Monday, October 29, 2007

Madagascar Sour


This is a drink made popular in London by Townhouse and Lab Bar. The vanilla liqueur required for this drink has been hard to find in California.







Recently, San Francisco bartender and man-about-town Dominic Venegas gave me a sample of the re-re-introduced Navan Vanilla Liqueur.

Navan is cognac-based, and maintains a sturdy 40% by volume. The Navan has a natural vanilla aroma, and a strong vanilla flavor. It's a great match for this cocktail.

This cocktail works best if you make the vanilla sugar it requires, so I've included a recipe for that below.

Madagascar Sour

A London Vanilla Daquiri

1 1/2 oz Bacardi 8-year old rum
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1/3 oz lime juice
2/3 oz Navan Vanilla Liqueur



Combine all ingredients and shake hard over ice. Fine strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.


Vanilla Sugar

2 pounds granulated sugar
3 vanilla pods

Blend in food processor.
Sift out larger pieces of vanilla

The original calls for Bacardi 8, but I think there is plenty of room for experimentation in your rum choices. I'd like to try it with an ounce of light rum and an ounce of demerara rum. If you've got some ideas, let me know in the comments.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

How do you think this would fare with licor 43 in place of the Navan? I would assume they're fairly similar.

8:23 AM  
Blogger Colonel Tiki said...

It's dead easy to keep vanilla sugar. It's a perfect baking ingredient as well as cocktail helper. Need vanilla syrup? Use your vanilla sugar to make simple syrup.

All you need is another sugar container and your spend vanilla pods. When I use vanilla in a recipe, I'll dump the spent pod in my separate sugar container. It does take about 2 weeks for a fresh batch to get sufficiently scented, but you can keep adding sugar when you use some, replace pods every 6 months or so.

And let me tell you, nothing is better than cinnamon (Ceylon) and vanilla sugar on your toast in the morning. Heaven.

8:42 AM  

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