Twisted Daiquiri & Choclate Vodka

My wife called over couple of her Friends for a lazy lunch on Saturday. She got herself busy cooking some Mughali chicken dishes & tapped me to think of some nice afternoon cocktails for the ladies. I checked my booze stock & found half a bottle of Romonov & about 100 ounces of Blue Riband gin.


For a nice sunny afternoon, nothing is better than Cuban cocktails. & Cuban cocktails mainly use Rum. We all know of Mojitos. But a lesser ordered cocktail in India with the Rum base is Daiquiri. Daiquiri is widely known outside India, but I have not seen too many people in Indian bars ordering it. I guess, they don't know much about it. I wanted to make Daiquiri`s but without Rum in my stock, i thought, I will twist the cocktail`s base to Vodka & keep the rest as it is. Thas why "Twisted Daiquiri".


One of the nice things I observe about white spirits (Tequila blanco, white rum, vodka, gin etc) is that you can almost use them interchangeably in many cocktail recipies. Of course the taste gets a bit different, but, they don`t become undrinkable. Anyways, Twisted Daiquiri is made thus:


Its built in a cocktail tin. Squeeze about one full lime without its seeds into the tin. Then add some ice-cubes. Pour about one ounce of sugar syrup.(Sugar syrup is home made, easy to make, just boil equal parts of sugar & water.Allow it to cool for a about 30 minutes & ready to use.) Over the ice-cubes pour 1 1/2 ounce of choicest vodka or rum. Since I wanted the drink to look & taste fancy, I added about 1 ounce of Manama KIWI crush into the tin. Close the tin shake it vigorously till the shaker starts freezing. The moment you see the frost all over the tin, your drink is very well shaken. The shaking roughens up the strength of vodka & makes it milder. Also, shaking infuses oxygen into the drink & creates the bubbles. Its these bubbles that give you the aroma to the drink. At this point, strain the drink into a martini glass & garnish it with the peel of orange or a slice of lime. & Twisted Daiquiri is ready.

When the guest are ladies, I make sure, I keep another drink apart for a limey one. & that has to be a chocolate base. Even if the drink falls apart, ladies will drink every sip of it adoring your skills, only because, what chocolate can do, no man can. :) This is how I made a Chocolate,Coffee martini.


Chill a martini glass before making the drink. You can do so by keeping it in the freezer for about a minute of two or just fill it with ice cubes to throw them later when you are ready to pour your drink into the glass. Take ice in a cocktail shaker, add about 1 ounce of vodka, 1 ounce of Kahlua, (If you don't have the coffee liqueur, you can use some cold dark black coffee). Add about 1 ounce of Hershey`s chocolate syrup.Shake them together till the tin is frozen. Empty the contents into a martini glass & top it with some coke. Garnish it with a Kit Kat bar or a a cadbury toffee. You cant fail!!


I made two other regular drinks for their third & forth rounds - Margarita & Mojito. I got the ladies mildly high on the cocktails as I enjoyed the Mughlai chicken & Dave bruebeck on his saxophone.