Flower". This is sweet, but with a bit of pucker to it, and it's as good as finally getting "that stupid shutout".

The Stupid Shutout

About 5-6 strawberries, washed and tops cut off
Dash balsamic vinegar
2 ounces Absolut Berri Acai
Lemon-lime seltzer

Place strawberries in cocktail shaker with just a small dash of balsamic vinegar. Mash them in the shaker with a spoon. Add Absolut Berri Acai and a couple of ice cubes. Shake like crazy for a minute. Strain out liquid into an old-fashioned glass; discard ice and strawberry pulp. Top with seltzer; stir or shake lightly.

Notes on ingredients: I have seen other acai-flavored vodkas besides Absolut Berri Acai, but not many. The Absolut has other flavors to it--blueberry and pomegranate. (I'm trying this with blueberries when the time's right!) Also, I do mean seltzer--Sprite, 7-Up, and the like would be far too sweet and overwhelm the other, more interesting flavors.

Of Staals and Shooters

We've gone an awful long time without Penguins hockey, haven't we? And the last game was marred by Matt Cooke's possibly season-ending hit to Marc Savard's head. Tomorrow night's game against the Carolina Hurricanes should be much better. I'm going to have to TiVo it because it's my birthday and I don't want to spend it in front of the TV, but I hope Bill Guerin gives me the gift of a hat trick and/or a really hot decisive fight.

What this game will almost definitely bring are a few (hundred) references to the fact that the guys named Staal on each team, the ones who look really similar, are, big shock, brothers. Last year, Kim and Zoe at Puck Huffers came up with the Staal Brothers Drinking Game. A drinking game requires a good shooter, and so I came up with this earlier in the season. It tastes good, and it's green, like the famous sod farm. (Some of you may therefore wish to try this next week.)

Staal Sod Farm Shooter

1 ounce vanilla-flavored vodka
1 ounce creme de menthe

Shake ingredients in cocktail shaker with a couple of ice cubes; pour into shot glass. Can be easily multiplied for multiple shots.

After I posted that, FrankD at Pensburgh suggested that I make a cocktail that is appropriately grassy, with chlorophyll or wheatgrass. Homer Simpson (okay, his writers) beat me to it. I'd have to drink a lot of something else in order to drink this, but I'll share it here anyway.

Lawnmower

1 oz vodka
1 oz wheatgrass juice

Stir together in a shot glass, and serve.

Me, I'll probably be having a bourbon and "Come onnnnn, y'all, ya gotta have Diet Pepsi, not just Coke, right?" Hooks Orpik can help with morning-after recovery. To quote the great Sinead O'Connor, "If we can't be good, we'll be careful."