Flor de Puebla

Today is National Margarita Day! As random as these various holidays may seem, I do love how they bring lots of people together to play with the same recipe or ingredient. If you check Twitter, Instagram, or your favorite blogs today, you're almost certain to find dozens of fantastic margarita recipes. And I'm happy to throw one more into the mix.

For this margarita, I infused blanco tequila with dried hibiscus flowers. This gives it a floral, slightly fruity taste and a beautiful bright pink color. Hibiscus is not as hard to find as you might think. I like getting it from my local natural wellness store, which lets you scoop your own teas and spices. It's great because you don't need much for an infusion. But you can also buy dried hibiscus online. Just a half tablespoon of dried flowers in one cup of your spirit of choice will give you a beautiful infusion overnight.

To give this margarita a bit more depth and spice, I also threw in some Ancho Reyes chili liqueur. This is a surprisingly versatile ingredient that goes with lots of different flavors, but it certainly does shine with agave spirits. If you don't have a bottle, you can still make a more traditional hibiscus margarita by subbing in some triple sec or Cointreau. And if you want to keep it spicy, try adding a few jalapeño slices to your hibiscus infusion. I finished off the drink with a hibiscus-chili salted rim - definitely optional, but a fun touch!

Flor de Puebla

2 oz. hibiscus-infused tequila blanco*
3/4 oz. Ancho Reyes
1/2 oz. lime juice
1/2 oz. agave nectar
Hibiscus-chili salt, for rim**

Prepare glass by running a wedge of lime around the rim and dipping it in the salt. Fill the glass with ice. Combine tequila, Ancho Reyes, lime juice, and agave nectar in a shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Strain into the prepared glass and garnish with a few rehydrated hibiscus flowers.

*For hibiscus-infused tequila, combine 1/2 tbsp. of dried hibiscus flowers with 1 cup of tequila in a jar and let sit overnight, shaking occasionally. Strain out the flowers before using.

**For hibiscus-chili salt, crush some hibiscus flowers with a mortar and pestle. Add kosher salt and chili powder (I completely eyeballed the amounts, but maybe 1:2:3 chili:hibiscus:salt). Crush a little more with the pestle to break up the salt and combine the ingredients.

Blood Orange Margarita

Today is National Margarita Day! My social media feeds are filled to the brim with mouth-watering margarita recipes, and I just had to join in. I was only going to post this Blood Orange Margarita on Instagram, but then I took a sip, fell ridiculously in love, and decided that it merited a entire blog post.

I've actually made a blood orange margarita for the blog before, my Spicy Blood Orange Margarita, which uses blood orange liqueur instead of fresh juice. This one is actually quite different, if you couldn't tell from the vibrant color alone. Blood oranges are honestly one of the most amazing fruits you can include in a cocktail. They're just so, so pretty, and their juice turns just about anything a vivid, gorgeous shade of red. I had a couple in my fridge because I saw them at the grocery store, and when you like to take photos of pretty cocktails, you do not just pass up blood oranges. Adding a couple of ounces of juice to your margarita instead of the usual triple sec or Cointreau instantly transforms it into a stunning glass of tangy, citrusy goodness.

I'm pretty glad I decided to participate in today's holiday. I forgot how tasty a good margarita can be. The only problem is that now I kind of want some tacos. When is National Taco Day?

Blood Orange Margarita

2 oz. tequila blanco
1 1/2 oz. blood orange juice
3/4 oz. lime juice
1/2 oz. agave nectar

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Rim a coupe glass with pink salt (I like to do it halfway) and strain the cocktail into the prepared glass. Garnish with a slice of blood orange.

Mocktail: Spicy Sandia

It might be late May, but it doesn't feel like summer in Boston yet. We got a brief taste of seasonally-appropriate (or even seasonally extreme) weather when it hit ninety degrees for two days last week, and I ran out and bought herbs and vegetables for my garden thinking that the warm weather had finally arrived. But then it promptly returned to fifty degrees and raining. At least I don't need to water the plants. I'm not exactly in a hurry to get to sweltering heat, but a few days in the seventies certainly wouldn't be unwelcome.

While this mocktail is more ideal for sipping on the porch in the summer heat, its color and spice certainly brightened up my rainy day. One of the biggest challenges to mocktail recipes, I've found, is finding ingredients that make up for the liquid volume usually taken up by alcohol. There's a reason you see a ton of drinks made with club soda and ginger beer - they're easy add-ins. Things like tonic water, shrubs, fruit juices, and teas are other good options. When brainstorming ingredients for this purpose, it occurred to me that watermelon would be a fantastic addition to a mocktail - colorful, subtly sweet, and very juicy. And so this ode to a margarita was born. It's ridiculously tasty and extremely refreshing. I added some jalapeño for a kick and some smoked salt on the rim for a bit of extra flavor and aroma. Smoked salt isn't something I've used before, but it's an amazing rimmer for cocktails. Look for it at your grocery store with the organic spices.

Booze it up: One word: tequila.

Spicy Sandia

8 1-inch cubes watermelon
2-4 thin slices jalapeño pepper (depending on spiciness and how you like it)
1 oz. lime juice
3/4 oz. agave nectar
1 oz. club soda
Smoked salt, for rim

To prepare the glass, rum the rim or exterior of a rocks glass with a wedge of lime and roll it in smoked salt. Fill the glass with ice. Combine watermelon and jalapeño in the bottom of a shaker and muddle well to extract the juices from the watermelon and incorporate the spice from the pepper. Add lime juice and agave nectar. Fill the shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Fine-strain into the prepared glass. Top with club soda and garnish with a slice of watermelon and a wedge of lime.

Mixology Monday: Cool as A...

I was so excited about making shrubs for this month's Mixology Monday hosted by Mr. Muddle that I couldn't stop with just one. My garden is producing gigantic cucumbers faster than I can find ways to use them, so there was no way one of them wasn't going to end up in a shrub.


If you missed yesterday's post, check out the You Say Tomato for a little info on shrubs. These mixtures of fruit, sugar, and vinegar are deliciously tangy and make great additions to cocktails and mocktails. They're perfect for this month's theme of vinegar.

I felt like my tomato shrub came out a little too sweet, so I knew to use a bit less sugar for this cucumber shrub. I opted for champagne vinegar, which I thought would work well with the lighter flavor of the cucumbers. White wine vinegar would be another good option, but I don't recommend using regular white vinegar - its flavor is pretty harsh, and apparently it's not the best choice for shrubs.

It's important to taste your shrub as you go along, especially when adding the vinegar, so you don't overdo it. I think I nailed proportions with this one. It's sweet and tangy and refreshing. Shrubs are definitely going to be a regular addition to my cocktails from now on!

Cucumber Shrub

1 lb. cucumber, diced
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup champagne vinegar

Stir cucumber and sugar together in a bowl. Cover with a dish towel and let it sit on the counter for 48 hours, stirring once a day. The cucumbers will release a lot of water. After two days, strain the mixture into a cup measure. Mine made about 1 2/3 cup of syrup. I poured off the extra 2/3 of a cup and set it aside to adjust the final mixture. To the remaining 1 cup of syrup, add 1/4 cup champagne vinegar one tablespoon at a time, tasting as you go. If the shrub becomes too vinegary, add some more syrup.

Recipe adapted from Food52.

As with the You Say Tomato, I wanted to keep this cocktail pretty simple and let the flavor of the shrub shine. I thought tequila and mint would work well with the tangy cucumber shrub. I was surprised by how much it blended with the other ingredients; whereas the tomato shrub in the You Say Tomato is front and center, in this recipe it more subtly enhances the cocktail with tart and savory notes. You can't go wrong with these flavors in the summertime. This is an utterly refreshing, completely delicious drink.

Cool as A...

1 1/2 oz. tequila blanco
1 oz. cucumber shrub
1/4 oz. lime juice
1/4 oz. agave syrup
6 mint leaves
2 oz. club soda

Combine mint leaves and agave syrup in a shaker and muddle gently. Add tequila, cucumber shrub, and lime juice. Fill shaker with ice and shake the mixture until it's well chilled. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Top with club soda and stir gently. Garnish with a cucumber ribbon and a sprig of mint.

Lawn Dart

The description for the Lawn Dart in The PDT Cocktail Book says that its flavor mimics the aroma of freshly-cut grass. If that doesn't sound like something you'd like to drink, I suppose I understand. But you'd be missing out. One sip of this cocktail really blew me away. The flavors are really unique, but they work perfectly together. The bell pepper, a truly unique cocktail ingredient, makes a big impact. It brings out the grassy notes in the gin and tequila, and the dash of Green Chartreuse ties it all together. It does, indeed, taste like summer.

I have a beef with the recipe, though. It calls for "one 5-inch slice of bell pepper," which is not nearly descriptive enough. If we're talking about, say, cucumber, a 5-inch slice is a very clear unit of measurement; there's really only one dimension in which to cut a cucumber. But a bell pepper is more vague. What orientation is the bell pepper when you cut this slice? Do you slice all the way around the pepper? If not, how wide should the slice be?? I thought about this for way too long.

In the end, I went with a slice from the top to the bottom of the pepper (roughly the instructed five inches), about 1/4 inch wide. Maybe smaller than the recipe intends, but I didn't want to over-bell-pepper my cocktail. And I was pretty happy with the outcome.

History: This cocktail was developed by Sean Hoard at PDT in New York in 2010. He's now the manager of Teardrop in Portland.

Lawn Dart

1 oz. tequila blanco
1 oz. gin
3/4 oz. agave nectar
3/4 oz. lime juice
1/4 oz. Green Chartreuse
1 5-inch slice bell pepper

Recipe from The PDT Cocktail Book.

Basil Cranberry Julep

The Mint Julep may be a classic, but it isn't really a cocktail I crave very often. It's just so very sweet, without much to balance it out. I used to think I'd only ever want one during the Kentucky Derby; I've been forced to amend that statement after a visit to Houmas House Plantation outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where we sipped Mint Juleps while touring the beautiful gardens at sunset. A Mint Julep can be perfect in the right setting.

Despite my Mint Julep misgivings, I like the idea of trying some variations on the simple mint-sugar-bourbon mixture, and this one from Nick Caruana of The Straight Up looked like a perfect candidate. It swaps out the mint for basil, the bourbon for mezcal, and the plain simple syrup for a cranberry syrup, which I already had made up for my Autumn Cranberry Old Fashioned.

Like a traditional Mint Julep, this cocktail dances dangerously close to being too sweet. The mezcal really helps provide some balance in this respect, as does the slight tartness of the cranberry syrup. It's still not my favorite, but I'm really glad I made it. One of the most remarkable things about it is how very much like a julep it tastes, even with its unique ingredients. I could definitely find a situation or two in which this would be the perfect cocktail to sip. Nick points out that Derby Day and Cinco de Mayo usually fall quite close together - I think I know what I'll be drinking this year.

Basil Cranberry Julep

2 oz. mezcal
1 oz. cranberry syrup*
1/4 oz. agave nectar
6 basil leaves

Add basil leaves and agave nectar to the bottom of a julep cup and muddle gently. Add the mezcal and cranberry syrup. Fill the cup with crushed ice, mounding it on top. Garnish with two basil leaves and some fresh cranberries, if desired. Drizzle about 1/4 oz. cranberry syrup on top.

*For cranberry syrup, Nick recommends reducing cranberry juice in a saucepan and adding sugar. You can also simmer fresh cranberries in equal parts water and sugar until they begin to break down. Crush them with a spoon and then strain the syrup. Either way, let it cool completely before using.

Recipe from The Straight Up.

Oaxaca Old Fashioned

If you want to put a unique spin on a classic recipe, a pretty surefire way to do it is to work in some mezcal. The deep smokiness gives just about everything a delicious facelift if done right. I see mezcal variations popping up all over the place: mezcal mules, mezcal palomas, mezcal sours, mezcal juleps... I recently featured a Mezcal Smash and even attempted a mezcal Manhattan. But, as I learned while trying to come up with the Manhattan recipe, it's not always so simple as replacing the base spirit with mezcal. This is even more true when it comes to the Old Fashioned.

The Old Fashioned is the original cocktail, and it's a simple one at that. Spirits, sugar, bitters. Modifying it requires a certain amount of subtlety. But this variation puts a nice, agave-centric spin on the classic. With tequila reposado, mezcal, agave nectar, and mole bitters, it sticks to the formula of the Old Fashioned without actually keeping a single ingredient.

The Oaxaca Old Fashioned also calls for a flamed orange twist. Flaming a twist is something I didn't mention in my post on twists. Maybe I should have, because it's fun, dramatic, and actually educational - it gives you a really clear view of the oils expelled from the twist, which are usually all but invisible. It does not involve lighting the twist on fire; instead, the oils pass through the fire, giving them a nice caramelized flavor. It does require you to be a bit more ambidextrous than the usual twist. First, strike a match and hold it over the glass in your non-dominant hand (being careful not to panic and drop it into your cocktail if it burns too low). In your other hand, pick up your orange twist with the outside facing the match. Hold the twist between your thumb and middle finger or forefinger and bend it in half by bringing your fingers together. The ends should bend towards your hand, the middle out towards the drink. You should see little flickers as the oils are expelled and pass through the flame into the cocktail. Blow out the match and rub the peel on the edges of the glass when you're done.

History: The name of this cocktail is a reference to the Mexican province where most mezcal is made, Oaxaca. It was created by Phil Ward at Death & Company. Ward left to open Mayahuel and create many more delicious mezcal and tequila cocktails, such as the Division Bell.

Oaxaca Old Fashioned

1 1/2 oz. tequila reposado
1/2 oz. mezcal
1 tsp. agave nectar (I like a little less)
2 dashes mole bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into an old fashioned glass filled with ice. Garnish with a flamed orange twist.

Note: Other versions of this recipe use Angostura bitters instead of mole, and some omit the flaming of the orange twist.

Recipe adapted from Imbibe and Kindred Cocktails.

Grilled Pineapple Margarita

The Margarita is a cocktail that positively begs for experimentation. There are so many different things you can do with it. One of the easiest variations is just to add different fruits. I already made Peach Margaritas, which were really good.

But these Grilled Pineapple Margaritas are better.

This recipe, from Erin of Platings and Pairings, is amazing. It requires a fair bit of preparation, but it's completely worth it. This is a whole other level of margarita.

First of all, you're not just throwing in some pineapple - it's grilled pineapple. If you've never grilled pineapple, you should know that it's delicious. It gets sweet and caramelized and smoky. You're going to want to grill it well ahead of time so it has time to cool. Try not to eat it all while you wait.

On top of that, this margarita uses jalapeno-infused tequila. It's the first time I've made it, but I can already see myself experimenting with it in lots of cocktails. This also needs to be made ahead of time. Since I didn't want to make a lot, I poured about 4 ounces of tequila blanco into a mason jar and added half a jalapeno, sliced. Though Erin recommended letting the tequila infuse for 12 hours, I tasted it after only one hour and thought it was spicy enough for me. The longer you let it sit (and the more jalapeno you use), the spicier it will be. If you overdo it, just add some more tequila to dilute it.

Erin's recipe calls for 1 1/2 ounces of the jalapeno tequila, but I decided to cut this back to one ounce and add 1/2 ounce mezcal to play up the smokiness of the pineapple. The final special touch is a teaspoon of vanilla, which really brings all the flavors together. It is so good!

Grilled Pineapple Margarita

1 oz. jalapeno-infused tequila*
1/2 oz. mezcal
1/2 oz. triple sec
2 slices grilled pineapple** (I used a little less)
1 1/2 oz. lime juice
1 oz. agave nectar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

*For jalapeno-infused tequila: Slice jalapeno and combine with tequila blanco. Use roughly one jalapeno pepper per cup of tequila. Let the tequila infuse until it's spicy enough for your taste, 1-12 hours. Strain to remove jalapeno slices.

**For grilled pineapple: Slice fresh pineapple into 1-inch thick rings. Remove the rind, and the core if desired (I removed the core after they'd cooked). Preheat a grill to medium-high. Grill pineapple slices for 4-5 minutes each side, until pineapple is softened and has browned grill marks. Let cool and store in the refrigerator until you're ready to make your cocktail.

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Strain through a fine sieve to remove pineapple pieces. Erin suggests adding as much as 3/4 cup water in the blender to reduce the thickness of the liquid; I omitted it water, but did find it difficult to strain the mixture. Pour the strained cocktail into a shaker and shake with ice until well chilled. Coat the rim of a rocks glass with salt and fill the glass with crushed ice. Strain the cocktail into the prepared glass. Garnish with a piece of grilled pineapple.

Recipe adapted from Platings & Pairings.

Peach Margarita

Some recipes I plan to make ahead of time, but others just happen. These Peach Margaritas just happened. We were making tacos for dinner, and I thought Margaritas would go really nicely with them. Peaches are in season right now, and I've been seeing them everywhere, so I thought adding some would be a nice touch. I started with this recipe from Gimme Some Oven and simplified it by muddling the peach instead of pureeing it.

I was pretty sure these were going to taste good, but what I didn't expect was the texture. It is thick and smooth and just perfect. For a cocktail made on a whim, it is really darn good. So delicious and refreshing. I'd love to do a big batch for a party.

Peach Margarita

2 oz. tequila blanco
1 1/2 oz. lime juice
1 oz. triple sec
1/2 oz. agave nectar
1/2 peach

Slice up the half peach and place it at the bottom of a shaker. Add agave nectar and lime juice. Muddle well. Add tequila, triple sec, and ice. Shake until well-chilled. Salt the rim of a rocks glass and fill with ice. Strain the cocktail into the glass. It will be very thick and there will be lots of peach pulp, so this can be a slow process going straight from the shaker. I recommend pouring the entire cocktail out of the shaker and into a sieve over a pitcher or measuring cup, then pouring the strained cocktail into the glass. I know it's a bit messy, but don't worry - you'll thank me.

Recipe adapted from Gimme Some Oven.