Tamarind Cocktail
I could not write this book without including drinks, punches, and a cocktail or two. In this section you will find some beverages that you can make without too many hard-to-find ingredients. Okay, I admit there at least two things you may have to run around the block (or two) to find, but most drinks in this section are pantry friendly.
When making drinks, I tend to use a simple syrup rather than agave nectar, as the syrup works better here since it dissolves more easily, especially in alcoholic beverages—and you do not have the raw sugar taste in the drink. It is best to chill most of these drinks before serving, rather than serving them over ice, as that will water them down and diminish the flavor. Starting with cold ingredients will speed the chilling process.
Garnishes are important and festive, especially at parties. Try to think of simple, appropriate garnishes that your guests will enjoy. For example, try using sugarcane sticks or long pieces of fruit as stirrers in rum punch. Shaved chocolate and chopped nuts give a stunning presentation. Another option is splashing some Angostura bitters into the mixed drink.
Please remember to drink responsibly.
In the Caribbean we have lemon trees, but there are far more lime trees. Therefore, our lemonade is made with limes and a few drops of bitters, which gives it a yellow-brown color. On a hot day, this is just what you need.
SERVES 2
¼ cup (60 ml) fresh lime juice
2½ cups (600 ml) ice-cold water
½ teaspoon Angostura bitters
Island Simple Syrup or agave nectar
Mix the lime juice, water, and bitters together, then sweeten to taste. Serve well chilled.
This peanut punch is inspired by a tiny juice bar called JNC in Barbados, in the Sheraton Centre mall. It serves up the best peanut punch I have ever had. Every time I go home, I have to get a peanut punch there. Although I don’t know JNC’s recipe, I used my supersensitive taste buds to come up with this version, and it is close to the one sold there.
SERVES 2
2 cups (480 ml) nondairy milk
⅓ cup (85 g) creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoons agave nectar
½ teaspoon brewer’s yeast (see Island Tips)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon or cassia
Put all of the ingredients in a blender. Blend for 1 minute, until smooth. Serve well chilled.
ISLAND TIPS
You can add peanuts to this punch, but you will need a powerful blender. You can also add 1 tablespoon of protein powder to enhance the nutritional value; if you do, increase the amount of agave nectar by 1 teaspoon.
Brewer’s yeast, the nutritional supplement, should not be confused with nutritional yeast flakes. You should be able to find brewer’s yeast in most health food stores.
A good coconut punch always starts with grating a coconut and making milk from the flesh. What happens next is the chef’s preference. This thick beverage can be frozen to make blocks of sorbet (see Island Tip).
SERVES 4
Flesh of 1 coconut, finely grated
1 cup (240 ml) water
2 cups (480 ml) nondairy milk
1 tablespoon almond essence, or 1½ teaspoons almond extract
½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon or cassia
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
Mix the grated coconut and water together in a bowl. With clean hands, squeeze the coconut flesh to extract some of the milk from the flesh. Stir in the nondairy milk, essence, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Transfer the mixture to a blender and blend for 30 seconds, until well mixed. Strain and serve well chilled.
ISLAND TIP
You can use this punch to make cubes of sorbet. Add a few drops of food coloring if you like; you can make several small batches in different colors. Pour the mixture into an ice tray and freeze. These colorful frozen cubes are called ice cream blocks and are a traditional frozen dessert that was once sold in the streets.
A stocky, well-dressed woman sells mauby in the bustle of the city as horse-drawn carriages go by, almost fifty years ago. She sells the mauby from a canister balanced on her head, and when she pours the customer the beastly cold drink, not a drop of mauby gets on her. Perfection! Mauby has been around a long time. It is a drink made from the bark of the mauby tree, a type of buckthorn. This beverage is well suited to the heat, as it is sweet and then very bitter. I never liked mauby when I was growing up because it is so bitter, but now I always stock up on bark when I go home. If you cannot find the bark and want to try mauby, check with your local ethnic market for mauby syrup, mauby concentrate, or mauby bitters. Mixed essence is a flavoring that includes vanilla, almond, and pear flavors.
MAKES 5¼ CUPS (1.25 L) CONCENTRATE
6 pieces mauby bark
6 cups (1.4 L) water
10 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick or cassia stick
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, if you used a cassia stick
Island Simple Syrup or brown sugar
Mixed essence
Angostura bitters
ISLAND TIP
You need to sweeten the mauby to suit your taste. I use about ¼ cup (50 g) sugar when I am making this at home, as I like my mauby very bitter and less sweet.
In the Caribbean, sorrel refers to hibiscus. During the December holidays, drinks and cocktails made from sorrel are traditional, along with ginger beer. Sorrel is a drink that most people will like, so why not shake things up with some white rum? Then you will have yourself a cocktail. Sorrel can be also consumed as a hot beverage. This recipe was developed with dried sorrel, which can be found in most ethnic markets year-round.
MAKE 5¼ CUPS (1.25 L) OF CONCENTRATE
1 cup (40 g) dried hibiscus flowers
One 5 × 1-inch (13 cm × 2.5 cm) piece of orange or tangerine peel
⅔ cup (135 g) brown sugar
12 whole cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
5¼ cups (1.25 L) boiling water
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
Because this is a Caribbean cookbook, I have to give you a tropical punch recipe, so here it is. This recipe calls for some untraditional strawberries to add color to the drink.
SERVES 6
1 small pineapple, peeled and cut into chunks
6½ cups (1.5 L) water
1 passion fruit, halved and emptied in a bowl
10 strawberries, hulled
Juice of 4 oranges
Juice of 1 lime
Angostura bitters, to taste
Island Simple Syrup, to taste
ISLAND TIPS
Remember, if the starting product is not good, the final product will not be good; so pick fresh, flavorful fruit.
This recipe is great, unstrained, as an ice pop recipe.
This is a great smoothie to have during the week because you can multipurpose your sweet potatoes for bowls or smoothies. These smoothies are rich in beta-carotene and are a great snack for picky eaters.
SERVES 4
3½ cups (840 ml) nondairy milk
1 cup (200 g) mashed baked sweet potato
¼ cup (25 g) pecan halves
¼ cup (25 g) rolled oats or oat flour
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon flax meal
1 tablespoon chia seeds
2 dates, pitted
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, plus more for garnish
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
Pinch of pink or sea salt
Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend on high until smooth. Chill the smoothies if desired and serve in two glasses. Dust the top of each with a little ground cinnamon.
Soursop, or guanábana, is a large tropical fruit, and also the name of a very popular drink in the West Indies. The fruit, which has a prickly skin, can be eaten as is, but most people tend to use it to make tarts, ice creams, and beverages. Because the juice from the soursop is very thick, it is suitable for making ice cream. My father helped me develop this recipe, and he suggests a vanilla-flavored nondairy milk. You can substitute store-bought guanábana nectar for the soursop juice in this recipe.
SERVES 6
3 cups (720 ml) concentrated soursop juice
1½ cups (360 ml) nondairy milk
¾ cup (150 g) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence, or ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, optional
Combine all of the ingredients. Serve chilled.
I grew up drinking this nonalcoholic version of the ginger beer. The flavor is slightly milder than the fermented version, but this beverage can be consumed within 2 days.
MAKES 2 QUARTS (2 L)
3 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
2 quarts (2 L) boiling water
Place the ginger in a large bowl. Pour in the boiling water and stir with a clean spoon. Cover with a kitchen towel and leave undisturbed for 2 days. Strain, then sweeten with simple syrup to taste. Transfer to a bottle and chill well before serving.
When mixing alcoholic drinks, sugar takes a long time to dissolve. The solution is to use a simple syrup. This sweetens without the problem of undissolved sugar in the drink. Simple syrup is usually made with granulated sugar. I like to make mine with brown sugar so it has some character. The flavor of brown sugar is richer than granulated sugar and this is what sometimes gives Caribbean cocktails their unique taste.
MAKES 1 CUP (240 ML)
2 cups (400 g) brown sugar
¾ cup (180 ml) water
Put the sugar and water in a saucepan over low heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until dissolved. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a rapid boil, stirring constantly. After 2 minutes of boiling, remove from the heat and let cool. Transfer to a clean jar, seal, and refrigerate. The syrup will keep for 6 to 8 months in the fridge.
ISLAND TIPS
If you want to sweeten light-colored drinks and worry that the dark syrup will affect the color, use granulated white sugar to make the syrup. Simple syrup sometimes recrystallizes. If this happens, reheat it on the stove or in the microwave and stir until redissolved.
You can make many other syrups this way, such as ginger, using fresh ginger, or spiced syrup, using cinnamon sticks and whole cloves. These spices can be added while the syrup cooks. When the syrup has cooled, strain to remove the solids and place in a clean jar or bottle.
In many parts of the world, sea moss is known as Irish moss, but in the Caribbean we call it “sea moss.” Another name for this sea vegetable is carrageen. Known as an aphrodisiac and touted as a sexual stimulant for men, it is also used to make a punch that is popular in the Caribbean. I always avoided it as a child because of the name and maybe its association with sex—who knows what was going on in my brain at that tender age! My father helped me develop this recipe. The finished product will be a creamy milkshake-like drink infused with island spices. Before we get to the recipe, you should know that the color of the final product may vary. If you use bay leaf, the drink will turn slightly brown, but if you leave it out, you’ll sacrifice the nice bay leaf flavor. Also, you need to soak the sea moss overnight before making the punch, so plan ahead.
SERVES 6
3 quarts plus ¾ cup (3 L) water
3 ounces (85 g) sea moss, soaked overnight and drained
3 bay leaves, optional
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon or cassia
3 cups (720 ml) nondairy milk
½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar, or to taste
½ teaspoon almond extract
ISLAND TIP
You can use this punch to make vegan sea moss ice cream. Just put the punch into an ice cream maker and proceed according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Drink to the final days of summer with this beautiful expression of a beverage.
SERVES 4
½ ripe pineapple
2 bananas
½ cup (120 ml) water
Three 4-inch (10 cm) pieces lemongrass
¼ cup (60 ml) vodka, optional
Place the pineapple, bananas, water, and lemongrass in a blender and blend on high until smooth. Strain through cheesecloth. Taste and add simple syrup, if necessary. Stir in the optional vodka. Serve on the rocks.
I fell in love with rum punch one night when I was on vacation in Guadeloupe and vowed to make one of my own that was simple but unique. This is what I came up with. Similar rum punches are found on many islands. I like to make mine with a mixture of pineapple and orange juice, but you could also use passion fruit juice.
SERVES 2
1 cup (240 ml) fresh orange juice
1 cup (240 ml) pineapple juice
½ cup (120 ml) Mount Gay rum
2 tablespoons granulated sugar or Island Simple Syrup
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon Angostura bitters
Combine all of the ingredients. Serve well chilled.
ISLAND TIPS
Do not skimp on the bitters, as this ingredient makes the cocktail come alive.
Use fine-quality orange and pineapple juices that you would enjoy drinking on their own, not cheap, artificially flavored varieties.
Cocktails on the beach! Yes, there is something about drinking sweet, boozy concoctions mixed in with the salt spray and internal revelry that gets you a bit happier. The tamarind trees that grow in the West Indies are not as sweet as the Asian variety, ranging from slightly sweet to tears-in-your-eyes sour. Tamarind is usually made into syrups or candies for children and adults. It also makes excellent beverages due its wholesome, rich flavor. The pulpy flesh makes for a thick drink with a tart kick that surprises you at the end. Add rum and tropical spices, and you have a party in a glass. Transport this punch in a thermos or jar, and do not forget to bring ice. Remember, sweet, alcohol-infused drinks mixed with sunshine and sand can make you tipsy!
SERVES 6
One 1-pound (454 g) box sweet tamarind
2 cups (480 ml) hot water
4 whole star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
1 orange, sliced
½ cup (120 ml) Island Simple Syrup
½ cup (120 ml) dark rum (try Mount Gay brand, which is perfectly balanced and not bitter)
1 teaspoon lime juice
6 lime slices, optional
This drink is so simple but looks like you did a lot to make it taste good. Frozen mangos, agave, fresh mint, and rum. I like to add a little pink salt to my blended cocktails because it lifts the flavor even more.
SERVES 6
4 cups (560 g) frozen mango
2 cups (480 ml) cold water
½ cup (120 ml) agave nectar
½ cup (120 ml) white rum
Pinch of pink or sea salt
¼ cup (5 g) loosely packed mint leaves
Place all the ingredients except the mint in a blender and blend on high until smooth. Taste and add more simple syrup if necessary. Serve immediately in skinny glasses with a straw and garnish with fresh mint.
I first met the rum runner when I was in Saint Martin on the boardwalk and I sauntered into this hip beachside eatery run by a Frenchman. A wide-eyed waiter asked me what I wanted to drink. Dejected from the day, I told him “anything.” He smiled even if I was not smiling back and asked if I wanted a runner. I lifted my head and asked, “What is that?” He smiled and said, “You will love it.” I did love it, and I ordered two more at $12 a pop—it was addictive, rich, and delectable. As time went on, my taste changed to lighter cocktails that do not feel heavy on the palate, so I designed the rum runner light. This is a real fruity take on the Jamaican cocktail that lets you have your cocktail and your health, too.
SERVES 2
2 cups (480 ml) mixed fruit juice (try a tropical punch)
1 cup (140 g) ice
2 ripe bananas
½ cup (85 g) frozen blueberries
½ cup (120 ml) pomegranate juice
¼ cup (60 ml) dark Mount Gay rum
Island Simple Syrup, to taste, or ¼ cup (60 ml) agave nectar
Angostura bitters, for garnish
Cherries, for garnish
Place the mixed juice, ice, bananas, blueberries, pomegranate juice, and rum in a blender and blend on high until smooth. Taste and add simple syrup as needed. Pour into skinny glasses, add a straw, and garnish with a drop of bitters and a cherry.
This is a super easy colada recipe made with the fruit known as soursop or guanábana; it has a very tart flavor, like pineapple. The pulp is mixed with coconut milk and flavored with a little white rum and served beastly cold. Soursop pulp is sometimes sold frozen in the supermarket without any additives (use 1½ cups [300 g]). Because the fruit is naturally thick, it makes a full-bodied colada.
SERVES 6
1 medium soursop, peeled
4 cups (400 ml) water
One 13.5-ounce (400 ml) can coconut milk
¾ cup (180 ml) Island Simple Syrup
½ cup (120 ml) white rum, or to taste
Pinch of pink or sea salt
1 cup (140 g) crushed ice
Pineapple wedges, for garnish
This pick-me-upper has a bit of rum in it. You might not want to drink this before working out, but it’s a good choice for an active day and whenever you are feeling sluggish. Think of it as a treat, dessert, or recreational smoothie. Experiment with different nondairy milks and do not forget to swirl in the blackstrap molasses.
SERVES 4
4 cups (960 ml) nondairy milk
1 cup (100 g) rolled oats or oat flour
1 ripe banana
¼ cup (25 g) walnut halves
1 tablespoon hemp seeds
1 tablespoon flax meal
1 tablespoon dark rum
1 tablespoon agave nectar, optional
2 teaspoons blackstrap molasses
1 heaping tablespoon peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of pink or sea salt
Ginger beer is a very popular West Indian drink usually consumed during the Christmas period. On some islands, ginger beer is usually fermented. On others, they make a ginger beer that is more like iced tea. This ginger beer is fermented and needs to rest in the kitchen or a warm area for a couple of days. If you are interested in making this in the winter months, you can keep it near a heater. This ginger beer takes up to 5 days to make, but very little of that is hands-on time. You’ll need a 1.5-quart (1.5 L) plastic bottle with a secure top for making this.
MAKES 6 CUPS (1.4 L), SERVES APPROXIMATELY 6
¼ cup (100 g) coarsely grated or crushed fresh ginger
5¼ cups (1.25 L) hot water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 teaspoons unbleached all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons plus 1½ teaspoons warm water
¾ cup (150 g) brown sugar
¼ cup (60 ml) fresh lime juice
Four 3 x 3-inch (8 × 8 cm) pieces of lime peel
ISLAND TIP
If you like alcoholic drinks, mix in some dark rum. If you want to increase the alcoholic content of the ginger beer, use about 1 part rum to 4 parts ginger beer.