Liqueur flavors
Dec. 15th, 2011 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI keep thinking about booze flavors and combinations. I bought a container of Taza toasted cocoa nib bits, and used some of them in a batch of liqueur with orange and some lavender; it wasn't enough lavender to come through (it can be strong, so I was being cautious), so the question of whether all three work together didn't get answered, but chocolate and orange work together well (big surprise :-), and the leftovers, plus some non-boozy oranges and more sugar, became a batch of orange-chocolate marmalade. Well, sort of: it's more peel than jammish bits, so perhaps closer to some sort of filling than spreadable jam.
I have a lot of nibs left, so I've been thinking about other things I could use it with. Chocolate goes with so many other fruit flavors, especially berries and such, but it's citrus season. Or I could go for something odder, and put chocolate with a root vegetable batch, maybe carrot or beet.
And then I got to thinking that cocoa beans aren't all that different functionally from coffee beans (er, as an ingredient, texture and so on; obviously the flavors are different), and I started contemplating the possibilities, then quickly got overwhelmed: there's tons of different coffee bean sources (countries as well as shops) and different roasts, and I know nothing about it all, since I don't drink the stuff. And again, it seems like the fruit flavors that would go best with coffee would be berries, though perhaps citrus or other tropicals would work, perhaps with a rum base rather than vodka. But really, there's too many options. I posted to FB, and a couple of people had good suggestions; other opinions and ideas are welcome.
And then I thought about how so many people seem at least somewhat coffee addicted, with the other major legal addiction (other than booze, since I'm already in the booze universe) is nicotine. I have no interest in smoking anything, but it might be interesting to see whether nicotine affects me ingested some other way. It turns out it's alcohol soluble, so I could make a liqueur with fruit and tobacco. Originally I considered fresh tobacco leaves if I could find them (I'd read somewhere that there are farms in western MA that grow tobacco, though I know it's a much bigger crop south), but again, out of season. If I use dried, commercially available tobacco, two people have recommended a tobacco shop in Harvard Square with a huge variety of options, so I could find something that was unadulterated leaves (unlike what ends up in cigarettes). Given the different flavors of shisa (hookah tobacco) out there, it seems like it can go with most fruits, too.
And if I get really silly, I could make an all-vice liqueur: some fruit with both coffee and tobacco.
I've still got lots of lavender (it's a small shrub in the kitchen), so I might try another batch of citrus with lots of lavender, perhaps lemon this time. And I want to keep an eye out for other affordable organic produce that might lend itself towards liqueur.
Random bonus track:
Best recently-found typo: a web page that had MacGyver "diffusing a bomb" with a paperclip.
I have a lot of nibs left, so I've been thinking about other things I could use it with. Chocolate goes with so many other fruit flavors, especially berries and such, but it's citrus season. Or I could go for something odder, and put chocolate with a root vegetable batch, maybe carrot or beet.
And then I got to thinking that cocoa beans aren't all that different functionally from coffee beans (er, as an ingredient, texture and so on; obviously the flavors are different), and I started contemplating the possibilities, then quickly got overwhelmed: there's tons of different coffee bean sources (countries as well as shops) and different roasts, and I know nothing about it all, since I don't drink the stuff. And again, it seems like the fruit flavors that would go best with coffee would be berries, though perhaps citrus or other tropicals would work, perhaps with a rum base rather than vodka. But really, there's too many options. I posted to FB, and a couple of people had good suggestions; other opinions and ideas are welcome.
And then I thought about how so many people seem at least somewhat coffee addicted, with the other major legal addiction (other than booze, since I'm already in the booze universe) is nicotine. I have no interest in smoking anything, but it might be interesting to see whether nicotine affects me ingested some other way. It turns out it's alcohol soluble, so I could make a liqueur with fruit and tobacco. Originally I considered fresh tobacco leaves if I could find them (I'd read somewhere that there are farms in western MA that grow tobacco, though I know it's a much bigger crop south), but again, out of season. If I use dried, commercially available tobacco, two people have recommended a tobacco shop in Harvard Square with a huge variety of options, so I could find something that was unadulterated leaves (unlike what ends up in cigarettes). Given the different flavors of shisa (hookah tobacco) out there, it seems like it can go with most fruits, too.
And if I get really silly, I could make an all-vice liqueur: some fruit with both coffee and tobacco.
I've still got lots of lavender (it's a small shrub in the kitchen), so I might try another batch of citrus with lots of lavender, perhaps lemon this time. And I want to keep an eye out for other affordable organic produce that might lend itself towards liqueur.
Random bonus track:
Best recently-found typo: a web page that had MacGyver "diffusing a bomb" with a paperclip.