Canned frozen limeade intensifies the citrus flavor of this slushy libation, an easy drink for summer cocktail parties and cookouts. Pair it with any spicy dish—a frozen margarita is just the thing for taming the heat.

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Nothing’s more refreshing than a cold drink on a hot day. But when the temperature starts to rise, sometimes ice cubes just aren’t enough. Thankfully, frozen cocktails are inherently  batchable, so you can spend less time fiddling with the refills this summer and focus on relaxing over those frosty beverages.

The name of the game is working smarter. When American inventor Mariano Martinez figured out how to make frozen margaritas using a soft serve ice cream machine, it changed the cocktail game forever. Thankfully, for the home bartender, the ol’ Tex-Mex classic doesn’t actually require any special equipment beyond a decent blender. Simply combine tequila or mezcal with ice, limeade, and a hit of fresh lime juice and let the crusher rip.

Tiki-style drinks favor fruit-forward flavors that channel the tropics.  Feel free to add fresh ingredients like berries and bananas directly to the blender—just be sure to save a slice or two for garnishing the glass. 

So trade your beach umbrella for a paper one, because the drinks are served.

Frozen Margarita

In 1971, American inventor Mariano Martinez figured out how to make frozen margaritas from a soft serve ice cream machine—the rest is history. We recommend using Herradura Silver Tequila for this refreshing variation. Get the recipe for Frozen Margarita »

Frozen Piña Colada

The ultimate vacation drink, this rum-based pineapple cocktail is enriched with cream of coconut and half-and-half. Get the recipe for Frozen Piña Colada »

Beach Towel

A fruity frozen daiquiri becomes dessert-like with the addition of heavy cream. Get the recipe for Beach Towel »

Frozen Limeade Margarita

Canned frozen limeade intensifies the citrus flavor of this slushy Mexican-inspired libation. Get the recipe for Frozen Limeade Margarita »

The Pink Baby

This refreshing frozen drink from Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right gets its baby pink color and pleasant bitterness from a combination of Campari and fresh grapefruit juice, while a pinch of finely ground yerba maté adds subtle herbal flavor and a gentle caffeine kick—the perfect fuel for a night of revelry. Get the recipe for The Pink Baby »

Sgroppino

Sgroppino, a slushy combination of lemon sorbet, vodka, and prosecco, is common in Italy as a palate cleanser, a dessert, or a pre-dinner drink. This recipe calls for the ingredients to be whisked together to create a chilly, frothy libation. Get the recipe for Sgroppino »

Pineapple Express

Cinnamon adds warm spice to this frosty treat made with puréed pineapple. Get the recipe for Pineapple Express »

Blackberry Blast

Agricole rum, made from fresh sugarcane, adds rich flavor to this frozen drink. Get the recipe for Blackberry Blast »

Prickly Pear Margarita

This legendary margarita comes from bartender Ruben Bernal at Las Carnarias restaurant in San Antonio. Get the recipe for Prickly Pear Margarita »

Pisco Sour Slushy

A classic Peruvian cocktail gets the freezer treatment. Made with the South American grape brandy that’s popular in Chile and Peru, the pisco sour makes for a salty, sweet, tart, and beautiful sorbet. Get the recipe for Pisco Sour Slushy »

Pink Squirrel

This rose-hued variation on a grasshopper—the classic boozy chocolate–mint milkshake—trades crème de menthe for almond-flavored crème de noya. Get the recipe for Pink Squirrel »

Punch Romaine

Punch Romaine, a rum-spiked shaved-ice palate cleanser served to first class passengers during the fateful last dinner aboard the Titanic on April 14th, 1912, was based on a recipe from famed French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier, who championed alcoholic shaved ices during the early twentieth century. The original recipe, essentially a granita, is updated here as a drinkable, citrusy cocktail poured over an iceberg of crushed ice. Get the recipe for Punch Romaine »

Frozen Bloody Mary

The recipe for this icy take on a bloody mary is based on one in the classic Esquire Drink Book (Harper and Row, 1956). Get the recipe for Frozen Bloody Mary »

The post Keep Your Cool With These Thirteen Frozen Cocktails appeared first on Saveur.

A poolside classic, this blended pineapple-and-coconut cooler is heightened with a splash of aromatic bitters.

Equipment

• Blender
• Cocktail Glasses

The post Frozen Piña Colada appeared first on Saveur.

Few classic cocktails have suffered such abuse as the daiquiri, which, to many drinkers, still suggests over-sugared beachside slushies. But a properly made daiquiri is a classic right up there with the martini and margarita—and just as simple. Shake up rum, lime, and sugar, and presto: a daiquiri. No blender or umbrella garnish required.

As with any simple cocktail, details are key: a high-quality white rum, a judicious hand with the sweetener, and fresh lime juice (you do always use fresh juice in cocktails, don’t you?). A perfect daiquiri is tart and refreshing and perks you up instantly, elegant in its balance, slightly dangerous in its drinkability.

Since it’s such a simple drink, the daiquiri is ripe for experimentation. Try adding some grapefruit along with the lime, or dropping a few basil leaves into the shaker, or adding a float of aged rum on top.

The Technique

Juice your limes, and if you’re a perfectionist about these things, pass the juice through a fine-mesh strainer to remove any bits of seed or pith. Shake rum, lime juice, and sugar together over ice—we’re talking a vigorous, 15 to 20 second shake here—and strain into a glass. A chilled coupe is best, but not mandatory. And a thin, thin lime wheel is always an elegant garnish.

Try it in This

The daiquiri we know today traces back to Cuba circa 1898, and has stuck around the island as an extremely popular drink. Order a daiquiri in Havana today and you’re likely to have a cocktail somewhere between what we know as the Hemingway (with the addition of grapefruit and maraschino liqueur) and a classic. In this version, we use a sparing measure of Luxardo Maraschino—a huge upgrade from what you’ll find in Cuba proper—lending a hint of its complex, bittersweet cherry flavor.

Get the recipe for the Cuban-Style Daiquiri »

More on chasing down the perfect Cuban daiquiri »
More bartender secrets »

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Plenty of questions came to mind when I booked my first trip to Cuba. Are the roads really full of ’57 Chevys?, for one. (Yes.) Will Cuba feel like a time warp? (Absolutely.) And, as a cocktail obsessive—Can you find a good drink in Havana?

I love a good daiquiri, but in a larger sense, I’m fascinated by bar culture. I hardly expect all my travel destinations to have great drinks. But Cuba plays a prominent role in cocktail history. Many classic cocktails—the daiquiri and the mojito among them—were invented and popularized on the island. Cuban rum’s quality deserves international acclaim, to say nothing of the forbidden allure it shares with the nation’s cigars. And Havana’s nightlife is legendary, even if that legend is a holdover from pre-embargo days when Americans saw Havana as the Las Vegas of the Caribbean.

So much of Havana feels lost in time; I hoped I’d find bars that did as well. Unobtrusive establishments undisturbed by the passage of decades, shaking up daiquiris just as in Hemingway’s time. Did that window into another era’s world exist?

At the risk of spoiling the punchline—no. But that’s not to say you can’t drink very well in Cuba. And it’s the journey to finding a great daiquiri that taught me far more about Havana than any hidden-away tavern could. In a country where you can’t rely on buying even staples like milk and vegetables at the store, you can rely on finding good rum, limes, and sugar. And in a country where private enterprise still faces enormous obstacles, modern bars are just beginning to break through.

Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost

Two names kept coming up in my bar research: La Bodeguita del Medio and El Floridita. “My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita,” Ernest Hemingway once said, or rather, is said to have said. Every alleged Hemingway quote, especially about Cuba, should be greeted with skepticism. In Cuba, Hemingway is far more than a beloved author; he’s an industry. Every real or manufactured association the man has with Havana has been wrung dry—every former residence is a museum, every former haunt touts his name far and wide. (One imagines that Hemingway himself would have nothing but disdain for his commercialization…but there I go, ascribing opinions to Hemingway like everyone else.)

I was after the perfect daiquiri, the classic that’s been reclaimed by bartenders in recent years. Most drinkers still envision a strawberry-flavored slush, but the original daiquiri, which does trace its roots to Cuba, is elegant in its simplicity: rum, lime juice, and sugar, all shaken together. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, the story goes, an American mining engineer named Jennings Stockton Cox was working near the Cuban town of Daiquiri. While entertaining guests, he found himself short on gin, his tipple of choice, and reached for local white rum instead. He added citrus and sugar, the cocktail ingredients he had on-hand, and the daiquiri was born.

Cocktail historian Dave Wondrich points out that “the daiquiri represents such an obvious marriage between local ingredients—rum, sugar, limes—that it would take the chowder-headedest duffer who ever buttoned a trouser not to invent it.” So it’s hard to declare Cuba the only site of the daiquiri’s evolution. Still, the version Americans know stems from the Cox daiquiri; a sailor who had passed through Cuba introduced the drink to Washington DC’s Army and Navy Club by 1909, and its reputation evolved from there. In Havana, too, the daiquiri was soon a barroom staple.

I found countless articles about Hemingway, about how Floridita invented the frozen daiquiri (the rare drinking claim that’s fully documented), about the two bars’ decades of history. What I couldn’t figure out is if the damn drinks were any good.

Good, no. Serviceable? Absolutely, in a sanitized, friendly-to-tourists way. Now both state-run, like the vast majority of Cuban bars and restaurants, Bodeguita and Floridita have become dressed-up, almost caricaturized versions of themselves. (I can’t imagine the six-foot plastic daiquiri by Floridita’s entrance was around to greet Hemingway.)

Inside Floridita, four or five nattily dressed bartenders each run a blender, whirling up frozen daiquiris with remarkable speed. No measurements needed; they free-pour Havana Club and maraschino with precision that impressed my bartender fiancé. There’s a three-piece band playing Guantanamera and the greatest hits of Buena Vista Social Club. Daiquiris fly from the bar, trays of 10 or 12 at a time. The free plantain chips: excellent. It’d be silly not to have a good time. (As a tourist, at least; the $6 price tag exceeds a Cuban doctor’s weekly salary.) The daiquiris? The ice wasn’t always fully blended. The flavors were a little dulled. Perfectly tasty; perfectly unremarkable.

A few blocks further into Old Havana stands La Bodeguita; you’ll know it by the crowd at the bar, which spills out into the street. The restaurant further back is less chaotic, though live musicians are, again, a given. (The tourist bands all have the same repertoire, but even a standard-issue Cuban tourist band is impressive.) There are worse places to spend a first night in Havana, when the city still seems bewildering, and a plate of tasty-enough ropa vieja is a worthy dinner.

The mojitos? Fine. A modest pour of Havana Club, lime, granulated sugar that collects, crunchy, in the bottom. A flaccid sprig of mint. It was refreshing in a city that can often feel a furnace. Worthy of international acclaim? Hardly. Hemingway was letting me down.

Perhaps we shouldn’t take the endorsement of a man who, by all accounts, drank just about everywhere in Havana that one could drink. How discriminating could Hemingway be through the haze of 12 daiquiri doubles?

A Better Sip of Havana

Beyond appreciating the history, it became clear that there’s no particular need to seek out Floridita or Bodeguita. Because, as I figured out quickly, just about any bar or restaurant can make an equally solid daiquiri. Better than many in the States. You can’t count on finding much in Cuba—even staples like milk can be elusive—but you can count on rum, lime, and sugar. Since limes are plentiful, there’s no need to use anything other than fresh juice. Havana Club is the city’s go-to rum, and it’s a solid one—better than Bacardi Silver, to be sure. Drinks tend more toward tart than sweet; in my dozens of daiquiris, I never came across one too sugary. It reminded me of drinking a restaurant’s house wine in Italy: The baseline is quite high. The best glass of wine you’ve ever had? Not at all, but reliable, affordable, and leagues better than the Barefoot or Yellowtail you might get as a default in the States.

What a blessing a decent drink can be, in a country that can feel as unfamiliar as Cuba. And once I freed myself of my New York cocktail snob’s critical glasses, it became easy to appreciate drinks everywhere. In the last few years, the Cuban government has loosened restrictions on private ownership of bars, and overnight, new venues began to sprout up across the city. While none are on the cutting edge of craft cocktails, all are trailblazers in a much more powerful way, pushing the bounds of private Cuban enterprise. And every place I visited was a pleasure to drink at.

At Siá Kará I encountered a properly blended daiquiri, in a barroom outfitted in eclectic ephemera—antique clocks, old lamps, weathered couches. I idly wondered how much a bar in the States might spend to achieve the look of artful decay that comes so naturally in Havana. A young, excited bar staff chatted over the bar with young, excited regulars. At El Cocinero, a sophisticated rooftop lounge of a kind that didn’t exist in Cuba until five years ago, I sipped the best frozen daiquiris, made with a judicious dose of maraschino liqueur. Our waiter was swift, smiling, and eminently professional (rarely the case at government-run restaurants).

At FAC—a nightlife hub housing theaters, galleries, and performance art spaces within a maze of rooms and bars—bartenders dashed Angostura bitters, which to that point I’d only seen at expensive hotels, atop each mojito. And I sipped mine while wandering between a seven-instrument jam session, an exhibition of contemporary religious art, a performance from an all-female drumming group, and a screening of “Goodfellas.”

At Kingbar, Havana’s newest gay bar, with Beyoncé and Madonna videos projected on 15-foot screens: an excellent piña colada. (Be careful asking a cab driver to take you there. Pronounced with a Cuban accent, it’s apparently a slang term for a sexual act my Spanish was not quite strong enough to appreciate the nuance of.)

At O’Reilly Bar—not an Irish pub, as the name might suggest, but located on O’Reilly Street—the menu has dozens of cocktails, mostly reworked classics. Or smashed-together classics. Why not top a frozen daiquiri with a gin-and-tonic? And tint it with blue curaçao? And then garnish with a long, long lime peel to spiral down the glass? O’Reilly is tiny; I’d guess its legal occupancy would be about six people, were it in the States, not the 25 or so happily crammed in with frosty drinks. The owner clearly knew many of his clientele, squeezing between tables to make his rounds. It’s a convivial place, and a welcoming one. (Also: Excellent plantain chips topped with garlic oil. Complimentary, as they were in many bars across the city. Bar-hopping in Havana leaves one a connoisseur of plantain chips.)

The Rise of a New Cuban Bar Economy

Rather than searching for a cocktail culture that has yet to land in Havana, it became easier to appreciate that a bar scene is reemerging at all. Hemingway’s alleged haunts La Bodeguita and El Floridita are now, like the vast majority of Cuban bars and restaurants, government-run. Such establishments have a sense of eerie sameness and predictable mediocrity; decades of state control have in many ways suffocated the service industry.

But back it comes, with every one of these bars. Nearly all are family-operated, even run out of family homes, like the country’s growing host of paladares. The airy Bar Bohemio felt every bit an elegant bar and restaurant—until I visited the bathroom; there’s a shower, and a slight gap in the curtain revealed a baby’s bath toys. The building doubles as public bar and private home. Traces of family life are masked, but not hidden completely.

When the bartender lives upstairs and his cousin waits tables and his aunt is in the kitchen, the personal investment is palpable. And impressive, given the enormous obstacles to success. A service industry that’s essentially starting from scratch. An agricultural system so dysfunctional that an island once fought over for its natural abundance now imports 80% of its food. An embargo that prohibits many imports and vastly complicates others.

A few months ago, I talked to a prominent New York cocktail type who was petitioning Tales of the Cocktail—the industry’s largest cocktail conference, an annual confluence of bartenders, writers, and brands—to hold a session in Havana. “There’s so much cocktail history, and so many incredible bars that we haven’t been able to see, until now—right?” he asked. And my answer was an emphatic no. Try to chase Hemingway’s ghost through now state-run tourist bars and you’re likely to be disappointed. Search for inklings of craft cocktails and you’ll be more disappointed still.

What you will find, rather than any idealized historical treasures, are resolutely modern bars breaking the government’s grip on drinking establishments. And I found their success impressive far beyond the scope of any one cocktail. That these bars exist, and even flourish, and can serve you a properly made rum drink, is worthy of attention. Yanquis have spent decades upon decades looking at Cuba through a hopelessly American lens. Far better to just sip a daiquiri and appreciate Havana for what it is.

How to Drink Havana

La Bodeguita del Medio
Empedrado No 207, Havana
+53 757-1375

El Floridita
Obispo 557, Habana Vieja, Havana
+53 7867-1300

Siá Kará
Calle Industria 502, Havana
+53 7867-4084

El Cocinero
Calle 26, Vedado, Havana
+53 7832-2355

Fábrica de Arte Cubano (FAC)
Calle 26, Vedado, Havana
+53 7838-2260

KingBar
Calle 23, Vedado, Havana
+53 7833-0556

O’Reilly 304
Calle O’Reilly 305, Havana
+53 5264-4725

Bar Bohemio
Calle 12, No 1065 Entre 12 y 14
+53 7833-6918

The post The Trouble With Finding a Good Daiquiri in Cuba appeared first on Saveur.

Years ago, I had little use for the daiquiri. I regarded it as a fruity, frothy, adolescent concoction, made for injudicious college drinking and the “specialty cocktail” page at chain restaurants, all too often impregnated with artificial colors and flavors. Then something changed: Mixologists rediscovered the drink. Using careful techniques and artisan rums, they started pouring daiquiris of beauty and of balance. How could a cocktail I once dismissed as garish be able to clean up so nicely? It simply went back to its roots. As I found out when I looked into the matter, the daiquiri in its inaugural incarnation possessed a dignity and purity to match any libation.

Rum, lime juice, and sugar: Americans, British sailors, and Caribbean locals have been mixing these ingredients for nearly as long as sugarcane and citrus have been grown in the West Indies. Colonial America loved punch, a sweet, citrusy potion; rum, distilled from Caribbean cane or molasses, regularly found its way into the bowl. During the 1700s, British sailors spiked their daily ration of watered-down rum with lime and sugar. For this reason, the seamen became known as “limeys.” In fact, there are endless variations on the island trio, including Brazil’s caipirinha and Martinique’s ti’ punch. The daiquiri, Cuba’s 19th-century gift to the world, is arguably the prime exemplar of this strong, tart, sweet balance of flavors.

The man who gets the lion’s share of credit for bringing the drink’s harmonious flavors together under the moniker “daiquiri” was not a bartender but a mining engineer. Jennings Cox was a rotund, bow-tie-sporting American who worked at a Cuban iron mine around the time of the Spanish-American War. A jolly entertainer, he’d serve large batches of his own liquid invention, a just-so blend of light-bodied white rum (probably Cuba’s own Bacardi brand), lime, and sugar. Stories vary, but at one point or another, one guest came up with the bright idea of naming it after the town where Cox mined: Daiquire.

Thinking he was onto something, Cox took his daiquiri to a couple of upscale bars he hung out at in nearby Santiago de Cuba, the Hotel Venus bar and the private San Carlos Club. According to Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, author of the forthcoming Potions of the Caribbean: 500 Years of Tropical Drinks and the People Behind Them (Mud Puddle Inc., 2013), a bartender Cox introduced the drink to began mixing it in single servings that he poured over shaved ice in a cocktail glass. From Santiago the recipe traveled to Havana, where the added steps of shaking and straining the mixture turned it into a straight-up cocktail.

Credit: Courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

Within the next couple of decades, a perfect storm of circumstances conspired to make the daiquiri a border-crossing hit. In 1909, an American naval officer named Lucius Johnson went to a shindig at Cox’s place, pocketed the recipe, and took it back to Washington, D.C., where it became the signature at the Army and Navy Club. Eleven years later, Prohibition was passed, instilling in thirsty Americans an interest in travel to Cuba, where liquor still flowed freely. Anyone drinking in Havana was bound to encounter a daiquiri at some point. In the 1930s, the drink got an added boost by the one-man publicity machine known as Ernest Hemingway, who had decamped to Cuba seeking quiet to write. He ended up spending just as much time drinking at a Havana bar called El Floridita as he did composing terse sentences; “Papa” liked how the owner, Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, handled a daiquiri. Hemingway’s fame rubbed off on the drink. On a wave of rum that flooded the States following Prohibition’s repeal, the daiquiri swept the country.

For today’s purists, it is tempting to believe that the daiquiri’s virtue as a pared-down masterpiece—shaken, strained, and served straight up—remained unstained until the 1970s, when some bartenders threw the poor girl into a blender. But that’s not exactly the case. The words frozen and daiquiri were never quite strangers. Those chilly potions Hemingway guzzled at El Floridita were served on piles of shaved ice. In the 1928 work When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba, Prohibition-era writer Basil Woon cautioned that the drink “must be drunk frozen or it is not good.” He probably meant you should serve it very cold. But the notion is there.

When the Waring blender was introduced to America in 1937, encouraging people to make smoothies out of everything, the daiquiri was transformed, as Wayne Curtis puts it in And a Bottle of Rum (Crown, 2006), into “something to be eaten with a spoon.” It stands to reason that postwar America’s love of mechanical convenience and the need for speedy service in the discos and singles’ bars of the 1970s sealed the drink’s slushy fate. In 1971, Dallas resident Mariano Martinez paired up with inventor Frank Adams to make the first frozen drink machine, and the daiquiri, in a rainbow of fruity new flavors, returned to batch proportions. Today, manufacturers such as Louisiana’s Frosty Factory of America, supplier to many of New Orleans’ drive-thru daiquiri shops, boast contraptions that dispense 30 gallons of icy cocktail per hour. For bar owners, it’s a heck of a lot less work than blending drinks one at a time.

But, as I’ve found out, the effort it takes to make a daiquiri by hand is well worth it. Of course, like many classics, it is easy to make and easy to get wrong. Because there are only three ingredients, a classic daiquiri can quickly be thrown out of whack. Too much sugar or lime (or too little), and you’re sunk. As one barkeep told me of the cocktail, “There’s nowhere to hide.”

To make a proper daiquiri, the lime juice must be fresh squeezed. Simple syrup (basically sugar water) should be used to achieve a smooth consistency. And the rum must possess the right mix of lightness, body, and pungency; aged rum, so delicious on its own or in tiki drinks, makes for an inappropriately ponderous daiquiri.

For me, 86 Co.’s Caña Brava, a Panamanian rum, has enough lightness, as well as an intriguingly gamey flavor, to make a balanced daiquiri. I’m also a fan of St. George’s Spirits Agua Libre California Agricole Rum. Pressed from fresh sugarcane, it adds grassy, pungent depth to the drink. Once I have my mighty trio ready, I measure each into a cocktail shaker, give it a hearty rattle over plenty of ice, and strain it into a chilled coupe. It took practice, but I now make a pretty fine daiquiri: potent, piquant, and just this side of sweet.

And I have to agree with something that today’s mixologists already know: The daiquiri is endlessly adaptable. Once I learned to master the original, it was a simple side step to the Hemingway Special. The version, which the legendary writer enjoyed at El Floridita, incorporates maraschino liqueur and grapefruit juice. When I’m in the mood for a sparkling drink, I try the Airmail daiquiri, which includes champagne. If I want to go stronger, I mix up a Kapu Kai, which calls for high-proof Lemon Hart 151 Demerara rum. I’ve even come to appreciate frozen inventions when they’re crafted by a skilled bartender using fresh ingredients—blackberries, strawberries and bananas, cinnamon and pineapple—and that balanced undergirding of rum, sugar, and lime. With each new, delicious creation, I’ve found that the daiquiri hasn’t deserted its island roots at all.

See a gallery of Daiquiri cocktails »

The post Papa’s Favorite Poison appeared first on Saveur.

Straight up, over ice, or frozen, daiquiris are just as good now as when Hemingway drank them. Try these 9 variations, from a classic version on ice to one pureed with fresh blackberries.

See our favorite daiquiri recipes in the gallery »

The post 9 Variations on the Classic Daiquiri appeared first on Saveur.

Straight up, over ice, or frozen, daiquiris are just as good now as when Hemingway drank them. Try these 9 variations, from a classic version on ice to one pureed with fresh blackberries. These recipes first appeared in our May 2013 issue with Robert Simonson’s article Papa’s Favorite Poison.

Airmail

Beach Towel

Blackberry Blast

Classic Daiquiri

Derby Daiquiri

Hemingway Special

Kapu Kai

Pineapple Express

Jasper’s Jamaican

The post Papa’s Favorite Poison appeared first on Saveur.

This bright, citrusy drink is from Fort Lauderdale’s Mai-Kai. This recipe first appeared in our May 2013 issue with Robert Simonson’s article Papa’s Favorite Poison.

The post Derby Daiquiri appeared first on Saveur.

A fruity frozen daiquiri becomes dessert-like with the addition of heavy cream. This recipe first appeared in our May 2013 issue with Robert Simonson’s article Papa’s Favorite Poison.

The post Beach Towel appeared first on Saveur.

In the spring and summer of 2011 I worked as an extern in the pastry kitchen of a restaurant. We always had plenty of sorbets on hand: we sent them out between courses, as part of the tasting menu, and as a special treat for diners to smooth things over when a server made a mistake or the kitchen was a little backed up. Whenever we accumulated too much sorbet to fit in the tiny service freezer, they’d send me home with large deli containers full of it: apricot, lemon, hibiscus, blood orange. I brought it along to parties and barbecues constantly that summer — I’d buy a bottle of cheap sparkling wine and we’d drop a melty scoop of sorbet into the bottom of everyone’s cup, turning it into a slushy, fruity treat that was perfect for sipping on hot afternoons.

Steve Wildy, beverage director of the chef Marc Vetri’s restaurants in Philadelphia (he oversees the bar programs of Vetri, Alla Spina, Amis, and Osteria), shares my affinity for the alcoholic slushy — properly referred to by its Italian name, sgroppino. In Italy, sgroppino is common as a palate cleanser, a dessert, or even a pre-dinner drink, but you don’t come across it as often stateside, which makes it a sort of beacon for Steve when he’s dining out. “If a bar has a sgroppino on the menu, I always know I’m going to like the place right away,” he says.

Odds are good that if you do find it on offer at a restaurant, the drink will be a standard sorbet-prosecco float, but Steve’s version takes a slightly more elegant form, with the sorbet, prosecco, and a shot of vodka vigorously whisked together for a frothy, icy drink with a beautiful rich texture. It’s a brilliant improvement: I bought a pint of lemon sorbet and made a batch of these for my friends one weekend when unexpectedly hot weather hit New York City in full force. They were heaven: silky smooth and just sweet enough. Gathered on my Brooklyn roof as the sun began to set and the air cooled to a respectable temperature, we sipped the chilly, frothy drinks and toasted the start of summer.

See the recipe for the Sgroppino »

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