welcome friends welcome back to cocktails after dark today we're gonna
do a cocktail that I saw on a cocktail menu a couple of weeks ago but I didn't
order it and the reason I didn't order it is because one I didn't want to live
through the indignity of drinking it the way they were serving it sometimes bars
taverns restaurants they choose glassware for cocktails that it's just
like why what you want people to order it I know that you're trying to make it
so that a certain group of people order it but that excludes other people who
just don't want to suffer the indignity of drinking from your glassware the
other reason I didn't order it and probably the real reason the biggest
reason is that on a very expensive cocktail menu this cocktail cost four
times as much as anything else and I thought it's just a vodka it's just a
vodka Tomah tini or a martini Tomah tini so I didn't order it but the real reason
it was probably four times as expensive as everything else is it's a cocktail
that contains vinegar and it contained balsamic vinegar and balsamic vinegar
can be incredibly expensive depending on which one you've you've got in which one
you're putting in the drink and so I expect they were probably using a really
expensive balsamic I know I I posted a picture on Instagram not too long ago
of a tiny little bottle of balsamic vinegar and it was like six hundred
bucks it's expensive I get it I know why it's expensive for the real stuff I'm
not using a particularly good balsamic vinegar today so the cocktail is vodka
lemon juice balsamic vinegar gum syrup but you could use just a regular simple
syrup if that's all you've got I started out by throwing a couple of little
cherry tomatoes in there a couple grinds of black pepper and I'm gonna start out
just by muddling down those Tomatoes and once I've got the muddled down just to
kind of break them up a little bit now we'll go in with some ice and give it a
shake okay and like all of these it gets a double strain now of course you don't
have to double strain I kind of like double straining just to pull out any
little shards of ice okay and we're gonna garnish this with a spicy pickled
bean and there we have it the Toma teeny
let's see the color isn't isn't terribly inviting I mean it's kind of a you know
brown which is probably why at the restaurant they had it in a much
shallower glass one of those giant martini glasses that are impossible to
drink out of I can't stand drinking out of those big martini glasses and it had
you know a couple of grape tomatoes a couple of cherry tomatoes a piece of
shrimp and some other things as you know decoration on the side to try to draw
your eye away from the color that's imparted by the vinegar I mean you can't
get away from the vinegar I suppose there are white balsamic vinegars but
you know that's not to me that's not a true balsamic vinegar
anyway let's give a shot
I like that I really like that the lemon is pretty muted the sharp tang of the
balsamic vinegar is gone and with balsamic vinegar of this age you
shouldn't get a sharp tang anyway but the flavor of the balsamic vinegar is
there and it's absolutely wild now vinegar in cocktails is as old as
the hills vinegar and cocktails goes way back if you go back and you look at
something like shrubs drinking shrubs they were alcoholic and they were
vinegar it was essentially the spoilage that had you know it had turned alcohol
and then it had started to turn to vinegar and people started drinking it
and realized hey you know what this tastes really good so this works now
this is not the vodka that they used in the restaurant they were using I think
it was kettle one which is you know one of those giant international brands
nothing wrong with it I'm the whole purpose of most vodka is that it's
flavorless it's not supposed to have any flavor I kind of like potato vodka
because there's something more to it than a grain vodka a grain vodka is very
clean smooth clear no flavor doesn't feel like anything in your mouth where's
the potato vodka
has more substance to me it feels like it coats the inside of your mouth
and so that coating of the inside of your mouth with the gum syrup keeps this
this flavor from this in your mouth for quite some time okay to me that's a
winner but I'm going to say it's not for everybody
I'm gonna say for every ten people that try it nine probably won't like it I
kind of like it it is something that with the right food and the right
company I could go through a few of these so thanks for stopping by see you
again soon
you