(Blue) Rose Vodka

I grow roses, I concentrate on "blue" ones due to limited space. Queen of the violets is an old double rose with a deep perfume & a good strong purplish colour, ideal for making scented/flavoured vodka.

The Vodka quickly leaches the colour from the rose, but it ends up a light golden/yellow colour rather than a stronger pink .

I just put a bloom or 2 in vodka, with out any sugar (though 25g/500ml is reckoned to be a good amount) and let it stand for a few days to let the flavour develop properly. Once that was done I strained & bottled.

But why stop with 1 single variety of rose vodka ? Twice in a blue moon seems to be having a late summer/early autumn flush  and whilst being closer to a hybrid tea rose than the bourbon/old fashioned roses it still has a very strong perfume. So it was out with the secateurs and a few snips had a couple of those blooms in a bottle.

Tasting both is interesting, whilst they are both obviously rose flavoured they are quite different. The Queen of the violets vodka is heavy & very rosy. The Blue moon on the other hand is a bit more delicate and has definite vanilla notes. Now all I need to do is find a cocktail for it. It'll work in my Turkish delight drink, but there must be other uses though...

Chocktail

Hotel Chocolat make some unusual cocktail chocolates, in their seasonal range (which the website doesn't show) they are currently doing an "Alcohol-led" White lady truffle.

That's the truffle on the right, next to it is a freshly shaken White lady, let us see how they stack up.

The savoy book gives the recipe as 2 Gin, 1 Triple-sec, 1 Lemon juice, which seems to be quite standard. If you know your cocktails, you might notice that that is very similar to a sidecar, indeed you may find the White lady listed under Chelsea sidecar.
This gave me a bit of a start as Embury has a very different ratio for this family of drinks, which generally results in a cleaner, sharper taste. Since I don't know the relative proportions inside the chocolate shell I decided to forego Embury this time and go with the more widespread result.

Inside the chocolate shell is a creamy white ganache flavoured with well a white lady cocktail, the lemon & Cointreau notes are right up in front, the gin however is very faint and more of a back note. The cocktail however pushes the gin forward and gives a more citrus finish, now whether this is indicative of a different ratio in the chocolate or just an artefact of the manufacturing process its difficult to tell (had I gone with Embury's recipe the gin is very much the base ingredient).

It's a fun little thing to do, and if more of the cocktail truffles come out I'm probably going to try the experiment over, this time with a little more strictness in the procedure. For now though if you like either the chocolate or the cocktail, its pretty likely that you'll enjoy both.

Beer

      In a change to Friday's usual schedule, I went to the beer festival.
My taste in beer tends towards the chunkier brews, I don't really like the taste of hops, so that rules out most bitters, and I tend to drink larger on the mainland.

Last year they had my all time favourite beer. J.W.Lees' Moonraker, a brutal barley wine that is best described as vodka infused molasses. It was a hard job to go sample other beers.This year in a bid to make my life easier they only appeared to have Hydes in. Also I had a spy in the camp, my compadre had worked the Thursday evening opening shift & spied out some good stuff.

First up was a damson stout, a very palatable number, with sweetness up front and a damson ending. Unfortunately our next target a blueberry ale had just run out, and I fell for the old trick of a punny name. It was fortunately a very tasty mild, thick dark & sweet. After that I found a strong stout, nice enough, but not very memorable.

Moving down to the second tent, a wheat beer evangelist cornered me. After serving me several tasters and finding my stance somewhat unassailable he launched a coup de gras with an orange wheat beer, which was bloody lovely.

The band started up and they were very much pub rock, until a BSL interpreter joined them at which point they suddenly became RAWK. As the orange wheat beer was fading fast I ventured back in to find a strong imperial stout. Another pun turned up in the shape of "raisin to live". I think it was the evening's strongest brew (at a disappointing 7.9%) but had a great chocolate finish.

Beedhams the butcher (see Iberico) provided some lovely catering, in the shape of sausages & steak baps, ok not haute cuisine but ideal with a mug of beer on a gusty October eve.

Flame fondue

I believe that in the area of BBQ desserts are sadly neglected. I've tried to redress this several times, usually ending up with some variation on the caramelized fruit theme. Thursday's adventures in fire eating & the chance purchase of some Wray & nephew over proof rum, led me to a BBQ Dessert spectacle.

First slice several slightly under ripe bananas,into 4-5cm slices.
Grate 30g of good dark chocolate into one bowl
Put a similar amount of brown sugar (the treaclier the better) in a second bowl
Arrange Banana, bowls & wood skewers on a serving tray.

In a Fireproof bowl put 50ml of overproof rum & 20 ml of falernum (preferably the alcoholic version).

Serve the bananas, then light the rum.

To eat, skewer a banana chunk, dip into the chocolate or the sugar, then dip into the flaming rum & stir, bring the now flaming banana to the mouth & eat.
You can if you like extinguish the banana before eating or if you are a flaming Sambucca fan, just go for it. The rum mix will probably burn out in 5 or so minutes. At this point mix the remaining liquor, chocolate, sugar & banana in a foil parcel & place amongst the hot BBQ coals for 5 minutes. Enjoy.

Le délice gastronomique

or

The salamander's dessert

A bit off the beaten track here (ok further than normal). This is something fire eaters used to present, usually in one of 3 different ways. The one involving petrol we are going to brush right past, because ingesting petrol as well as being dangerous is foul.

The other 2 are more interesting to us, at least from the point of view of a blog such as this. Both require high/over proof alcohol. My favourite being a mix of Kirsch (preferably Kirschwasser) and brandy (I suppose an asbach would be proper, but I'll go with a VSOP cognac myself). Any over proof will do, infact 151 rum would have been ideal if I'd had any left. Since I was testing & not aiming for the perfect taste a shot of le fee parisian formed the alcohol component.

Thats it lit there in a fireproof (in this case pyrex) bowl. Some took this as far enough, stuck in a soup spoon (preferably one of those Chinese ones, it'll look good and being pottery can withstand the abuse).

That however doesn't really deserve the title, that comes about when fruit is added, usually some form of dried grape (for brandy mixtures) or cherry (if Kirsch was included). Being in a frenzy of curiosity I made do with banana, which would go really well with the 151 rum (and maybe a splash of falernum). This ends up kind of like a fondue, but the consequences of not keeping your morsel on the fork are well a bit more serious.

I'm very tempted to make this into an actual dessert for Saturday's BBQ. A little brown sugar or cocoa powder to dip the banana slices into, before plunging them into the flame, would make an interesting taste and the squeamish could always extinguish before eating.