FrogPrincesse

Stephen does some pretty amazing research for sure. Extremely creative.

Awe-inspiring.

pjm333 - Beautiful! What recipe do you use for the coconut sorbet?

I was being facetious about the blood oranges. There is nothing wrong about using them in cocktails. We have many varieties available locally and the ones I use in cocktails are at least as tart as regular oranges .

Hassouni - it's OK! To me the Jungle Bird tastes like breakfast with the orange from the Campari and the maple syrup/molasses from the S&C. I like it but it's an odd bird for sure.

Yes, it's the US edition of Drinks.

Plantes Vertes - I hope you realize that "full cream, eggs and bread soaked in milk" is not equal to "chia seeds and some water"!!! Regardless, I can't wait to see the reveal.

More chilled soups for me. Cucumber sorrel gazpacho from Russ Parsons' How to Pick a Peach. It has the particularity of using raw sorrel. It has a fresh crisp taste, with some nice acidity from the sorrel. White gazpacho from the Tartine Bread cookbook. That one is almond-based. The garnish is a little salad with tomato | cucumber | red grape | mint. Very comforting and cooling.

Wow it's way more serious than what I thought then! I need to call an exorcist asap. Regarding the recipe, it just calls for "triple sec". There is no recommendation for a specific brand in the book as far as I can tell.

OMG Plantes Vertes! I just realized that you had made the Oh Gosh a few weeks before me and therefore most likely inspired me to make one! Substantially different ratios though.

An excellent reason indeed... I was starting to get worried about Rafa!

sbumgarner - how do you like the Depaz blue? I have heard mixed reviews.

Last night I made Martin Cate's Kaieteur Swizzle with Demerara rum, lime juice, falernum, maple syrup, Angostura bitters. It was more complex than I envisioned and I liked it a lot.

Heidi - That sounds very similar to an LLB, lemon lime & bitters, a delicious soda made by Angostura and available in the Caribbean, which is easily reproduced at home.

Have you tried it? Our friends bought a bottle and we sampled it with them. It tasted like a very rough eau-de-vie with anise and fig undertones. We did not care for it - not refined enough for sipping and it did not seem very versatile for cocktails.

Indeed it's a beautiful straw!

Stone Pale Ale. Robust but quite subdued on the hop front for a beer from Stone. I get mostly citrus and malt. Interesting to think that this was their very first beer, in 1996. A lot has changed since then in the beer world. Really nice with a couple of carnitas tacos.

Tzatziki, There was a discussion of Hemingway daiquiri ratios here. It looks like you are using the PDT ratios. I prefer to up the grapefruit and reduce the lime. I use a little more total citrus and maraschino than the PDT version but it's easy enough to reduce the maraschino if you think it's too sweet. I've also seen recipes that only use a teaspoon each of maraschino and grapefruit juice (like the one rumdood published here). Just try several versions and pick the one you like best (or come up with our own)!

This drink was created by a bartender for bartenders at the end of shift. It tastes very different after you have straw tasted 150 citrus drinks and 100 brown and stirred. You have serious palate fatigue, thus the name, and you need something with HUGE flavors. Trust me this is really tasty at 2:30am on a Friday night.Unlike Chris, I really liked the Fatigue. A deliciously bitter banana-cinnamon smoothie.

Thanks for the picture. That looks really good!

Hi LT, I recommend both books. The Drunken Botanist is a well-researched and well-written book that is very pleasant to read. Buy it if you are interested about botany and the history of plants used to make alcoholic beverages. If you are mostly interested in cocktail recipes, the book only contains a few. The Cocktail Lab has a lot of recipes, some that are easily achievable at home, and some that require equipment that most people don't have access to (centrifuge, rotavap, etc). But unlike most cocktail books which are a collection of recipes, this one describes the ideas behind these drinks and the creative process, and that makes it a fascinating (and inspiring) read.

One full ounce of grenadine? Wow. I find this quite terrifying :-)

Dan - I just knew this one would be coming up! I don't have any Tanqueray so Beefeater will have to do. Hopefully my homemade syrup will be worthy of this drink.

Okanagancook, I haven't tried April Bloomfield's version, but I love marinated red peppers. Plantes Vertes made another version recently (here). [nice cookbook collection by the way! ].

Heidi - I was in a restaurant in Santa Barbara recently and they had just picked a few wild fennel flowers (the smallest flowers) and sprinkled them on a cucumber soup I believe. I thought that was a great idea. It was pretty and delicious.