Hi Jack!
Wipe that smile off your face! Hope the "homecoming" was sweet!
Here's something to help make the weekend better! <g>
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Margarita!!!
Whether served straight up, on the rocks, or frozen, a truly stupendous Margarita is one that changes your life. As a friend of mine puts it, you don't actually TASTE a margarita; you FEEL it. Actually, you do both. Tart and tangy and tasty, this sublimely sensuous concoction is a perfectly legal way to salt-lick your way to paradise without setting foot off the patio. The seven keys to success:
1. START WITH THE RIGHT RECIPE. I prefer one part limejuice, one part Triple Sec, and two parts Tequila. You could make it three parts tequila, but you'd find yourself besieged with a raft of child support and alienation-of-affection suits filed by besotted ingrate friends.
2. KNOW YOUR LIMES. Not so well that gutting the little green creatures breaks your heart, of course, but well enough to know a good one when you see it. The small Mexican varieties are best. The large thick-skinned American variety are poor seconds, but they'll do if you buy the ugliest ones: the softer, squishier, and yellower the better.
3. GET THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB. Hand-held squeezers are best if you're doing just a few limes, but be prepared for sticky fingers. After the first squeeze or two, rotate the lime 90 degrees and squeeze again. Then smush the dome of the lime down hard to capture any remaining juice.
4. BE PREPARED TO STAGGER TO THE POORHOUSE. There are no tequila bargains in Margaritaville. Granted, plenty of second-rate tequilas can be had for $6 to $7 a bottle, but any tequila worth it's salt costs at least $13 a liter.** Once, faced with watering a multitude of strangers, I foolishly economized with some flashy-labeled off-brand tequila. After spending 18 hours squeezing limes and mixing it with the cheap stuff, I gave my bulldog a taste-test: He promptly lost two ears and a tail.
5. DON'T BUY AMERICAN. All tequilas are produced in Mexico, a claim that each brand proudly trumpets in order to mislead the ignorant. You see, tequila only comes from a single variety of blue agave cactus (Tequilana Weber) grown in parts of Michoacan, Nayarit, and Jalisco, Mexico; so any tequila NOT produced in Mexico wouldn't be real tequila to begin with! It is--Como se dice--a redundancia. Comprende? The three little words to look for on any tequila bottle label, then, are "bottled in Mexico." These days, about the only brands fitting that bill are Herraruda and Hornitos**(the latter brand is a thinly veiled allusion to tequila's most uplifting side effect). Most of the insignificant others claim they're "made in Mexico". True, technically, but then the stuff is carted thousands of miles in tanker trucks to be blended and bottled in gringo-villes like Chicago, St. Louis, and even Hartford, Connecticut, where Yankee know-nada promptly ruins it.
6. COOL IS THE RULE. Freezer-frost your glasses. ONLY use commercially crushed party ice with your elixir. Shake the ice in a martini mixer if desired; it gives your brew a nice seaworthy foam and helps explain why you're suddenly listing to the left. Crushed ice serves another worthy purpose; it dilutes your 90-proof potion just enough to keep your cocktail party from becoming a slumber party or an orgy, depending on your age group.
7. THINK BROWN. That means any orange liqueur in a brown bottle. Some hi-falutin' Houstonians swear by Cointreau, the liqueur made in la-di-da France, but it's three to four times as expensive as Triple Sec, and it doesn't really taste any better, in my admittedly bourgeois opinion.
Not that a great margarita is the ultimate saline solution to life, I admit, but seeing life through salt-rimmed glasses at least gives you a hollow leg up on it. Besides, except for my very first kiss, nothing has ever tasted better.
**Written in 1997, so prices and brands will be different.
CHEERS!
Have a great weekend, all!
E! |
