The Caribbean is home to rum, a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugar cane. The clear distillate is then aged in oak barrels for various lengths of time, the process that creates the different types of rum.

Your acquaintance with rum may be via a Daiquiri, Hurricane, Mojito, Piña Colada or Rum and Coke (a.k.a. Cuba Libre).

But today, August 16th, is National Rum Day, the day to discover premium aged rum, hand-crafted and aged for years to produce the kind of complex spirit that is sipped and savored neat or on the rocks, like a fine Cognac.

So today’s tip is to stretch beyond your favorite, familiar rum drink and enjoy some fine aged rum—premium rum. You don’t have to buy a bottle: Simply meet a friend for a drink.
 
 
THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF RUM

There are different grades and variations of rum. Most rum is produced with molasses, but some use sugar cane juice instead. Some are lightly aged and used as cocktail mixers; some are aged for years and become premium rums—the “sipping” rums.

 
Want to make your own spiced rum? Here’s a recipe from Liquor.com.

 
 
OTHER WAYS TO ENJOY THE NATIONAL RUM DAY

How about:

A rum & Coke ice cream float: Add a shot of light rum to a glass of cola, and top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (or rum raisin ice cream!).

A piece of rum cake, dense cake made with dark rum. Here’s a recipe if you’d like to bake your own.
 
 
FOOD TRIVIA: YO-HO-HO AND A BOTTLE OF RUM

This famous song, formally called “Dead Man’s Chest” is a fictional sea-song that originated in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel, Treasure Island (1883). Stevenson only wrote the chorus:

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

The words were expanded into a poem, “Derelict,” by Young E. Allison, which was published in the Louisville Courier-Journal in 1891. Here’s the whole story.

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*ABV: Alcohol by volume. The “proof” is double the ABV.

[1] Cachaca, often called “Brazilian rum,” is the national spirit of Brazil (photo © Novo Fogo).

[2] White rum, also called silver rum and light rum (photo © Koloa Rum).

[3] As rum ages, it takes on amber colors (photo © Appleton Estate Rum).

[4] Dark rum has more molasses flavor, and is often sipped straight (photo © Myers’s Rum).

[5] Spiced rum is infused with spices (photo © Flor de Cana).

Drinking your dessert is especially delightful on a warm summer night. Make a “dessert cocktail” with different types of sparkling wine.

The different types of sparkling wine are below.

Start with a scoop of your favorite sorbet in a wine glass or stemmed dessert dish; top with sparkling wine and an optional garnish.

You can have a higher proportion of wine to sorbet, as in the photo at right—a glass of sparkling wine with a scoop of sorbet.

Or, take the other approach: A dish of sorbet with a sparkling wine pour-over, as in the photo below.

Either way, you’ve got something light and luscious, with no more effort than scooping sorbet and pouring Champagne. That’s a win-win in our book.

Beyond the simplicity of sparkling wine and sorbet, you can add a scoop of sorbet to a conventional cocktail:

 
You can also add the sorbet to non-sparkling cocktails, for example:

[1] A glass of Prosecco with strawberry sorbet (both photos © Auremar | Fotolia).

And then, there’s the ice cream cocktail. Two of our favorites:

THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPARKLING WINE

Asti or Asti Spumante, from the Asti region of Italy, is a sweeter style of sparkler made from Muscat grapes. The sweetness is perfect for dessert pairings, and the lighter body and low alcohol content (about 8%) help.

Cava, from Spain, is available in white or pink. As with Champagne, it is made in different levels of dryness/sweetness.

Champagne, the world’s most famous and costliest sparkler, is produced in the Champagne region of France. Although even the least expensive bottles are pricey, you can find something in the $25 range. Unless you’re a rock star, don’t pour Dom Perignon into a sorbet cocktail: The sweet sorbet will overwhelm the complexity and finesse of a great Champagne.

Cremant, from France, is a sparkler that can be produced in any region. It has lower effervescence than Champagne, giving it a creamy mouth feel.

Prosecco, from the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions of northern Italy, is a lighter-bodied sparkler, most often drunk as an apéritif. But serve it with warm-weather fare instead of a still white wine.

Sekt, from Germany. The top-quality Sekts are a great experience, with delicate biscuit and brioche accents.Here’s more about Sekt.

There are also sparkling white wines from Austria, England, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.S., and other countries.

Not to mention the red wine sparklers, such as Italian Brachetto and Lambrusco, and Australia’s sparkling Shiraz.

When you’ve created your signature sorbet cocktail, please share the recipe with us!
 
 

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India was rife with malaria, and the British troops took daily doses of quinine water (what we now call tonic water), a medicine used to treat malaria, to ward off the disease.

Someone suggested mixing it with gin to make it more palatable, and gin and tonic became the iconic drink of the British Empire.

What name could more reflect the origins of gin and tonic than Bombay Sapphire, a premium brand of gin distributed by Bacardi. Not only the name, but also the photo of Queen Victoria on the label, evoke the historic period. The “sapphire” refers to the Star of Bombay, a 182-carat star sapphire that was given to Mary Pickford by husband Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford bequeathed it to the Smithsonian Institution.

But back to the gin:

Celebrate the for Labor Day weekend in style. Serve the classic gin and tonic—G&T to its fans.

G&T: the classic summer drink. Photo courtesy Martin Miller’s Gin.

Gin is distilled from juniper berries and flavored with a complex layering of botanicals that provide flavor and aroma. Each brand has its proprietary recipe. Bombay Sapphire uses almond, angelica, cassia, coriander, cubeb, juniper berries, grains of paradise, lemon peel, licorice and orris root. (Try to isolate the flavors, the next time you enjoy a shot of gin.)

First the neutral spirit base is triple distilled, and the alcohol vapors are passed through a mesh basket containing the botanicals.

The still is also special: a Carter-Head still constructed in 1948, of which there are only a small number in the world. It provides a lighter, more floral gin rather than those distilled using a copper pot still. The water used to bring the strength of Bombay Sapphire down to 40.0% (80 proof) comes from Lake Vyrnwy, a nature reserve in Wales.

The original Bombay Sapphire debuted in 1987. In 2011, the brand tested Bombay Sapphire East in New York and Las Vegas. Enthusiastic consumer reaction led to a national roll-out.

Designed specifically to pair with the sweeter American tonic water, East adds two more botanicals, lemongrass and black peppercorns, to the original ten. It is bottled at 42% alcohol (84 proof).

We’re sticking with the first Bombay Sapphire because we go out of our way to use finer tonic waters, like Q Tonic Water and Fever Tree Tonic Water.

They’re made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup (which the large brands use), which affords more quinine flavor with less sweetness.

Artisan tonic waters also use real quinine instead of synthetic quinine—another reason they taste so much better.

For centuries, natives had stripped the bark from the tree, dried and powdered it, then mixed with a liquid to drink as a tonic. The tree was given its name in 1742 by the botanist Linnaeus, who named it after a Countess of Chinchon, wife of a Spanish viceroy to Peru. As the story is told, the countess contracted malaria in Peru in 1638, was successfully treated with the local remedy made from the bark of the tree. The countess introduced the remedy to Europe, upon her return in 1640.

It took 177 years, until 1817, for medicinal quinine, used directly as a medicine to treat malaria, to be isolated and extracted from the bark. This was achieved by French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou. The name is derived from the Quechua (Inca) word for the cinchona tree bark, quina or quina-quina, which translates to “bark of bark” or “holy bark.”

Even as a cocktail mixer, tonic water—originally called quinine water—was created not for better mixology, but as medicine. In 1825, British officers of the Indian Army mixed quinine with sugar and water as a prophylactic to ward off malaria. To make the tonic more palatable, they added gin to the mixture. Thus, the gin and tonic—the archetypical drink of the British Empire—began as a medicinal drink.

As medicine, the quinine levels in the original quinine water were very high. Today, they are miniscule—the FDA limits the quinine content in tonic water to 83 ppm. But that’s exactly how consumers want it: A little bit of quinine is tasty. Remember why gin was added in the first place: to try to kill the strong medicinal taste of the quinine.

*Bacardi also markets a less expensive variant of Bombay Sapphire, known as Bombay Original London Dry Gin or Bombay Original Dry. Made with eight botanical ingredients rather than ten, Bombay Original is harder to find than Bombay Sapphire. According to Wikipedia, The Wine Enthusiast reviewer preferred Bombay Original.

So simple but so delicious, the Caprese salad (insalata caprese in Italian) layers slices of tomato and mozzarella di bufala* with fresh basil. The dressing is a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

The salad is named after the Italian island of Capri, where it was widely popularized in the 1950s following its “discovery” by tourists.

With all the gorgeous heirloom tomatoes now at farmers markets, it’s time to enjoy a daily Caprese salad. For an even more eye-catching salad, use a mix of different colored heirloom tomatoes, as they do at Balducci’s Market.

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*Almost all American mozzarella is made from cow’s milk. But in Italy, by law, mozzarella is made from the milk of the water buffalo, and is called mozzarella di bufala. Water buffalo milk lacks carotene, the yellow pigment found in cow’s milk, so mozzarella di bufala is pure white. Cow’s milk mozzarella is called fior di latte, “the flower of the milk.” Water buffaloes, native to Asia, were brought to Italy in the 1400s.

CAPRESE SALAD VARIATIONS

No tomatoes? No problem! Don’t like cheese or lactose intolerant? Substitute tofu. Don’t like basil? Try arugula, spinach or watercress. Not a salad person? Have a Caprese sandwich.

Recipes Without Tomato

 
Recipes Without Mozzarella

Your coconut cake deserves fresh-grated
coconut. Photo courtesy Taste Of Home.
Here’s the recipe.

Recently, the folks at Microplane wrote to tell us that their Microplane Elite Extra Coarse Grater was terrific for grating coconut. The grater has large grating holes that give fresh coconut a texture similar to commercial shredded coconut—but if you’re a coconut lover, you’ll really prefer the superior taste and natural crunch of freshly-grated coconut.

We love moist, grated coconut in and on ambrosia salad, cakes, cupcakes, lemon-coconut bars, macaroons and ice cream. On the savory side, there’s coconut batter shrimp, coconut rice, Thai chicken and soups, numerous Indian dishes and other Pacific Rim cuisine.
The grater also works on cheeses and root vegetables. The suggested retail is $16.95, and you can buy it online. If you have a friend who makes a great coconut dish, you can make a gift of the grater and a fresh coconut.

A COCONUT IS A FRUIT, NOT A NUT

Actually, it’s a drupe—a category of fruits that includes the coffee cherry (bean), mango, olive, most palms (date and coconut palms, e.g.), strawberry and all members of the genus Prunus, including the almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum.

Here’s what we dug up at the Library of Congress:

Is a coconut a fruit, nut or seed? Botanically speaking, a coconut is a fibrous one-seeded drupe, a classification of fruit.

A drupe is a fruit with a hard stony covering enclosing the seed (like a peach or olive) and comes from the word drupa meaning overripe olive. A coconut, and all drupes, have three layers: the exocarp (outer layer), the mesocarp (fleshy middle layer), and the endocarp (hard, woody layer that surrounds the seed). When you buy a coconut at the supermarket the exocarp and the mesocarp have been removed and what you see is the endocarp.

So why is it called a nut?

Food names were bestowed long ago, often by explorers and others who had no botanical training.

Eggplants have nothing to do with eggs, but the early small, white oval varieties looked like eggs to the folks who named them. Grapefruit growing on trees looked like jumbo clusters of grapes. To Columbus’s crew, the heat in chiles reminded them of the black peppercorns back home, so they called chiles “peppers.” They were ignorant of the fact that there is no relation between chiles and peppers.

The oldest reference to the coconut comes from a 5th century Egyptian traveler, Cosmas, who wrote about the “Indian nut” or “nut of India” (the coconut more than likely originated in the Indian Archipelago or Polynesia). “Coconut” was derived from old Portuguese and Spanish, where coco meant head or skull.

Why skull?

It’s not a nut, but a fruit. Photo courtesy Microplane.

Botanically, the coconut palm is not a tree since there is no bark, no branches, no secondary growth. The coconut palm is a woody perennial (flowering plant) called a monocotyledon; what we see as the trunk is a very thick, woody stem.

Other monocotyledons include the true grains (maize, rice, wheat, etc.), the pasture grasses, sugar cane, bamboo, banana, ginger and the amaryllis family—which includes onions and garlic plus flowering plants such as the amaryllis, daffodil, lily, iris, orchids, and tulip.

Isn’t botany enlightening?