Boozy McGuzzles

It’s time for another nerd drink for nerds! Yes, another drink inspired by that fine bit of children’s programming (no, really, it’s good for adults, too!) Avatar: The Last Airbender. But you can drink it even if you’re not a big nerdface. This is another one that involves infusing a sugar syrup, because by god! I just love infusing things! It makes me feel like a mad scientist a little bit. (As an aside, when I was filtering the vanilla-ginger rum, with funnels and the what not, a friend my roommate had over passed through the kitchen and said, “What’s happening here?! Science is happening!” Drunk science, sir.)

ANYWAY the drink.

Fire Nation

Ingredients:
2 oz. shochu
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. habenero-ginger infused sugar syrup (recipe follows)

Combine all ingredients into a shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Enjoy, breathe fire.

Habenero-Ginger Infused Sugar Syrup

2/3 cup of sugar
2/3 cup of water
1 habenero pepper, chopped roughly
3-4 inches of ginger root, peeled and sliced into rounds, then crushed (squeeze the pieces in your hand before adding them to the pot)

This recipe makes a pretty decent amount of syrup, and it’ll keep in your fridge for about 2-3 weeks. Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil. Drop the heat to medium and simmer for about 10-15 minutes. It’ll thicken up some, and take on a nice reddish-brown, caramel-y color. Turn off the heat, and fish out the larger pieces with a spoon, and then strain the smaller fibers and seeds through cheesecloth or, as I did, my ever so handy tea ball. Chill in the fridge or freezer, depending on your patience level.

This syrup is sweet and flavorful and brilliantly spicy. It’d probably be good on some other stuff! Like… I don’t know, some fruit? Maybe why not!

As for the cocktail itself, if you didn’t want to go to the trouble of infusing syrup, you could probably mimic the taste by muddling a habenero and some ginger with sugar, but this method is untested, so don’t come crying to me if it’s bad and you burned your tongue and feel bad about yourself now!

Okay, it’s time to get nerdy up in this piece.

Now, I may be a grown woman who pretends to be a respectable adult, but this does not mean I do not have some terribly nerdy geekball hobbies and interests. I spend 85% of my life in front of a computer, I play video games constantly, I will argue with you about Star Trek, and I watch cartoons intended for a much younger demographic than the one I fit into.

What does this have to do with cocktails? Well, a while back I got myself into the really quite wonderful show Avatar: The Last Airbender. Yeah, it’s a Nickelodeon show, and the target age group is about the 8-12-year-old demographic, but really! Trust me! It’s a great show even for adults! No, stop laughing!

Mockery aside, I really enjoy the series, and when I like something, one of my first instincts is to try to see if I can come up with some sort of boozy connection for it. So for Avatar, I took the premise of the four elemental nations and tried to break them down, cocktail-style. If you’re a nerd like me and a fan of the show, you’ll see where I’m coming from with this one; if not, it’s a delicious cocktail that stands on its own.

Water Tribe

Ingredients:
2 oz. shochu
2 oz. unfiltered sake (Nigori)
1/2 oz. umeboshi sugar syrup (recipe follows) OR 1 tsp sugar + muddled umeboshi
1 pinch kosher salt
Umeboshi to garnish (optional)

The umeboshi really are the key to this drink. If you’ve never had them before, they’re sour-salty-sweet little balls of Japanese goodness, available at many Asian markets. Popping one in your mouth by itself is a recipe for puckered lips, but the complex flavor is released nicely in a drink like this.

Umeboshi Sugar Syrup

Like most infused syrups, it’s really pretty simple. You don’t need to make very large batches of this, so I’d suggest 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of sugar, either heated to boiling over the stove or given a solid zap in the microwave (is that gauche, to make simple syrup in the microwave? I do not care). While the water-sugar is heating, drop in 2-3 umeboshi.  Once the sugar has dissolved into the mixture, remove the syrup from heat and let the umeboshi steep for about 10-15 minutes. After that, give them a little pop with the back of a spoon and then strain out the solids with a tea ball or your preferred method of straining.

OKAY, THE ACTUAL COCKTAIL RECIPE:

Mix all the ingredients in a shaker with ice, shake thoroughly, and strain into a chilly, chilly cocktail glass. If you don’t want to go through the trouble of making the sugar syrup, simple muddle an umeboshi and a teaspoon of sugar in the bottom of your mixer before adding the liquids. In either case, garnish with an umeboshi and enjoy this salty, sweet, ice-cold full moon of a drink. And watch some cartoons, darn ya!