So, you’ve made your passionfruit syrup with your nice, local, organic passionfruit you bought at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, or in my case, the Larchmont Farmer’s Market, anywho, you’ve got a big pile of all those weird husks leftover. Now what do you do? Well, it’s a good thing I got up this morning to write this blog post now isn’t it? What do you say we stretch those puppies as far as they will go? After all, passionfruit doesn’t grow on trees.

First off, save your sweet seed mash you’ve got leftover from straining out your syrup. Put them in a jar with some high proof liquor and save for later. Yeah, you’ll have to wait on that post until tomorrow. There’s some cool shit brewing up over here and I’m hoping it’ll work. Hopefully I’ll have time today.

Next, take the husks, cut them up, scissors work best, and get a big old pot and throw them in there with simple syrup. In terms of ratio…It’s whatever amount can cover the husks. As a quick guide, I had five pounds of passionfruit yesterday, took all the guts out, which amounted to about a quart and a half of what I call “nectar of the gods” and with the leftover husks added 6 cups of sugar and 6 cups of water and let it all simmer for a couple of hours. The result is a gooey, sticky, purple mass of deliciousness. The husks still give off a good amount of passionfruit …musk…perfume…whatever…and the nice dye from the skins bleeds off as well as leaving a slight but pleasant bitterness if you like that sort of thing. It’s the bitter edge we’re really going to focus on here because it’s all natural. Please always pronounce that “au-natch-ur-all” in as douchey a voice as you can. Really grind out that “L” at the end.

The vermouth part is pretty easy. Once the husk syrup is over and done with, put all the cooked strained parts into a jar and add 1 bottle of red wine, 1 cup of pisco, and a handful of dried orange and let it sit out for a day. That’s really it. I use Beaujolais. Shh. The leftover sugar from the syrup cooking process gets all in there and the booze extracts that subtle bitterness from the husks. No need to add gentian or anything of the sort unless you’re really looking for more.

After a day it’s ready. You can let it go longer if you choose to have more intense flavor flav but just remember to put it in the fridge. Strain when you’ve worked up the motivation to go and when you’re ready and willing make yourself a delicious Martinez. It works really well with Barr Hill gin. Specs? Ok.

2 oz. Gin

1 oz. Passionfruit Vermouth

Barspoon Maraschino

2 Dashes Orange Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into small coupe glass and do the old orange peel expression dance over the whole shebang. Put the peel in or discard. Choose your own adventure. Yeah, we like our Martinez’s on the stronger side over here but you can go 1:1 if you want, no one is stopping you except you.