{ 2010 07 02 }

Cherries in drinks

I was not one of those kids who begged for more maraschino cherries in my shirley temple. I didn’t even eat the cherry in my shirley temple. That florescent, almost transparent red freaked me out but good. And so it was.

Then I made some spiced brandied cherries. And I ate one. I cannot imagine the person who would eat one of those and not think of making a manhattan with them. Well, I actually can imagine such a person. I even know several of them, but you get my point. To eat one of these delights is, for me, to think of a manhattan.

So I softened my position on cherries in drinks, if but lightly.

Then this past week I have twice – twice mind you – put cherries where I had never put cherries before. It was like I hardly knew myself.

First I put them in what would have been a gin and tonic but which, by muddling a few cherries before shaking the gin and a squirt of lime juice with them before straining that over ice and adding some tonic to the whole thing, became something else entirely. Neither particularly sweet nor fruity, since the bitter tonic canceled that out; nor bitter and a bit tart like a gin and tonic because, well, there were muddled cherries sweetening the proceedings up a bit. It really was a whole new drink and my dad and I enjoyed them thoroughly while my mom, who likes not cherries nor gin nor tonic, made a face at us.

Then – and given my family’s slavish devotion to my dad’s master margarita recipe and generations-long disdain of flavored or fruity margaritas I can hardly believe I did this – I made a cherry margarita. Again, I muddled some cherries, added one shot of tequila and half as much lime juice, shook it all together, and strained it over ice. I left out the triple sec I would normally use because I didn’t want it getting too sweet. It didn’t. It got cherry.

If I’d thought ahead I would have made a coconut drink and some kind of blueberry cocktail and had a real theme for the holiday weekend for you. Enjoy the fireworks – I’ll be watching them from a boat in northern Minnesota with, if experience tells me anything, my hands held tightly over my son’s ears as his little hands hold my hands firmly in place.

Posted by Molly Watson on Friday, July 2nd, 2010, at 4:37 am, and filed under cherries, cocktails, drinks.

Follow any responses to this entry with the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can post a comment, or trackback from your site.