You may ask yourself, what is a shrugroni? Well obviously, it’s a Negroni made with a shrub. In this case a watermelon shrub. I’ve been seeing shrubs all over the menus of hip cocktail bars around town; they always seem so mysterious. They often have fruit flavors like blackberry or rhubarb and apparently are not woody plants the way I usually think of shrubs, but what are they?? I bought a cookbook to find out – Michael Dietsch’s Shrubs: An old-fashioned drink for modern times. It turns out, shrubs are just vinegar and fruit (or vegetables). Meaning if you can juice it, you can probably shrub it. Which opens a whole world of cocktail possibilities…
Tag: gin
Stoddard’s Ciao Senza Nome
As I try to develop my ability to create my own recipes, I think being able to recreate dishes that I’ve eaten at restaurants is a great step to understanding flavor BALANCE and RATIOS, and to hone my sense of taste. Cocktails are the beginners version of this strategy, because the restaurant usually lists all the ingredients on the menu so I just have to figure out the measurements. I had this particular cocktail (the name of which means “hello nameless” in Italian) at Stoddard’s in Downtown Boston, where a very nice waitress recommended it because I don’t like very sweet drinks. I chose it because I already had all the ingredients so it would be very easy to recreate.
Tart Cherry Gin Fizz
Cocktail time! Please check out my Cocktails – thoughts post for some background on why I’m so into cocktail making. The way this recipe came about is that I was visiting my parents for the weekend and I felt like taking advantage of their pretty well-stocked bar and kitchen. My mom and I have a running joke that we should have a “signature cocktail” for every dinner gathering at their house, even though the gathering usually consists of me, my mom, and my dad, who doesn’t want anything to do with our signature cocktail tradition anyway. On top of that, my mom was doing a “dry month” as part of a New Year’s resolution, so the party consisted of JUST ME. But that’s FINE, because the great thing about cocktails is that you can make one at a time!
Results Not Guaranteed 