Ladies and gentlemen, where have I been all your month?
Where I’ve been is, first I went out of town for work, then I came home with a cold, then I went out of town again. The short month flew by, my skedge was always being cut at the corners, blogging got squeezed out, and all in all, it was a real Feh-bruary. (I just came up with that, really I did. You can use it, though. Or how about Meh-bruary?)
Throughout, I was hoping that an idea would percolate in the back of my head for this cocktail contest I wanted to enter (deadline: oh, about 89 minutes from this very moment): PAMA’s Best Home Bar Star. Just as it sounds, submitted recipes must include PAMA pomegranate liqueur, and the contest’s only open to amateur, at-home mixologists.
And yet, no inspiration was striking. Like, none. Feh-bruary really lived up to its name-I-just-made-up and I wasn’t coming up with any sort of hook to hang this drink on. So what I did was, I went to the supermarket, hoping that browsing the aisles would somehow reveal a perfect, secret ingredient to me. In the juice aisle, I found my muse.
Did you know that the French word for pomegrante is grenade? And just like a grenade, BOOM — cocktail framework smacks me upside the head. French ingredients, something that really goes pow on the palate. Voila.
The Grenade Launch
1 ounce Bulldog Gin
3/4 ounce PAMA
1/2 ounce St.-Germain
1/2 ounce Lillet
1 dash yellow Chartreuse
1 dash orange blossom water
1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
Combine all ingredients in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously and strain into cocktail glass.
