Cocktail Wednesdays: The Arnaud

 The Arnaud Cocktail is named after French born pianist, singer and actress Yvonne Arnaud.

Yvonne Arnaud,
Photo from Wikipedia

Germaine Yvonne Arnaud was born in 1890. She entered the Conservatoire de Paris at age 9, and at age 12, she began performing with orchestras throughout Europe and USA. In 1911, she moved to the theatre. According to the website of the theatre in Guildford, England named in her honor, "warmth, humour and talent gave her an unrivalled position on the English stage for nearly fifty years."

The Arnaud Cocktail:

1 oz Gin
1 oz Dry Vermouth
1 oz Crème de Cassis

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a blackberry on a cocktail stick.

Crème de cassis, or black currant liqueur, is considered to be a particularly French ingredient. Cassis ice cream is a classic French treat, as is the Kir, a drink made with wine and crème de cassis. A Parisian Martini also involves crème de cassis. Gin, on the other hand, is a classically English ingredient, so the combination of the two makes perfect sense for a French actress who spent so much of her life in England.

The verdict: I was a little afraid that Scott wouldn't like it since he wasn't a fan of the last drink with cassis or the cassis ice cream, but I was pleasantly surprised by his reaction. Surprisingly, I think he liked it better than I did. He thought it was a little fruitier than he would have liked last night, that it was more of a summer drink. I thought that although the flavors were both identifiable individually and smeed to play well together, there was something harsh about it that bothered me. Maybe I would prefer a similar drink with a different ratio of the ingredients.

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Cocktail Wednesdays: Diablerie

Tonight's cocktail was Diablerie, which was cocktail contest entry by Kent Wang. It is a riff on the El Diablo, a tequila-based cocktail. I picked this one because we have all of the ingredients, and I really thought it was about time we did a cocktail without Maraschino. Additionally, this is a cocktail containing cassis (black currant), which is an ingredient in two drinks that are standbys for me: the classic French Kir, and hard cider with cassis. This is a New Orleans sour, since it contains lime juice and is sweetened by orange liqueur, but also to a certain extent it is sweetened by the cassis as well.

I served it in some glasses that I cleared out of the bar in the basement. I was crossing my fingers that the glasses would be large enough, and they barely were. You may be seeing some more of these in the rotation in the future.

Diablerie

1 1⁄2 oz Light rum
1⁄2 oz Orange liqueur
1⁄2 oz Cassis
1⁄2 oz Lime juice

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass.

The verdict: The cassis provides a sophisticated fruitiness. It is a fruity rum drink, but it's not a stereotypical tropical rum drink. I have a bit of difficulty figuring out what the best setting or season would be for this drink. Scott thinks it has "a good taste, but it is a medicinal taste." He said that although he liked it tonight, he doesn't think he would normally have drunk all of it. I like it, but then I do like black currant anyway.

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Black Currant Ice Cream

The black currants I did not use to make jam -- 150g to be precise -- went into making cassis ice cream. I combined two recipes in particular, after reviewing a number. Neither of these recipes call for an ice-cream maker, and I suppose I could have simply divided this one by 1/3, but I was especially interested in trying this one because it is entirely proportional, so I could use it no matter how much I harvested. The only real change from the second recipe was that I added an egg in the manner described in the first recipe.

Since most of my followers don't speak French, here's what I did:

I boiled the black currants in a little water for a few minutes to soften them. The currants quickly became soft, broke and began to boil. I transferred them to the blender and liquified them. Because the mixture was thicker than the juice I was expecting, I measured the amount that came out of the blender and added enough water to get it back to the original weight of the fruit before boiling. Next, I added 1/2 the weight of the currants in powdered sugar. I seperated an egg and added the yolk to this mixture. I placed the sugared juice in the freezer to cool. Then, I whipped the eggwhite to hard peaks and popped that bowl in the refrigerator. In a separate bowl, I whipped 2/3 the volume of the currant juice of whipping cream.



You should have seen the cream. I bought local whipping cream from Calder Brothers Dairy for the first time, It was so rich that when I poured it out of the bottle, there were globs of cream so thick you would think it had already been whipped. When I tried to shake it a little to homogenize it before using it in vodka cream sauce for last night's dinner, I actually managed to whip it slightly in the bottle. I have never before seen cream so rich. I misjudged how much I would need for the ice cream, butterbeer and vodka sauce, so I envision more home made ice cream, strawberry shortcake and possibly Devon-style double-cream in our very near future -- like next week.

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Jam Making

At the beginning of the week, I decided to tackle the daunting task of trying to preserve the fruits harvested from our garden. This was a task I found daunting because I had never actually made jam before, just cut some strawberries for the other people who worked their magic in the back room. Also, I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with any of it. The picture above shows the strawberries, black currants and sour cherries I harvested and pitted or de-stemmed, as well as rhubarb and apples from the market all prepped for processing.



Strawberries and rhubarb were easy enough. After weighing the strawberries left from last week, and going out to pick an additional 4 oz of strawberries that day, I decided to combine them into strawberry-rhubarb freezer jam. With the guidance of some online sources, I mainly used the recipe on the box of pectin for strawberry freezer jam, substituting rhubarb for some of the strawberries. I did use one cup less of sugar, similar to some of the online recipes I had seen. I also only had one box of pectin, and I was planning to make several jams. When I bought it, I thought it was enough for processing a large batch of fruit, but then I read fruit quantities on the freezer jam recipes and realized that I needed more! I decided to use almost all of it on the strawberry rhubarb and boiled it the longest time I saw recommended for processing rhubarb to soften it. It set up beautifully.



The harder decision was what to do with the black currants. On the one hand, I wanted to make more jam, but on the other hand, memories of French glace au cassis (black currant ice cream) lured me that direction. Ultimately, I decided to use some for making jam and to reserve the rest for making ice cream.



I decided to use the apples as a neutral base for the strong black currant flavor. I had been planning to combine them with one of the other fruits, but I wasn't sure if it would be sour cherries, black currants, or both together. What led me to my final resolve was a drink that my Duien and I used to enjoy on a weekly basis at The Marlay House: Strongbow cider with crème de cassis. Since I love the combination of black currant and apple, I decided to give it a go, using a recipe for apple honey lemon jam as a base and adding just a handful of currants. I ended up relying almost entirely on the pectin in the apples with just a dash of the powdered stuff, and it set up beautifully. I did find all of the prep of the apples to be a big pain. When the sliced apples finally began to soften after a lot of cooking, and I could smash them a bit with the potato masher as directed, I ended up with what was basically applesauce with currants. In the future, I think I will use the method from my apple butter recipe, where you simply quarter the apples and cook them with skins and cores, then run them through a chinois or sieve. This gives the sauce more flavor, vitamins, and apparently the pectin is also primarily located in the cores and peels. What did amaze me about this recipe was how adding the sugar took it from applesauce to apple jam consistency. The apple-currant jam also set up beautifully, and turned a gorgeous ruby hue. I may have simmered it for a ridiculous amount of time though. Word to the wise: do not try to make two different jams at once; you can't pay enough attention to one of them -- in this case, the strawberry-rhubarb that was bubbling away as I sauteed the apple-cassis. Also, use an extra-deep pot, even if you have a small amount of fruit, or it could boil over, inundating your stovetop as you desperately try to catch the flowing juices in the random extra pan sitting on your other burner. Yeah, don't do it that way.


Strawberry jam to the left, cassis-apple jam, right.

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