The Martinez machine keeps on rollin. He got ahold of the cochelery and put this puppy up with one try. I made it on a weird whim during a slow night and really had no idea it would be good at all. I had a long streak of the feces touch but I think making cool stuff is more my strength and passion. Bar saucier! The cocktails are always secondary. Last December, we put out a little number called Bishop’s Blood. We were focused more on other ingredients at the time but now, looking back, I think I realized what made the whole damn thing work was the magic combination of cachaça, celery, and coconut together. Add a little lime juice, sugar, and a sprinkle of condensed milk and you have yourself a party.

I’m not sure if I noted this in the cochelery post, but it’s shelf stable and unbreakable which to me is a big win when dealing with anything coconut. We don’t have pebble ice at Rustic which is crucial for any coconut cocktails because after five minutes the coconut fat rafts to the top of the drink. This is fine but to me, looking from afar, I don’t like how it looks at the table. I mean, I’m of the camp that thinks a drink should be drunk within a couple of minutes unless it’s a Manhattan or martini, anything strong, stirred and up, otherwise it just dilutes. But try telling this to some punter at the bar spending $19 on a drink. “”Hey dude, you’re really nursing that beverage.” I mean, when I see someone leave a drink I just made and not take a sip right away I get a little double knit. It is the same thing as letting hot food get cold, just opposite. And lordy, lordy, when servers are talking up a storm at the host podium with their backs turned to the drink pass…Drinks sitting up there dying…I could tear out the remainder of my hair…What is so goddam special about the gravity of the host stand and it’s ability to absorb servers? When I look at it now I picture the event horizon of a black hole…The point where not even light itself can escape…That sort of thing…Now that I think about it…That’s a great cocktail name…Something even the servers can leave for minutes at a time as they’re texting and talking at the host stand…

Yes, the name is a bit of a stretch but if you look at the introductory picture in this post, you’ll see the man himself, Nicolas Cage, in a classic action flick called The Rock. In his hand is the toxic bioweapon the bad guys were about to unleash upon the unsuspecting inhabitants of San Francisco. Yes, that’s what the celery is representing. I mean, it’s the only bright green thing in the whole damn cocktail.

Let’s talk about celery for a moment. It’s one of those vegetables we grow up with. We put cheese or peanut butter in the grooves and munched on it as a snack. At least I did. In those days it was more about the satisfying crunch and a vector for whatever spreadable fat was laying around. As we grew up, we learned it was part of the holy mirapoix for soup and that the leaves were, in fact, not poisonous but edible. Celery alone is just fine…Maybe a little boring, but the juice is where the money is. It’s ultra grassy, salty, ever so slightly anise flavored, and even a bit numbing to the tongue. It really is a rare flavor that is so part of the culinary and homecooking world that it is, at this point, taken for granted. The reason it’s difficult to place in cocktails is 1. As a juice it will auto-dilute. 2. It spoils within hours. So, this leads me to believe the best way to do it is either juice to order which is a bit difficult or to just add some sort of sumpin’ sumpin’ that will preserve it.

Dr. Stanley Goodspeed

1.5 oz. Cochelery

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

1 oz. Oaxaca Rum or some sort of other funky pot still white rum

3 Dashes Absinthe

Shake, double strain into a small coupe and dust the top with some dehydrated and ground celery leaf. Smells good.

This is your AI generated image for this post, #394.