Monday, September 2, 2019

It’s Labor Day, Are Your Pucks Frozen?

Even over a holiday weekend the Wall Street Journal delivers a little something rant worthy, even if it’s only a drink recipe. Now you would think that something as prosaic as a daiquiri would be non-controversial. And you’re probably thinking that, like a liberal, I’m going out of my way to be offended. You be the judge.

It doesn’t bother me that the recipe is not for the classic daiquiri,

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but rather one that Jimmy Buffet would call a “frozen concoction.”

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The fact that it is made with an immersion blender instead of the standard bar issue Waring blender is also an irrelevant fact for this discussion.

At the Streamliner in L.A., Mikki Kristola reveals her frozen-cocktail hack: the immersion blender

Nor do I don’t care that author Kevin Sintumuang (Culture & Lifestyle Director @esquire) prefers a frozen concoction over any sort of manly drink:

The trouble with making frozen drinks at home? You have to make them. Perhaps that’s why, whenever I come across a frozen drink on a cocktail menu, I order it…So naturally, when I visited the Streamliner bar in Los Angeles’s Union Station, the first drink I ordered was not its dirty Martini or old-fashioned but its frozen daiquiri.

The fact that his recipe starts with a decidedly non-classic “pre-frozen puck”  is likewise no concern to me. I forgive all these things with a nod to our modernity, life racing rapidly towards the third decade of the 21st century. No, to be clear, my gripe is with the recipe itself.

First, Kevin advises us that in order to use this recipe technique you will need to acquire “a food-grade rubber mold made for large cubes, such as Cocktail Kingdom’s Cylindrical Ice Tray.”

Image result for Cocktail Kingdom Cylindrical Ice Tray

I always balk at recipes that require the acquisition of yet another piece of kitchen ephemerabilia. Still, I can be chill with that as well. But the actual recipe for the frozen Daiquiri? No, it just will not do.

Make the daiquiri pucks: In a pitcher, combine 310 grams fresh lime juice, strained through a fine-mesh sieve, and 410 grams water, then whisk in 130 grams sugar, preferably superfine. Very carefully measure 65-67 grams of mix into each into each compartment of a food-grade rubber mold. Wrap mold with plastic and freeze overnight.

Make a mint daiquiri: In a large cocktail shaker, blend 50 ml rum and 2-3 small mint leaves with 1 daiquiri puck until mint is pulverized and drink has a texture closer to a shaken cocktail than a slushy. Serve in a frozen stem glass.

Apparently you need much more than a silicone ice cube tray, you’ll need and entire metric chemistry lab set.

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Where the legislative branch of the U.S. government has failed to convert the country to the superior metric system, the Wall Street Journal weekend Culture & Lifestyle Director has taken it on himself to do so. And apparently all of the editors, who should have insisted on measurements using equipment that parched readers might actually own, were on vacation, probably at Burning Man.

So if you want a frozen daiquiri this Labor Day might I suggest you go to the local supermarket – don’t worry, they’ll all be open, it’s only a holiday - and purchase some of the premade packets and toss them in your freezer for a few hours where they are guaranteed to turn into slushy pucks.

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And when you squeeze it into your glass, don’t forget to serve it with a paper straw – we’ve got to make the planet safe for globalism!

Seagram's Escapes Cocktails: Sangria Spritzer and Beer margaritas #seagrams #cocktails

P.S. I’m sure the plastic and aluminum sack your frozen daiquiri comes in is recyclable, or at least biodegradable.