January 31, 2018

Espresso Bongo


I have really wanted a Tiki bar for quite som time. It's nok gonna happen in my tiny house, but I can dream and build one from lego. Which is what I did today and then I decided to celebrate it's grand opening with a drink I have been craving since I mixed the Karmic Alarm Clock a couple of days ago: An Espresso Bongo.

It is a drink created by the the worlds most knowledgeable expert on Tiki cocktails, Jeff Berry also known as Beachbum Berry.

According to this recipe he had always wanted to name a cocktail after the 1959 film Expresso Bongo and got his break through when he mixed espresso, fruit juice and rum.

I have tinkered a little with the recipe - I know it's almost sacrilege - mainly because I seldom have passion fruit juice or nectar but I do have a commercial passion fruit syrup which is as sweet as simple syrup.

Also I simply wanted to make the recipe easier to remember - for seconds.

So I suggest you try the original if you have fresh passion fruit and only revert to my take if you have to use passion fruit syrup.

  • 6 cl golden rum - I used Mount Gay
  • 1.5 cl orange juice
  • 1.5 cl lime juice
  • 1.5 cl pineapple juice
  • 1.5 cl cold espresso 
  • 1.5 cl passion fruit syrup - I used Giffard
Add all ingredients to a shaker, fill it with ice, shake and then cocktail and ice into a low glass. Garnish with a Lego tiki bar - or what ever floats your drink.

January 28, 2018

The Karmic Alarm Clock - Asserbo Style


How fair is it to try a recipe for a cocktail, when half the ingredients are out of your reach and you have no way of knowing, what the end result should taste like?

Not very - if you do it for any other reason than: But it's the only way I can get to taste this mix that intrigues me!

And it did speak to me. Mainly because it sounds like a meal more than a drink but also because it woke up a powerful longing for all things New Orleans

The drink originates from SoBou, a bar I have visited a couple of times. Unfortunately I do not think I'll get to visit New Orleans or SoBou in the foreseeable future.

I remember finding SoBou's cocktails and bar menu playful and fun - but not over the top crazy.

When you read a recipe of a cocktail containing curry caramel you might think: That's over the top -especially as it is partnered with rum, cold-brew coffee and the Italian artichoke bitter Cynar.

Having decided the only way to taste the mix, was to try to recreat it - I faced a few problems:

Old New Orleans Cajun Spiced Rum is not for sale in Denmark, so I had to find a substitute. I've read a few reviews - some of them talk of a rum with strong hints of Christmas spice.

I suppose I could try spicing up a golden rum with som cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and clove but I have to admit - that particular mix is not a favorite of mine.

Instead I decided to use a mix of Stiggin's Fancy Plantation Pineapple and Myers dark rum.

My reasoning goes like this: Pineapple play well with curry and equally important with coffee.

My next problem was the call chicory cold-brew coffee. Whatever substitute I could find in Denmark would never match the original New Orleans coffee.

So instead I went for a strong espresso - which is probably at the exact oppersite end of the coffee scale to chicory cold-brew - but Espresso Bongo.

And then on to making the curry caramel. I started by dividing the recipe by 4 - I might love this cocktail, but not enough to drink the more than 70 that can be mixed from the amount of curry caramel the original recipe makes.
  • 4.5 cl rum - I a mix of Stiggin's Fancy Plantation Pineapple and Myers dark rum
  • 1.5 cl Cynar
  • 6 cl coffee - I used chilled espresso
  • 2 cl curry caramel*
And no I did not cook an extra salted caramel just for a garnish, I simply rolled half of the mouth of the glass in a little of the curry caramel and then som yellow sugar. I am lazy that way.

So how did it taste? Pretty much the way I expected. It tasted sort of how you feel after eating a salad of artichoke, a good curry, something sweet for dessert with an espresso. Only with booze...


* I cooked 250 g sugar with 1.25 dl of water over medium heat for a good 15 minutes and heated 6 grams of a strong curry powder in 2.5 cl of whipping cream until the cream just shivered on the surface. Just before adding the cream to the boiling sugar I poured it through a sieve.
P.S Happy 60th birthday Lego-brick!