About Me
I'm a Melbourne boy, hailing from St Kilda with one ex, one current wife and four kids. Love the outdoors and making new discoveries. I cook a lot at home (cheers from wife) and do some preserving, mostly jams, pickles and fruit liqueurs. This is the diary of a cooking journey.

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Monday, April 14, 2008
Polish Orchard - Mixology Monday
Hey, a cocktail using fruit liqueur as its base, well, I'm all over it, especially given that we make fruit liqueurs, which just happens to be the theme for this month's Mixology Monday, being hosted by Anna from Morsels & Musings.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that cocktails are high on my list of things to drink, having had my first ever Negroni just the other day, but the chance to experiment with a homemade liqueur seemed to good an opportunity to pass up; the experimenting was lots of fun too!

We have a good supply of homemade cherry vodka, which is also available commercially, in Australia it is stocked by Dan Murphy. It's made from fresh sour cherries which gives a deep cherry flavour and because the cherry pits are left in, it picks up some of that slightly astringent kernel flavour.

At first my thoughts turned towards a classic Eastern European combination of cherries and walnuts as found in a wonderful cherry and walnut cake made by my local Russian bakers, but there was a slight problem. The only walnut liqueur available was Nocello, a sweetish Italian liqueur made from both walnuts and hazelnuts.

The difficulty was its strength of flavour - it completely overwhelmed the cherry vodka and after two goes I was unwilling to commit any more attempts at fine tuning, though it was a fine drink in its own right. Pity, because a name suggested itself, Polish Autumn, after the deep burnished brown and the taste of nuts, traditional autumn fare, along with the use of vodka.

Then some inspiration hit, what about using some elderflower syrup?

Elderflower is such a light, delicate flavour, there was no chance it would compete with the cherry flavour - elderflower seems more like a perfume, acting similarly to rose water, though not with the same intensity. One attempt was all it took for a perfect fruit cocktail to be born, not overly sweet or overpowering in flavour, just wonderfully sophisticated.

Polish Orchard

2 shots cherry vodka
2 shots vodka
1/3 shot elderflower syrup

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker full of ice. Give a few shakes and pour into a cocktail glass, garnish with a morello(sour) cherry on a toothpick.
 
  posted at 7:48 am
  3 comments



3 Comments:
At 8:56 am, Blogger MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

And then you had everybody swooning!
Joy to the experiment!

 
At 7:16 am, Blogger Gigi said...

You do come up with the most interesting ingredients! I've never even heard of Nocello, nor of elderflower syrup. But I sure wouldn't mind being there for the experiments... :)

 
At 7:42 am, Blogger neil said...

Hi tanna, I was like a mad scientist, mixing this and that!

Hi gigi, you could have been my chief taster...

Hi przepisy kulinarne, jest w zyciu wiele okazji kiedy kieliszek domowej nalewki powoduje, ze czujemy sie lepiej. Ale masz racje -- byle nie za duzo. Cos co zrobione jest z sercem -- serce ogrzewa.

 

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