Shrub Cocktails: La Tristeza de Lupe

As delicious as these shrubs can be as a non-alcoholic treat, there are those times when you could really use a nice slug of booze with them. As an avowed cocktail geek, I am always racking my brain trying to come up with a way to incorporate my shrubs into a cocktail. As of last night, the dream became a reality.

After a five month break, I visited one of my favorite places in the universe, the famed Zig Zag Cafe in Seattle, where the friendly and skilled barman, Mr. Ben Perri agreed to taste some shrub samples and see if he could work them into a cocktail. I was enjoying his on-the-fly concoctions including a Manhattan variant with Francoise, and a sort of mescal buck served up made with Frankie Teardrop, when I made a slight suggestion in the use of crowd favorite, Don Whoa.

I had kind of fooled around with the idea of using the pineapple based shrub in cocktails that normally might call for pineapple juice. My own home experiment with an Algonquin variant was an unholy disaster. The thing about Don Whoa that makes it tricky for cocktail use, is the earthy funkiness that the coconut vinegar lends it. If it were a straight up pineapple shrub, mixing with it would so much easier. Tasty, it might be, but its singular flavor profile makes it a fickle bastard in a drink. Clearly, this called for professional help.

I hadn't given up on doing a prohibition era update, and there was one I thought might still have a chance of working, the sweet, but tasty Mary Pickford. I mentioned to Ben that this was a direction I would be interested in traversing, and he instinctively gathered the requisite ingredients, and with a calm and deliberate demeanor nailed that sucker the first time out of the gate.

I loved it; this thing was smooth, and utilized the unique flavors of the shrub without being weird, and maintained that subtle, haunting heat that the habanero imparts in the finish. I asked Ben if I could name it, as I love naming drinks and have had one in mind in case this ever worked out. Since Mary Pickford was named after a silent film star, I felt that with the habanero component, it should be named after the lovely, but tragic Latina silent film star who once played a character named "Pepper."

[Editor's Note: Despite having years of intensive, nerdy study, it somehow escaped Kern's attention that there is already a cocktail called the Lupe Velez which contains rum, orange juice, kummel, and pimento dram. He could not be dissuaded from referencing Ms. Velez, so he instead made the title allude to the darker, more tragic aspects of her young life. Though I am loathe to admit Kern did something well, I grudgingly applaud the name change-Ed.]

So without further ado, meet La Tristeza de Lupe:

La Tristeza de Lupe

1.5 oz El Dorado 3 year rum

1 oz Don Whoa shrub

.25 oz Luxardo Maraschino

.25 oz grenadine(Please use the good stuff!)

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a cocktail glass or coupe. Enjoy. 

A giant thanks again to gentleman Benjamin Perri from the Zig Zag for indulging my cocktail/shrub fantasies and crafting such a brilliant tipple for us.

Shrub #12: "Frankie Teardrop"

Fruit: None
Sugar: Turbinado sugar(Sugar In The Raw)
Vinegar: White Wine Vinegar
Additions: Fresh ginger root, ghost chile

As you may have guessed, there is a bit of distance between when I first made most of these shrubs and when I have finally gotten around to writing about them. In the case of this week's second shrub, "Frankie Teardrop," I actually have the benefit of having made the recipe very recently, and can actually compare the two different approaches rather than just theorizing as to what might make it better the next time. But we'll get to that in due time.

The genesis of "Frankie Teardrop" was very simple. I love ginger ale and ginger beer. Unfortunately, for the most part, companies whose job it has been for decades to produce these products assumed that the beverage sipping public somehow is frightened to death of the actual heat and flavor of ginger, leaving those of us who yearn for the crisp, fiery bite of a ginger drink with some gravitas and character completely out in the cold. In short, I want a drink that feels like Cary Grant or Jean Paul Belmondo, and they're giving us Taylor Lautner and Ashton Kutcher.

Beyond the mere pleasure of drinking ginger beer straight, many of my favorite cocktails call for ginger ale/beer and the overly sweet, bland smooth operators that are normally offered in a bar setting have no chance when standing up to a stable of ruffians such as rye, bourbon, rum, and the like. They simply find themselves to be hopelessly lost wallflowers in the drink[Much like Kern at a cocktail party-Ed.]. This will not do.

When I set out to make a ginger shrub, my goal was to think about where other ginger beers had failed me, and it largely came down to two elements. Number one, most ginger ales/beers seem to have a distinct lack of ginger flavor. When a drink has the word "ginger" in the name, the crime of not really tasting like it is pretty damned unforgivable in my opinion. Secondly, I like my ginger ale/beer hot. I mean, blazing hot. In my life there has only been one ginger ale I've tried that fulfilled that desire, and that is Blenheim's ginger ale with the red cap. When it makes you nearly sneeze just from smelling it, it's the right stuff for me.

The first problem was quite easy to address; I just used an metric asston of fresh ginger root. I won't tell you the exact amount, but I can guarantee that it is enough so there will be no mistaking what it is you are drinking. I microplaned the hell out the ginger, leaving a neat pile in my jar. The ginger itself in the amount I chose would likely be sorta spicy. However, at Feel Like Making Shrub, sorta is not acceptable. I needed a way to give the shrub a clean, full mouth heat, but one that didn't obscure the delicious, aromatic flavor of the ginger I was working hard to showcase. To finish the base of the shrub, I chose turbinado sugar which would offer both depth of flavor, and would compliment the ginger, and white wine vinegar to stay out of its way. As usual, I prepared the shrub according the my normal methods.

Addressing the second issue,  I figured that the use of a pepper would likely do the trick, but I thought habanero might be too obvious. I wanted something to strike fear into the hearts of ginger drink amateurs and awe and wonder in the ones who had felt betrayed and practically mocked by the flabby, flavorless offerings haunting the shelves at the local grocery stores.

The answer came in the form of the red, wrinkled package of the bhut jolokia pepper, better known to Western audiences as the fabled "Ghost Chile." To give you some idea of how hot this pepper is in relation to some of its also hot brethren, the bhut jolokia weighs in at an imposing 855,000 to 1,041,427 on the Scoville Scale. This means it is about 208 times hotter than a standard jalapeno, and nearly 7-8 times hotter than a normal orange habanero. More simply stated, it's hot, dammit!

Looking back at my earlier experiments, the slow steeping of a very small habanero whose seeds and membranes were removed imparted just the right amount of heat over a week in the "Don Whoa", but I had a feeling that after a week of steeping, the ghost chile could possibly become so hot, that it might render the whole shrub undrinkable. I could have done the steeping, checking everyday to see if the chile needed to be pulled, but that seemed like a pain in the ass. I knew there had to be a way to control the heat level in a way that it should stay stable once I reached a flavor I liked. I slapped my forehead. The answer was simple: tea.

I didn't literally use camellia sinensis, but I did borrow the method most people use to make tea. I boiled some water, poured it over a couple of ghost chiles in a bowl, and covered the bowl tightly with aluminum foil. I tasted the "chile tea" every half hour or so to see how hot the tea was becoming. At about the three hour mark, I thought it was ready. I then poured the "tea" into a Pyrex measuring cup, and added it in one ounce increments until I reached the desired level of chile heat. It worked like a charm. Unlike the traditional steep-in-the-shrub method, there was no guesswork involved with how hot the shrub might or might not become by the end of the week. It's so much easier when an unknown quantity(especially heat) becomes a constant. I put it back in the fridge to do its thing for the week, and didn't check on it until the next Saturday.

The resulting shrub, as of the bottling stage, was a hit. It was as spicy as the Blenheim I love so much, but much different. In addition to intense ginger flavor and all over warmth of the chile, there was just the slightest tang of acid to round everything out. Mixed with a bit of sparkling water, and you have a ginger beer substitute I would put up against any of the other small batch ginger beers I actually like and respect. After  the second week, it actually seemed that the flavors melded together even more, and the mixture tasted slightly hotter!

While I was quite happy with version 1.0, it didn't quite get as hot as I expected. Just recently, I made a new batch to make sure we had enough for our recent shrub tasting, and I slightly modified the "chile tea" a little bit to see if I could craft a more efficient solution for extracting heat into the shrub. Vinegar, as it turns out, is a superior solvent to water in extracting flavors from things like herbs, spices, and chiles. As a shrub contains vinegar as one of its major liquid components, it seemed like a great idea to imbue the vinegar I would be using in the shrub anyway with the ghost chiles. By the end of that process, there would be no question as to how much spice the chiles would contribute to the overall shrub. It worked brilliantly, and more effectively than water. I was looking for more heat, and at 2 hours, I got it in even less time.

In addition to its almost magical beverage properties, several people have suggested this would be an amazing marinade, especially when married with other Asian flavors for a chicken or beef stir-fry of some kind. I wholeheartedly approve of this line of thinking.

The name of this shrub comes from the title of one of the most eerie, mystifying, and just downright messed up songs I have ever heard by the dark, pre-No Wave duo Suicide, from their eponymous debut album. The name is a bit of a joke I thought of as I was making what I hoped would be one of the hottest ginger drinks one might try. I told people who were about to sample it that "after a having a glass of this shrub, it should be hot enough to cause the person drinking it to violently ramble and scream murderously for 10 minutes and 27 seconds." So far, no one has screamed...yet.



My initial quest was to make a ginger drink with some grit amidst a world of preening, overly smooth pretty boys, and with its smoldering heat and blatant disregard for the rules, this drink subverted even my own expectations; I may have aimed for Cary Grant, but I'm happy to say, "Frankie Teardrop" turned out to be far and away, much more Robert Mitchum.

Shrub #11: "Melville"

Fruit: Smoked Pears
Sugar: Raw Sugar
Vinegar: White Wine Vinegar
Additions: Poudre Douce

I should have done something simple. After the "Coconut Catastrophe" as I am now calling it, a nice simple shrub would have been the way to go, but unfortunately, that idyllic thought went straight out the door the very minute that my friend and I began discussing the possibility of smoking fruit.

My friend Jeremy brought it up, and asked if I had ever entertained the thought of doing something like that. I had seen something similar done at Bushwhacker Cider in Portland, Oregon, They had enlisted the good natured folks at a German market across the street to utilize their smokers to flavor the cider. I'm not clear on whether they smoked the apples or the finished cider, but it was certainly smokey. Intriguing as this was, I don't own a smoker, and wouldn't have much of an idea how to use one even if I did. Luckily, Jeremy came to the rescue.

"I could smoke the pears for you, if you think that's a shrub you'd like to do," he said.

Yes. Yes, it was.

The plan was this: I would buy pears the week before and he would do a test run with both whole pears and sliced pears at a low temperature for varying amounts of time to see how both would react to the smoking process. Then, when we had determined what the optimum conditions were, we replicate those the next Friday night so that I could make shrub with them the following morning. But before we could get to the magic, we needed some produce.

That Friday I went to the Pike Place Market to find some pears. It took many tries, and the near drawing of a diagram to explain to the gentlemen selling their wares what I meant. I was glad to see that they were still nearly as excited when they realized my project involved actually smoking the fruit as a cooking technique as opposed to utilizing the pears as makeshift bongs. Once we'd gotten that figured out, I dropped the pears off with Jeremy, who smoked them that evening. He came by after he was done, and we checked all the various preparations. The pears that had been cut into pieces were cooked too much, taking on an almost leathery appearance, and tasting of nothing but smoke. The whole pears, however, were a different story; some of them had been done for about two hours, and others that were just a bit longer. As it turns out, whole pears at 2 hours at just under 200 degrees was the sweet spot. The skins, while brown and wrinkled looking, gave way to a mild smokiness and a nearly caramelized, ultra-juicy interior. It was like magic.

A week later, it was time for the real show. I bought more pears, but the market was out of the cultivar I had used the week before. Pears were pears, I figured. But I couldn't have been more wrong. The pears Jeremy brought me were done the exact same way, but the smoke had penetrated more deeply and strongly into the pear's flesh. They were still good, but much smokier than the week before. Then it hit me. The skins on the new pears were much thinner than the ones on the first batch. Without that thicker skin, the smoke was much more easily able to work its way into the fruit.

The pears cooled overnight, and I went through the normal shrub making process. I decided that I was going to use raw sugar, because I thought brown sugar would be too deep a flavor, but I wanted something with a little more character than refined white sugar. In addition, I needed some spices that would not only go well with pears, but would also help compliment and potentially mellow some of the smoke. For this purpose, I went with the warm spice blend known as Poudre Douce, which roughly means, "sweet powder." Poudre Douce seemed perfect as it contains cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove, all things that would work nicely in say, a pear tart. I mixed them all together, and was about to put it in the fridge until...

"What would you think about putting the skins in there?"

Sarah had been helping me cut up pears and gather ingredients that morning, and had just posed a very interesting question. The skins were smoked. They were otherwise going to be thrown away, so was there a possible use for them? Ultimately, I decided to put them in. I think my reasoning was that it would mostly impart more smoke to the nose than it would contribute anything to the taste of it shrub. In went the skins, and into the fridge went the shrub.

It seemed that flavors were already getting pretty out there, so I opted for the neutrality of white wine vinegar. As usual, it gave a slight amount of tang while staying out of the way of all of the other flavors, which is exactly what I wanted.

I waited a week, and it was bottling day. Normally, these things go pretty easily. This one, not so much. I am not entirely sure how high the pectin content of these pears was, but as I attempted to strain the mixture, the tea strainer kept becoming clogged with an almost pear butter type substance. It was jammy and viscous, and I'm sure would have been delicious on biscuits, but it was really pissing me off something fierce. Not only was it taking forever, it became quickly apparent that my actual liquid yield was going to be pretty damned low. All in all, I got just under 17 oz of liquid, which was not much considering the amount of pears that went in. I waited another week until it was finally "done."

So how did "Melville" fare?

Quite well, I am happy to say. While it was a bit smokier than I was initially expecting, it the sweetness of the pears and the warm notes of the Poudre Douce really evened everything out brilliantly. Some of the initial comments I received were that the nose reminded people of a fruity barbecue sauce. I must say, I agree. I think one's interest/tolerance for this shrub depends largely on how much they enjoy smokey flavors. If you like barbecue or scotch, you'll probably be very intrigued. Everyone else, your mileage may vary.

For uses, there is always drinking it, which was the first intention, but since barbecue has been mentioned multiple times, I say we embrace it as either a marinade or sauce. My friend Paige made the astute observation that it would be particularly tasty if used as a pork marinade. To that, I say, "Yes, please!"

This week's shrub is named not for the American author, but for the French director who adopted his name, Jean-Pierre Melville, director of some of my favorite films of all time, including but not limited to, Army of Shadows, Bob Le Flambeur, Le Cercle Rouge, and Le Doulos.



While I wasn't initially sure how this shrub was going to turn out, the results were well worth it. The lessons I learned from this shrub were that inspiration can come from anywhere, and it's always much easier when you have friends who are willing to go the extra mile to help make your visions, no matter how esoteric or bizarre, come to life.

PS-Thanks, Jeremy!

Notes From A Shrub Tasting

After a brief absence, I am back for the forseeable future, to bring you more news from the fascinating, slow paced world of shrub making. 

A Myriad Of Shrubs 

Today I am going to refrain from writing up a description of a shrub that I've completed, so that I can tell you about my first ever shrub tasting, held in the humble confines of our apartment. The turnout was great, as were the fine folks who came to sample the wares. I believe the thing I was most proud of was continually being told that after tasting nearly every one of the 28 offerings(most of which are soon to be written up right here, so stay tuned), that it was still virtually impossible to declare a clear winner.

Despite this, it's always fun in any sort of beverage tasting to approximate the favorites. So without any real, solid scientific method, and further ado, I am going to attempt to relay what appeared to be the Best In Show, so to speak.

Based on the comments, I think first place would likely be a tie. First, we have Ernest, a grapefruit/savory shrub. For those unfamiliar with savory, it's a really nice herb that sort of comes off as a peppery sage with the hint of rosemary. As it turns out, grapefruit hearts savory in this shrub, whose clean tang is bolstered by a spicy herbaceous character. It was particularly enjoyable with a splash of seltzer. Equally beloved by partygoers was the ginger/ghost chile shrub called Frankie Teardrop. This shrub was a reaction to the common problem of weak ginger ales and ginger beers. Frankie certainly fits the bill if you're looking for a ginger drink that can actually bring the heat.

A close second was another citrus shrub, the lemon-rosemary dynamo named Lucrezia. Generally, I find that you can rarely go wrong pairing lemon with rosemary in almost anything, so it was little wonder that this shrub turned out to be one of the people's favorites. Lucrezia plays like a particularly intense rosemary lemonade, but that's a great thing in my book, and it seemed my sentiment was largely echoed by the tasters.

Third place is a bit of a hard call, but I think I'm going to have to go with 3 Faces of Eve. This was tough, as there were two apple based shrubs in the tasting, one being the 3 Faces of Eve, with its deep, apple pie flavor, as well as the newer, sweeter mulled apple shrub named Martin. Despite both being apple shrubs imbued with warm spices, I think the use of three very different cultivars of apples along with homemade brown sugar may have pushed Eve to a photo finish victory.

There were many honorable mentions that were passionately singled out by individual tasters, however. Among them were some of the more experimental offerings, such as Chakka Khan(pumpkin/kala masala), Bowery Babe(sweet potato/pumpkin pie spice), Give My Love To Rose(honey/rose/cardamom), Dale(coffee), and Elizabeth(heirloom tomato/berbere).

At some point, I'll be giving you more information on those shrubs that were mentioned, but not previously written up in the coming days and weeks.

In closing, I would like to not only thank everyone who participated, but my wife Sarah for being so patient with all those early Saturday mornings and especially for helping do nearly the entire preparation for the party. I appreciate it more than you know, and wanted to let you know(again), you're the best.

See you all soon with more shrubs!

Shrub #10: "East By Midwest"

Fruit/Vegetable: Sweet Corn
Sugar: Sugar In The Raw
Vinegar: Coconut Vinegar
Additions: Coconut

Sometimes, it just won't do to continue playing it safe in one's culinary endeavors. After a string of good luck with more standard recipes, I felt it was time to go out on a limb and do a couple of more experimental shrubs. The first of these attempts was an attempt to capture the flavors of a Thai dessert salad called Khao Pod Khluk. From my understanding, this salad is normally made with cooked corn and coconut in its native land, but I came across a enthusiastic writer who extolled the virtue of a raw vegan version of the dish. Since capturing the delicious raw flavor of an ingredient is something I strive for in fruit shrubs, it seemed to me that this was a good place to start.

I bought way too many ears of sweet corn at the Pike Place Market, which if nothing else, gave my forearms a mighty workout, and brought them one step closer to the Popeye-esque physique I have been dreaming of since my childhood. While that part was easy enough, the bigger issue was finding a whole coconut. I looked around the normal spots, without much luck. Luckily, my friend Jeremy was kind enough to pick up a young coconut whose outer husk had already been removed which he graciously donated for the project. With all of the ingredients gathered, it was time to start on the shrub.

Normally, it isn't too difficult to smash fruit and sugar together to form a syrup, as the fruit in question usually surrenders more quickly than my eight year old self to bullies in elementary school. Unlike other materials, corn has other ideas. My normal muddling was quite in vain, as none of the damned kernels would break open, despite my best efforts. There was some juice, but overall this was not going quite the way I expected. Taking a page of the Alice Cooper playbook, I firmly decided that there would be no more Mr. Nice Guy. Mr. Clean, as it were, had left the building. All that stood between myself and victory over these sweet nuggets was my trusty stick blender, which I plugged in, and wielded without mercy.

This did the job. Corn juice was finally mingling with the raw sugar, and something resembling a syrup was forming, finally. The downside was this mixture was far more reminiscent of sugar creamed corn than that of a corn based syrup. Disappointing? Perhaps, but I had come this far, there was no turning back now. The only addition left at this stage was the coconut. Puzzled, Sarah and I brainstormed as to how to get the damned thing open.

"I think you should tap it all the way around with a cleaver," she said.

I had read advice very close to this on the internet, and as we all know, the internet has never steered anyone wrong. Let's do it, I thought.

Five frustrating minutes later, I had tapped out an interesting rhythm, yet accomplished little else. Sarah then suggested I use the sharp end of the cleaver. I thought this was a good idea, as maybe the first round was just to soften this tough little bastard up a little bit. When facing the business end of a cleaver, it may not be such a rough customer. As woody shards flew up around us, I could see Sarah's expression which conveyed something about how much vacuuming was going to happen after this, but she politely didn't say anything about it. Eventually, we had a mild success! We'd managed to gouge a hole just big enough to drain all of the water out. The seam, however, was impervious to my he-man styled pulling. Feeling thoroughly mocked, I had had just about enough out of this ****ing tropical delicacy.

"Sarah, please hand me a Ziploc bag," I said slowly, and calmly. Despite my icy demeanor, which I am sure she found off-putting, she handed me a gallon sized bag, which I shoved the slightly busted coconut into, doing my best to seal the thing up despite its odd shape. I opened the door and went out on our patio.

Sarah is quite used to me doing weird things. She is also used to me doing dumb things, and I am not quite sure where the following actions would fall in a Venn diagram of the two, but I was a desperate man, and these were desperate times. I was getting this bloody coconut open one way or another.

Encased in its snug plastic cocoon, I stood on the concrete and hurled the coconut into it with all my might. [For the readers at home, that's not really saying much...Kern throws like an uncoordinated child.-Ed.] Rather than bursting open in a triumphant explosion of tropical deliciousness, it languidly rolled into the dirt by our tomato plants.

"Dammit!"

I picked it up and heaved it again. Nothing. At this point, I channeled the apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and simply picked up the coconut and began smashing it over and over against a big rock formation in our garden. Tools, shmools. Upon the twentieth or thirtieth try, it finally split open. I let out a huge cheer, which I have a feeling scared both our upstairs neighbors and random passersby. That's ok. I had finally triumphed. Over an inanimate object. Needless to say, it was a bittersweet victory.

With all of the excitement over, we went back inside where I scraped out what bit of the coconut meat I needed, and threw it in with the mash. I gave it a stir, clamped down the lid, and threw it in the fridge for several hours. To be honest, I was quite happy not to have to look at the damn thing for a while.

Of course, I eventually had to, if only to put in the vinegar. I thought for the tropical touch, I would go with the same coconut vinegar that had given a funky, yet very interesting taste to the pineapple/habanero shrub, "Don Whoa." After adding it, and sending it back to its refrigerated incarceration, I waited for the bottling.

More than any of the previous shrubs, "East By Midwest" was really messy to bottle. The thick sludge of sugary corn kept clogging my filters, which I had to keep removing and washing out. Eventually, it was done. At this stage, the vinegar was still very, very strong. I had faith, however, as I was equally worried about the "Don Whoa" at the bottling stage, which ended up being fantastic.

When all was said and done, was the melding of Thailand and Iowa worth the trip?

Resoundingly, and sadly, no. Not even close. Nuh uh. Nope.

While I can't say "East By Midwest" is undrinkable, or gross, it's not something people would find themselves reaching for on a hot summer day. I think it does taste like a dessert of sorts, which is nice, but the worst part is that one can't really taste the delicious and delicate flavors of either the sweet corn or the coconut. It sure as hell does not capture the light freshness I had envisioned in the salad that it is based upon. It's just...sweet and really funky. The coconut vinegar was a particularly bad call here, as its overwhelming flavor covers up the main stars even more. It's just too much all the way around.

Ultimately, this is the price of doing an experiment. Without daring to dream about what something might taste like, we'd all be eating vanilla everything. While ultimately I chalk this one up to being a interesting novelty, I do not really suggest anyone drink it in earnest. This isn't to say that I would give up on the idea of a sweet corn shrub entirely. I may try again, but next time with much less sugar, a milder vinegar, and perhaps more corn. In my haste to make this taste like a specific dish, I forgot the importance of letting the flavors of the star ingredients be themselves.

For those curious about the title of this shrub, it was meant to be a play on the movie "North by Northwest", indicating both the flavors of Thailand mixed with a traditionally Iowa based ingredient. I do hope you all appreciate the fact that I went with this instead of the original title, "Thai-owa," which still makes me cringe a little bit. So at least there's that...

Shrub #9: "Kim"

Fruit: Watermelon
Sugar: White Sugar
Vinegar: White wine vinegar
Additions: Aleppo pepper, torn mint leaves

As August began, so did the realization that summer as we knew it would soon be over here in the Pacific Northwest. As much as I love the imminent arrival of beautiful autumnal weather, I knew that there were just some flavors I hadn't captured that wouldn't feel quite the same after we begin donning our jackets and scarves.

One of those flavors I find most associated with summer, is watermelon. To be perfectly honest, this is one fruit I am really not a fan of. It always strikes me as being quite watery and sweet without much actual flavor to speak of. Despite this, I know a lot of people who are crazy about the stuff, and I thought it would be nice to give the people what they want.

But giving the people what they want can sometimes be a tad challenging. Sarah and I bought a melon that looked as though it had been injected with some sort of anabolic steroids, and would have threatened to kick any of the other fruits' asses up and down the produce section for looking at it wrong. Due to my general disinterest in watermelon, I had lost all perspective on how big this thing actually needed to be, and to make matters worse, we had to push it down the hill our little personal grocery cart. Every twenty feet or so, the front heaviness of the cart threatened to spill all of our delicious groceries into the sidewalk, a proposition made all the more plausible due to the proliferation of cracks in the uneven sidewalk. In an odd way, it was like being in a very low stakes community theatre version of Wages of Fear. I mean, if one were to subtract the threat of nitroglycerin blowing everything to hell and subsitute bags of chicken tenders falling into the street. On second thought, nevermind.

I had a couple of thoughts coming into this shrub. My first thought was just making a pure watermelon shrub, unadorned with spices or herbs. It seems fairly rare that I do a shrub that is just fruit, and thought it might be nice to just let the watermelon be itself. My second thought was that this seemed like a pretty boring idea, and I would hate to be stuck with a bunch of watermelon shrub, which is not a favorite flavor of mine in the first place. Apologies to thought one, but thought two just wrecked your ass.

The concept for this shrub came to me pretty easily, As it was summer, why not pattern this after some kind of watermelon salad? Obviously items such as cheese were out, but the brightness of mint might be nice. This seemed like a reasonable solution, but then as I was looking at the website for World Spice Merchants, I happened to see a suggestion regarding the Turkish flake pepper, aleppo.

"It's a winner in watermelon salad with a squeeze of lime."

I took that as a sign. Well, mostly, as it turned out I had plenty of aleppo pepper, but my limes had just turned bad. One can't win them all, but I figured that the aleppo would be bringing most of the verve to the party, anyhow.

The next big decisions were about the vinegar and and the sugar. Watermelon has such a delicate flavor to begin with, anything too deep or rich would overpower it easily. Therefore, white sugar and white wine vinegar were really the only choices in my mind. I spanked and tore the mint leaves, tossed in some aleppo along with the fruit and sugar, and muddled away. After the syrup began forming, I buckled up the works and tossed it in the fridge for five hours. At the five hour mark I popped open the jar and added the vinegar. Back it went for a week.

When the week was up, I went to do my normal bottling, and I noticed something quite interesting. I guess I didn't really think of how much of a watermelon is really liquid, and noticed that the yield was twice what I had initially calculated for, so I ended up with almost 35 oz of watermelon shrub. Yikes.

So despite my dislike of watermelon, how did it fare in shrub form?

The answer is, not too bad. As any good shrub does, it tastes, for better or worse, exactly like the fruit it is made from. For me, that obviously was not a plus, but it would be a watermelon lover's dream. The mint was there, though almost imperceptibly, and almost slightly bitter. I'm not quite sure what happened, but I am guessing it would have done better if added closer to finishing. I think sometimes overagitating mint can cause the oils to get a little harsh, and since one is supposed to frequently shake a shrub to make sure everything is integrating properly, this seems like a reasonable conclusion. The aleppo was indeed a nice touch, imbuing the mixture with a bright, subtle heat that compliments the watermelon's natural flavors without being overly hot like some other peppers might. My only issue is that I might have been a touch heavy handed with the seasoning, and though it wasn't overly hot, the delicate watermelon was being pushed out of the way a little bit. Next time, I would use a bit less than I think is actually necessary.

In addition to drinking it with sparkling water, several people who tried this suggested that this would possibly be a great base for a salad dressing, especially to reinforce the flavors of  a fruit salad. As I am not a salad guy, I will take their word for it.

For those curious as to how this week's shrub got its name, it kind of requires a couple of leaps of logic. Watermelon is a perennial favorite at summer picnics, which made me think of the 1955 film "Picnic" with William Holden and leading lady, Kim Novak. And from Kim Novak, I titled the shrub "Kim."








While this week's choice of fruit wouldn't be at the top of my list, I did gain more of an appreciation for an ingredient I have despised since childhood. If you are a watermelon fan, however, "Kim" is a rather good way to hold onto the warmth of those fleeting days of our abbreviated summer.

Shrub #8: "Françoise"

Fruit: Strawberries, hulled and quartered
Sugar: White sugar
Vinegar: Balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar
Additions: Long pepper

 

 "Françoise": Strawberry, long pepper, white sugar

With berries fresh on my mind and still at the Pike Place Market, I decided to grab some strawberries right after buying the blackberries. As I hadn't really gotten very deeply into this shrub project during June, I ended up missing some of the really killer stuff that usually comes out at the top of the season. This gives me an excellent incentive to try to somehow get my hands on some Shuksans next year, but for now these were definitely more than adequate.

While I had been having a lot of fun combining multiple herbs and spices with my fruit in "Black Moses", I thought a return to simplicity would be nice. I wanted to pick out one spice that would compliment, but not overtake the strawberry flavor which I was very anxious to highlight in this shrub. In this instance, I chose long pepper. For those of you who have never seen or heard of long pepper, it's quite a treat. I first read about it in the The Spice Lover's Guide to Herbs and Spices by Tony Hill. Incidentally, Mr. Hill owns the renowned herb, spice, and tea emporium World Spice Merchant here in Seattle. A cousin of sorts to the domesticated black peppercorn we all know and love, long peppers are squat, rock hard little spices that resemble little brown corn cobs, and really have more in common with another peppery wonder, Grains of Paradise. While not the most attractive spice, long peppers hide a wealth of personality once you grind, crush, or break them. While it is hard to pinpoint the taste exactly, it has a subtle floral aroma, with hints of cardamom and ginger. It is as if the black peppercorn got dressed to the nines for an evening out on the town and really went all out. In short, long pepper is like peppercorn with charm to spare.

Generally, shrubs with soft berries(blackberries, raspberries, etc,) are really pretty simple to get going. They don't have a lot of fight in them and when you even brandish a wooden spoon they almost cry uncle as quickly as a terrorized schoolboy under the thumb of Scott Farkas. Other berries, specifically strawberries, in this instance, are far more work. Luckily, Sarah was good enough to help me hull and quarter 19 ounces of strawberries, which not only made the time go by faster, but made it much more enjoyable.

Strawberry Strata

Once these were finished, it was time to decide what type of sugar to use, and how much. I picked white sugar, because it's sweet without having a lot of other depth of flavor. I know, it probably strikes some of you as counter intuitive to use an ingredient with less depth of flavor. Isn't more flavor the point, you may be asking? Not always. There are shrubs where I am trying to create a deep, blended flavor profile, and the increased character and richness of turbinado sugar or brown sugar assist with that, but in shrubs where you are really trying to highlight the main ingredient, mostly fruit, the white sugar sweetens without having other flavors of the sugar to get in the way. In this shrub, I really want the beautiful, ripe taste of these strawberries to have the spotlight, so I finally decide on about 14 ounces of white sugar.

 In the meantime, I turned my attention back to the long pepper I mentioned earlier. My first instinct is to coarsely crack it in a mortar and pestle, as I don't want the pieces to get too fine, for two reasons. First, they are a pain in the ass to strain out, and secondly, there is a possibility that the finer it is, the more strongly it might show up in the final product. I want the spice to be a session player; an item invaluable to the final product, but more or less anonymous. Unfortunately, the mortar and pestle method was not yielding the results I had hoped for. The long pepper is pretty rigid and unforgiving, and despite my repeated he-man pummelling, this stuff was just not having it. No more Mr. Nice Guy, I thought, as I pulled down the grinder to show it who was boss. I pulsed it a few times until I got the coarse grind I was after, and dumped it into the strawberry/sugar mixture already waiting in the jar. I stirred it all together, trying to smash any of the strawberries I could in the process. While I managed to bruise some of them, the rest stayed relatively whole, peeking above the red sludge, as though silently taunting me. I buckled the jar, and banished them to the fridge for a five hour time out.

After retreiving them five hours later, I opened the jar and took a taste of it. So far, I was liking what I was tasting. There was only one problem. I could not taste the long pepper at all. I'm always torn with this happens because some spices just take a long time to starting giving up some flavor in that first week of sitting. If you overadjust, you could end up with a long pepper bomb that tastes vaguely of strawberries. I rolled the dice and ground another tablespoon of the long pepper and hoped like hell that this wasn't going to ruin everything. Fingers crossed.

The final decision was what vinegar to use. Given all my earlier talk about letting the fruit be the star, I would have normally gone for the white wine vinegar without question. With only a slight tang, the relatively neutral white wine vinegar is normally the best choice for turning a spotlight onto the fruit. However...

These are strawberries, and if there is one thing that everyone loves with strawberries, it's balsamic vinegar. I had to do it. The one thing I considered, though, was that the Sarah could have used a bit of cutting so it wouldn't be so syrupy. I used 3 ounces of red wine vinegar along with 16 ounces of balsamic vinegar. While that doesn't sound like a lot, I didn't want to necessarily go half and half with it. Just a nice bit of dryness to take the edge off. I shook the container a few times until I was nearly lightheaded, and decided to put it back in the refrigerator.

A week later, Sarah was helping me bottle the shrub, and she seemed a bit more excited than usual. I couldn't figure out why until I saw all those nearly whole strawberries come out into the strainer, so full of the balsamic vinegar mixture they looked like they might explode. She put a few in her mouth and smiled.

"These," she exclaimed, "are delicious."

As advertised, the fruit was great. But did all of the ingredients in "Françoise" make beautiful music together?

Oh mais, oui.

If you love strawberries, this is the shrub for you, my friends. The red wine vinegar cuts the thick, almost unctuous balsamic just enough to spare it from cloying, the strawberries were clear and bright, with just the right amount of sweetness, and the long pepper donated a little spicy, slightly floral kick to the aftertaste. All in all it was absolutely amazing. I couldn't have been more pleased. In some ways, this was kind of the strawberry alternative to "Sarah," but with more of a spicy kick. To say I enjoyed it was an understatement, and of all of the shrubs I have tried out on unsuspecting friends and co-workers, this one has received the most unsolicited praise.

At the risk of being redundant, I feel almost as thought one should be obligated by some law that doesn't currently exist(but should) to put this on some vanilla ice cream. I know, I know. Has there been a shrub yet I haven't said that about? This is true, and "try some on ice cream" is threatening to become the "Put a bird on it!" of the blog. But this time, I am practically begging you to do it. Please. I can say with 99 percent certainty, you will thank me. Other than that, I say just drink it, but I suggest doing it with water. The balsamic, despite its sweet taste, can really do a number on your stomach, especially my fellow acid reflux sufferers.

This week's shrub is named after a very cool French singer from France in the 1960's named Françoise Hardy. She began as sort of a pop star, but went on to make more complex and sensual albums like "La Question" later in her career. Her voice is every bit as sweet, yet complex as the elixir that was named for her.

This was one of my favorite shrubs to make, as I always love that little twinge of apprehension when you take a gamble on the recipe and the result is a huge, delicious payoff in the end. If you like strawberries, I urge you to hurry and make a batch before the season ends. The results are, well, très magnifique!