Food

BEAUTIFUL LIGHTS TO EAT & DRINK NOW

Flaming Vodka Cocktails by Carla McMahon.

by Carla McMahon. Flaming Vodka Cocktails. Used with permission

The holidays are a fabulous time to light up your food and drinks. So today, we’ve got some Beautiful Lights in which to indulge and savor.

Let’s start with cocktails! (But scroll down, there are some flaming sweets below).

Flair bartending is the art of mixed drinks spectacle. And flaming cocktails is one of its most spectacular tricks.

Sometimes called St. Brendan’s Flaming Surtsey, sometimes called the Flaming Lamborghini, this cocktail is a layered affair, of Sambuca, Tia Maria, Blue Curacao, and Baileys. You actually drink it in stages! It’s sweet and it’s hot!

ST. BRENDAN’S FLAMING SURTSEY AKA FLAMING LAMBORGHINI

1 oz Kahlua or Tia Maria

1 oz Sambuca

1 oz Blue Curacao

1 oz Bailey’s Irish Cream

Pour the Sambuca and Kahlua into a cocktail glass and give the drinker a straw.
Pour the Bailey’s and blue curacao into two separate shot glasses on either side of the cocktail glass.
Set the mixture ablaze in the cocktail glass.
Start to drink through the straw.
Once the glass is almost empty, pour the Bailey’s and blue curacao into the cocktail glass and finish it up.

Alcohol is flammable, so flaming cocktails are easy to figure out. People have been enjoying them for centuries. In the mid-1800s, various punches, toddies, egg nogs, and grogs, were set ablaze for dramatic effect.

The Blue Blazer cocktail in the first bartender’s manual, Jerry Thomas' Bartenders Guide: How To Mix Drinks 1862 Reprint: A Bon Vivant's Companion.

BLUE BLAZER COCKTAIL

(Use two large silver-plated mugs, with handles.)

1 wine-glass of Scotch whisky.

1 do. Boiling water.

Put the whisky and the boiling water in one mug, ignite the liquid with fire, and while blazing mix both ingredients by pouring them four or five times from one mug to the other, as represented in the cut. If well done this will have the appearance of a continued stream of liquid fire.
Sweeten with one teaspoonful of pulverized white sugar, and serve in a small bar tumbler, with a piece of lemon peel.

GLOW IN THE DARK FLAMING SHOT

Here’s a fancy one for you. This glow-in-the-dark flaming shot is made with vodka, which makes a beautiful blue flame, absinthe, which makes a lovely flaming layer on the top, and a vitamin B tablet, which adds a yellow glow, and tonic water, which glows blue, all under UV light.

Check out the video to watch this flaming recipe in action.

Here’s some Spanish fire to wet your whistle from 101 Tapas Recipes.

QUEIMADA DE GALICIA

Warm drink made with aguardiente like a clear brandy sweetened with sugar and flambéed a specialty of Galicia.

Ingredients:

4-5 bottles Spanish Orujo (or other distilled liquor)

1 kg white sugar

A few coffee beans

A few pieces of finely sliced lemon peel

Preparation:

You need a huge flameproof earthenware casserole dish for this.
Pour in the Spanish Orujo, about two-thirds of the sugar and the lemon peel.
Stir well bring to the boil and allow to bubble for about 15 minutes.
Take a tablespoon of the reserved sugar in a large serving spoon and take up some of the hot liquor from the pot.
Set fire to the spoon holding it over the pot and when the sugar begins to bubble lower it into the casserole, which will ignite. Repeat this a couple of times. The longer this burns the more alcohol with disappear.
Ladle into small earthenware mugs to serve.

RUM OMELETTE FLAMBÉ

Many traditional recipes for food incorporate flaming alcohol as a key process or ingredient. Bananas Foster, cherries jubilee, bombe Alaska, crêpe Suzette, steak Diane, are a few old favorites.

Ever flambé an omelette? High time you tried! Check out this scrumptious Rum Omelette by Michael Savard of Factory Two Four.

GRAND MARNIER SOUFFLÉ FLAMBÉ

Another flaming delectable is the Grand Marnier Souffle Flambé.

2 eggs

2 Tbsps. sugar

2 Tbsps. Grand Marnier

Orange zest marinated in Grand Marnier overnight; optional

Utensils:

1 souffle bowl

1 small stainless steel bowl

1 large stainless steel bowl for egg whites

1 French whip

1 wooden spatula

Coat the souffle bowl with 1 ounce of butter and 1 ounce of sugar. Remove the excess and reserve.
Separate egg yolk from whites. Place each one in a different stainless steel bowl. Add the sugar to the yolks.
Mix the Grand Marnier with the orange zest.
Whip the egg whites until firm. Fold egg whites into Grand Marnier mixture. Gently pour into the souffle bowl.
Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees or until you have a nice uniform blonde color on the top.

SAUCE:

1 egg yolk

1/4 cup whipping cream

1/8 cup heavy cream

1 Tbsp. Grand Marnier

Mix gently.

FLAMBÉ:

Leave souffle on a large warm plate. Pour 1/4 cup Grand Marnier around the plate, then flame it. Serve immediately.

FLAMING CHRISTMAS PUDDING

Of course we need a flaming Christmas Pudding. We like Nigella Lawson’s recipe. It’s plump full of prunes, currants, figs, and sultanas, all soaked in rum and Pedro Ximénez sherry. It’s gorgeous when set afire.

MALLMANN ON FIRE

Finally, check out this wonderful flaming food cookbook, “Mallmann on Fire,” by Francis Mallmann and Peter Kaminsky. It’s chock full of trailblazing live-fire recipes.

“He’s the master of smoke and char.”

— Dan Barber

“I would travel a thousand miles just hoping for a taste.”

— Mario Batali

Artisan (September 23, 2014)

Read more about Beautiful Lights, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink,Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 Extraordinary Lighting Designs to Delight you Now and Beautiful New Sky Lights are Happening Right Now.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Darkness in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 12.21.2014. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

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