I’m not sure how it was that you could call a drink The Hawaiian Cocktail back in the day without including any specifically Hawaiian ingredients, but that was apparently the case when “The Savoy Cocktail Book” was published in 1930. Indeed, based on the ingredients, it may have been more apt to call today’s drink the Californian or Florida Cocktail, since there isn’t a trace of anything native to Hawaii and the drink is dominated by orange juice. On the other hand, if you take a picture of this drink in the right light, it’s pretty much the same color as pineapple juice, so there’s that.
So, why this particular drink? Well, within 30 or so hours of the time this post goes live, I will be on Kauai to attend the wedding of a very old and valued friend and, if not now, then when? Yes, there are better known cocktails associated with the 50th state in the Union, and I’m pretty sure there are probably better tasting ones. However, they’re mostly a bit more fattening than average, and I’m actually trying to lose weight right now.
Suffice it to say, this is a drink that’s a bit on the sweet side but which, I think, can work reasonably okay if you keep your ingredients on a short leash.
The Hawaiian Cocktail
2 ounces gin
1 ounce fresh orange juice
1/2 ounce orange curacao or Grand Marnier
Add the ingredients to a cocktail shaker with lots of ice, shake very vigorously and strain into a cocktail glass. Salute our nation’s 50th state and maybe look up the meaning of “mahalo” for the 50th time. I know it means something nice and polite, but I keep forgetting what that is.
Early last month, the world mourned — something the world has been doing way too much of lately — the passing of Muhammad Ali, a boxer who transcended his sport in so many ways that even a complete non-sports fan like me hero worshiped him just a bit. However, since he was also a devout Muslim, it would probably be wrong to name a cocktail after him.
It’s almost Independence Day weekend and, as our nation veers towards either electing its first woman president or it’s last male president, maybe it makes sense to honor one of the few founding mothers kids my age were ever taught about in school.
Although today’s drink comes to us from David Embury’s 1940s cocktail classic, “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks,” it doesn’t really have any particular story to go with its classy provenance or courtly name. Embury just presents it as one of a series of drinks “based on an Applejack Sour.” It’s potentially a very sweet drink, at least on paper, since it includes both simple syrup (or sugar) and a very sweet orange liqueur. Still, the notoriously booze-severe Emory cautiously approves.
As I’ve mentioned here about 20,000 times, my approach to Drink of the Week is that these are reasonably quick and easy to make cocktails for the home, not major DIY projects. While I love the companies that send me free drinks and (for the most part) really good cocktails, if a recipe calls for, say, a ginger-asparagus-truffle reduction syrup, I’ll skip it. If it demands that I use freshly ground nutmeg, I’ll very likely just stick with the store-bought pre-ground stuff, thank you very much. In other words, I’m kind of lazy and I think you might be, too!
