Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Calamari Punch

Sarah and I checked out a Filipino food festival called Kulinarya where, among other things, we discovered a delicious limeade made from the Filipino calamansi lime, whose unique taste can be described as a cross between a lime and a kumquat. This is probably what goaded us into finally visiting Manila Oriental Market down the street. We loaded up on exotic ramens (they had an entire aisle devoted to ramen) and various beverages including a ton of calamansi-ade. The following highball is named after the combination of calamansi and Kraken rum upon which it is based. Kraken has been my go-to spiced black rum since Matt Wingert introduced it to me, and makes a great dark and stormy, though Sarah will insist that a true "Dark 'n' Stormy" is only made with Gosling's.

1 shot Kraken (or other black spiced rum)
 2 dashes Angostura bitters 
3+ parts Calamansi-ade

There's not a whole lot to be said about this drink. It's just good punch, with warm spices and featuring a neat Filipino beverage. Anyone who wants to try to recreate this without an insanely hard-to-find specialty ingredient should substitute limeade with a splash of orange juice (or, if you have it, kumquat juice). Like any good punch, this scales up. My thanks to the Excelsior House Tasting Team (aka Sarah).

No comments: