This is something I’ve obsessed about for a long, long time which shows you how my brain operates…The biggest hurdle was bringing peanut into the bar. Yeah, there’s so many weird allergies out there nowadays and peanut is one of the biggest. Unless you’re a Thai restaurant you’re probably leaving peanuts off the menu entirely. Out old pastry chef, Uncle Rico, was allergic, my wife, Jo, is allergic, having it behind the bar could be considered more of an impending catastrophe than anything else but the kitchen recently did something with peanuts…I think it was the mole seco…Yes, yes…And I thought to hell with it. We use a lot of other nuts as is…Just go for it and hope everyone brought their epi-pens out with them for the night.

I originally wanted to call this one Fat Elvis but found out while researching the sandwich itself that it already had a name, the Fool’s Gold Loaf. I actually thought it would garner a little more attention than it did. Ha. I guess no. Anyway, I’m fucking impressed with myself for this one if that counts.

The original recipe was a hollowed out loaf of bread with an entire jar of either blueberry or grape jam, a jar of peanut butter, and a pound of butter. Elvis had one after a concert in 1976 in Denver Colorado at a restaurant called the Colorado Mine Company. Later on he improvised upon the original and ditched jam for bacon. My kind of guy.

It’s blind luck the drink came out looking orangish and a little gold maybe? I don’t know. I think there might still be some gold flake kicking around in the kitchen. Might be worth a sprinkle or two. What I really wanted to do as a garnish was to have a mini version of the sandwich available but I don’t have the time for such nonsense. Still, a couple of little pizza roll size bite sized pretzelly style snacks would have been awesome on the side for this.

Fool’s Gold

1 oz. Oloroso Sherry

.75 oz. Bacon Rum

.75 oz. Bread Rum

.5 oz. Bananum

.5 oz. Amazake Peanut Orgeat

.5 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.25 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

1 Dash Shio Koji

It all went together quite easily. I followed the same old amazake recipe I’ve’ always followed. I used some old koji infused macadamia I kept in the freezer. Yeah, this is a little trick so as not to continue to buy koji rice. Just keep some starters from your last batches in the freezer and thaw and freeze as you need it.

I’ll have to read the fats section in Koji Alchemy again. Nuts just do so damn well with the stuff. Yes, yes, I know the peanut is a legume. It still worked better than anticipated and tastes just like it should–peanut buttery goodness with the added benefit of umami which further enhances the flavor of not just the peanut but the rest of the drink as well.

The bacon rum was a pound of bacon from Whole Foods roasted in the oven then placed into a four quart with two bottles of dark rum and then blasted with a hand blender. I let it sit out for a day or so then put it in the freezer for separation.

Bread rum was an old loaf due for an appointment with the waste bin. Four thick slices toasted aggressively then placed into a four quart with two liter bottles of White ‘Stache and left to sit for a day. Note: I lost about a half liter in the process here.

Both rums were strained and then given another strain through a coffee filter. Some advice for any budding bartender: Straining through a coffee filter is easy if there is no sugar involved and only takes a couple of minutes. Add sugar and it can take hours, even days, and is no fun at all.

Truth here…I’ve never eaten a peanut bacon banana sandwich. It sounds delicious but since I never have peanut butter at home it’s not something I think about much.