Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Too Hot in Boston

What do you do when it's 85 degrees in Boston at 5:30pm and you've spent the whole day in a non-air conditioned library with adolescents who have yet to buy into the concept of deodorant?

You make a drink.  Preferably a frothy, cold drink.  With ice.  And gin.


So, on my way home, I stopped at the store about bought (what seems to be) the most enormous cucumber in the world, and some fake lime juice.  Please don't mock my plastic lime shaped lime juice.  It's not my fault that there are no limes to be found in a 10 mile radius of Brookline.  

I had seen Ina on the Barefoot Contessa make a cucumber yogurt dip for which she shredded the cucumber and the squeezed out all of the water so the dip wouldn't get watery (which explained so much about my past dips).  I saw this and thought, what a great thing to make a gin cocktail with!  The cucumber water, not the shredded cucumber, that is.  So I shredded about a quarter of the cucumber into some cheesecloth and squeezed out all of the liquid.  There is A LOT of liquid in cucumber.  I then mixed the cucumber juice with some of the plastic lime juice and some Hendrick's gin.  I have no idea of the proportions.  

I had tried to chop some ice using the Magic Bullet, but when it all game together, the ice had melted, but the drink was cold and frothy.  I added the tonic water at the end, using Fear Tree tonic, which, if you haven't tried, you should.  Then I put it over ice in a glass chosen to support tonight's hockey game.    It ended cool, refreshing and delicious.



Oh, and don't worry about the cucumber that I grated, I tossed that in with the salad in the bag that was all I had the energy to make for dinner.  Well, that's a lie, I also ate about a third of a rotisserie chicken.  But then I saw Paula Deen make mashed potatoes and I didn't feel so bad about myself...

1 comment:

  1. You just about had a gimlet there, with the ideal gin for it but the wrong lime juice. It's made to go with the distinct flavors of Rose's Lime Juice (v diff from fresh or ...whatever you call that green thing you have pictured there), but the cuce notes in the Hendricks and the cuke garnish are perfect. Give it a try for this week, since it'll be plenty warm :]

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