Cooking Lesson #123 Sunny Californication & Dark & Stormy Cocktails

HAPPY HOUR

Sunny Californication Cocktail

Dark & Stormy Cocktail | Photo Credit: Gosling's

How you doin’? Here’s a pair of cocktails that are as polar-opposites as their names—sunshine and stormy. So get ready for some bright sunshine and dark clouds—please just don’t mix them together as I won’t be publishing a hangover recipe until New Years.
 
                                            Sunny Californication Cocktail
Californication reflects the Southern California orange groves and a patchwork of cultures and flavors. So why not mix it up a little for this week’s Happy Hours mixin’s? At the old Customs House we used to auction off the bar mat at the end of the evening. The bar mat catches all the spills of all the different liquors that may have been used that evening. I know that may sound awful, but waste not want not.

So, the Californication reflects these cultures with the various spirits used within the cocktail from all over the world. It is a generous mixture of rum, vodka, tequila and gin finished with orange liqueur, lemon juice and orange juice to mask the various spirits used throughout. Simply garnish with either a slice of orange or a twisted orange rind or both. This drink is deceptively strong and yet sweet… kind of like a Long Island Iced Tea with OJ instead of Tea.
 
Ingredients
1/2 oz each of vodka, gin, white rum and tequila (yes, all four)
1/2 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 oz orange liqueur
3 oz freshly squeezed orange juice
Garnish with slice of fresh cut orange
 
Directions

1. In a large glass, splash equal measures of vodka, gin, white rum and tequila into a glass.
2. Add the lemon juice, freshly squeezed orange juice and lots of ice.
3. Mix well.
4. Float the orange liqueur over an inverted spoon over the ice cubes
5. Garnish with a fresh orange round or strip of rind to finish it off.
6. That’s it—you’re now officially a Californian—time to pay your taxes.

ChefSecret: It is important to use fresh lemon and orange juice, not the bottled stuff.
 
                                               Dark & Stormy Cocktail
While Dark and Stormy may sound ominous you don’t have to batten down the hatches or pull into a safe harbor. The cocktail was not born from the windy blackness of London, nor was it created in a barroom catering to the needs of distressed beached sailors. The Dark and Stormy is a drink that came from the calm, blue Caribbean waters, where rum, pretty girls are plentiful and so are sailors. It’s a simple drink that with a cool name.
 
For all its name’s melodrama, the Dark and Stormy’s history is tame. In 1806, an early Gosling family member sailed from England bound for Virginia. He didn’t make it to America—the sea was too calm—so the ship headed for the nearest dock instead, which happened to be in Bermuda—he never got much further. He used his family background in spirits to create the recipe for Gosling’s Aged Black Rum.
 
Moving forward 100 years, after World War I, British naval officers were brewing up ginger beer to combat sea sickness. They swirled the ginger beer and the black rum together in a cup, a sailor allegedly commented it looks like “the color of a cloud only a fool or a dead man would sail under,” and that where the Dark and Stormy was christened like a British ship.
 
To make a Dark and Stormy—it takes just three ingredients—Gosling’s Black Seal is the preferred brand of rum, but really, anything dark and funky will work.
 
Ingredients
2 ounces dark rum (Gosling’s preferred to make it official)
3 ounces ginger beer (don’t cheat and try to use ginger ale)
1/2 oz. lime juice (optional)
Lime wedge garnish
 
Directions

1. Fill a tall glass with ice cubes.
2. Add rum.
3. Pour in the ginger beer and lime juice.
4. Stir with a barspoon.
5. Garnish with a lime wedge.
6. Enjoy.

 
ChefSecret: Gosling’s is litigious about its intellectual property, going after competing beverage companies that try to rip off the name and recipe with their own rum brands. On some menus, you’ll find a cocktail called Safe Harbor, which is basically a Dark and Stormy without the legal baggage.
 
Covid-19 Quip of the Day:  Home schooling is not going all that well. Two students were suspended for fighting and the teacher was fired for drinking on the job.
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