“Official cocktails” are not news. Countries have often had them, to showcase their products. The official cocktail of Peru is the Pisco Sour, highlighting the country’s white spirit, pisco. The official cocktail of Brazil is the Caipirinha, made with cachaça. The Mojito is the national drink of Cuba, where there’s plenty of run with which to make it.

But “official cocktail” could become a closer-to-home trend.

 
And on the west coast of Florida, Naples has selected the Coquito Mojito as its official cocktail.

The Coquito Mojito was chosen among six cocktails created by a mixologist who was retained by a group of Naples restaurateurs, called the Naples Originals, seeking an official cocktail.
 
The Coquito is an eggnog-like beverage, a traditional holiday drink in Puerto Rico. It is made with coconut cream, coconut milk, egg yolks, rum, sweet condensed milk, and holiday spices: cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg (photo #2).

The Mojito is a Cuban highball of white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water, and mint.

The Coquito Mojito combines the two concepts, taking the basic Mojito recipe (rum, mint, lime juice, sugar, and club soda) enhanced with coconut-flavored rum and cream of coconut, omitting the sugar.

> National Cocktail Day is March 24th.

> National Mojito Day is July 11th.

> National Coquito Day is December 21st.
 
 
RECIPE: COQUITO MOJITO

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Utensils

[2] A classic Coquito is a variation of coconut egg nog. Here’s a recipe (photo © Koloa Rum).

[3] A classic Mojito (photo © The Sea Fire Grill | NYC).

1. In the cocktail shaker, lightly muddle the mint in the coconut cream. Add lime juice, rum, and coconut flavored rum.

2. Fill with ice to the top, cap the shaker and give it a long, hard shake. Pour through a strainer into a glass over ice.

3. Add a splash of club soda. Garnish with a mint sprig, lime wheel, and coconut flakes.

If you’d like an official cocktail for your town, approach the Chamber Of Commerce and volunteer to be on the committee. You could find yourself with some new, civic-minded drinking buddies.
 

Find more of our favorite cocktail using the Food Categories pull-down menu on the upper right of this page.
 
 

Cool off with minimal calories. Photo
courtesy Sparkling Ice.

So we kept making bottles of seltzer with our Soda Stream, and mixed lots of our favorite new 5-calorie Lipton Tea and Honey To Go Stix Iced Tea Mix (in the Blackberry Pomegranate flavor) into individual bottles of cold water.

Then, we made our first diet ice pops of the season. All you need is ice pop molds and your favorite flavor of diet soda (we prefer fruit and root beer).

This tasty recipe uses calorie-free Black Raspberry Sparkling ICE with fresh raspberries. If you’re not counting calories, you can also use regular soda, juice or kefir.

The chopped fruit helps to bulk up the thinness of the soda.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. In a bowl, stir together soda and chopped raspberries.

2. Ladle mixture into ice pop molds and insert handles.

3. Freeze for at least 2 hours or until frozen.
 
The other Sparking ICE flavors can be adapted to pops as well: Coconut Pineapple, Kiwi Strawberry, Lemonade, Lemon Lime, Orange Mango, Pink Grapefruit and Pomegranate Berry. The line is certified kosher by OU.

The over-21 crowd can add a half teaspoon of gin, tequila or vodka per pop. Don’t add more without testing, or your pops may not freeze.

Dried morel mushrooms are available year round, but there’s nothing like the splendor of fresh morels—one of the most flavorful mushrooms, earthy and woodsy.

A perennial favorite of French chefs for the depth of flavor they give to almost any savory dish, morels grow wild in the woods from April through July. They are available in dried and canned forms year-round.

Morels have an unmistakable, honeycombed, hollow, cone-shaped cap which can be blonde, dark brown, grey or tan. The stems are white. The mushrooms range in size from two to four inches high.

One of the simplest recipes: Clean and soak the morels, cut them in half, then dip them into beaten eggs and then into seasoned flour (salt and pepper). Fry them for two minutes on each side, then drain. You can also freeze them this way.

Should you end up with more morels than you can use (what a luxury!), here’s a simpler way to freeze them, courtesy of TheGreatMorel.com.
 
After washing and soaking, dust with flour, place on a cookie sheet and freeze solid; then transfer to a in freezer bag. The flour keeps the mushrooms from sticking together in the bag.

[1] Instead of Caesar dressing with a raw egg yolk, try a poached egg. This variation also uses a long strip of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese‡ as a form to contain the salad and a dotted garnish of Parmigiano cream sauce. Beautiful! (photo © Payard).

[2] Bibimbap. The egg yolk is broken and mixed in with the other ingredients—vegetables and meat (photo © Minche11 | Pexels).

[3] Classic Caesar Salad (photo © Safe Eggs).

[4] A different take on Caesar. Hearts of romaine are cut in half, not torn. The recipe is below (photo © Parma Ham Consortium).

It borrows its key idea from bibimbap, the signature Korean dish (photo #3).

Bibimbap (BEE-bim-baahp) means “mixed rice.”

 
Chef François Payard adapted the bibimbap concept to a poached egg atop a Caesar salad, creating a delicious riff that also allays concerns of eating the raw egg yolk* in classic Caesar dressing.†

So gather your romaine, grated or shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, croutons and anchovies.

 
> National Caesar Salad Day is July 4th. The date was chosen because this popular salad was first served on July 4th, 1924.

> The history of the Caesar Salad.

> Here’s the original Caesar Salad recipe. Leave out the raw egg yolk and top with the poached egg instead (or a hard-boiled, soft-boiled, or deviled egg if you prefer.

> The history of Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese.

> The other Italian grating cheeses (not authentic Caesar ingredients, but just as tasty).
 
 
 
 
_____________

*If you’re not comfortable eating raw eggs, get Safe Eggs, which are pasteurized raw eggs.

†The original recipe used only lemon and olive oil to dress the salad. Anchovies, Worcestershire Sauce and creamy Caesar dressing were later additions. Here’s the original Caesar salad recipe.

‡Use a vegetable peeler on unaged Parmigiano-Reggiano.

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

There is no data, but our guess is a fraction of a percent.

Pasta Mamas’s aims to change that. The artisan pasta maker produces 26 flavors of pasta, plus plain and whole wheat.

Available in linguine, fettuccine and papardelle, the flavors include vegetables (beets, blue corn, zucchini), spices (jalapeño, tarragon-mustard) and even sweet flavors, made without sweetener, that can be used for main courses/sides or desserts (apple spice, chocolate, cinnamon nutmeg, Irish cream).

Pasta Mama’s also makes matching sauce mixes. So enjoy broccoli pasta with creamy broccoli sauce, garnished with steamed broccoli florets. Or sesame-ginger pasta with a stir fry.

At $5.75 for 12 ounces of dry pasta, and another $5.75 for a packet of sauce mix, Pasta Mama’s is a delicious gift, as well as a treat for you and your family.
The line is certified kosher. Read the full review.

Check out our Pasta Glossary and make some new discoveries.