Just in time for Memorial Day, an original knock-yo-socks off punch. This combo has been percolating in my brain for some time now — I think I had my first cucumber drink at Little Branch in December 2006. Since then, I’ve seen cucumber showing up in more and more drinks, but still not nearly enough for my liking. For me, cucumber juice is the perfect mixer (at least when it comes to gin, but aren’t you drinking your bourbon on the rocks anyway?). It cuts the alcohol, as a mixer is supposed to do, but in a complementary, rather than cloying, way. It’s a hint of crispness that really nicely sets off the slight herbiness of the gin. And it turns your drink a magnificent green!

If I were just making cocktails for a few friends, I would peel and slice a cucumber, muddle it with a little fresh lime juice and some sugar (and maybe some basil?!) and then stir the whole thing up with gin (resembling something like a Gordon’s Cup). Next time (and there will be a next time — I have cucumber juice leftover). This time, I was making drinks for a crowd, which meant punch, which meant I quickly realized that a bowlful of gin with a little cucumber juice was not such a good idea. Enter limeade, my next favorite mixer (a good one for vodka, too). Cheap, dilute, sweet, tangy. Great.

The ingredients here are of the make-your-life-easier variety: MinuteMaid limeade, presqueezed lime juice. With one notable exception: the cucumber juice itself. But until supermarkets catch up to mixologists, we at-home mixologists are just going to have to listen to some This American Life, and peel and food process and strain our own cucumbers. Try to do it the night before to avoid undue stress, and it’s not so bad.

From my cocktail glass (mason jar) to yours….(now might be a good time to mention that the party liked this drink so much they named it “the Claire.” aw, shucks.)

Cucumber-Lime-Gin Punch (“the Claire”)

Ingredients

- gin (I used Booth’s)

- limeade (I used MinuteMaid Light)

- lime juice (I used the presqueezed kind that comes in the lime-shaped bottle, but you can squeeze your own if you’re a purist/masochist)

- sugar

- cucumbers*

Proportions for one bowl of punch are roughly:

.75L gin + 1 carton MinuteMaid limeade + 1 bottle lime juice + 1/2 cup to 1 cup sugar (to taste) + juice from 5 cucumbers. Add ice to punch bowl and to glasses (this baby is strong).

* To make cucumber juice:

1. Peel cucumbers.

2. Slice cucumbers.

3. Put as many slices of cucumber as you can fit in your food processor (I fit about 2 cucumbers’ worth). Process until the pulp is whizzing around freely (about 2 minutes).

4. Pour pureed cucumber into a strainer set over a large bowl. Stir to force liquid through. Ta-da.

N.B. You can save the cucumber pulp and mix it with yogurt for a very saucy kind of raita.

I was raving just last week about my new-found love of citrus . Last week it was lemons, this week it’s limes.

Specifically, lime juice and jalapenos made into a dressing for this awesome salad. It’s sharp and spicy and piquant enough to cut through the winter malaise from which I, for one, am definitely suffering.

So I thought I understood the difference between yams and sweet potatoes. Evidently I did not. After some research, here is what I am pretty certain is the case:

Yams are a starchy tuber eaten in many different cultures in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. They are difficult to find in the United States and chances are that vegetables you encounter called yams are actually a variety of sweet potato.

Sweet potatoes are a starchy tuber as well. They come in a huge number of varieties that can be orange or white. Color cannot be used to distinguish sweet potatoes from yams. In the US, the softer orange sweet potatoes have been called yams to distinguish them from starchier white varieties, but they are all sweet potatoes.

I share this information with you, because I was totally confounded when I bought vegetables labeled “sweet potatoes” and found they had white flesh once I peeled them. But I forged ahead, and I can now tell you that the white sweet potatoes are just as delicious as the orange ones. Yams be damned.

I was serving a crowd, so I doubled the recipe. I also made one small and one huge change. First, I skipped the cilantro, because while I am a cilantro lover I ate a lot of it with my CSA and also because it has this funny tendency to make everything you add it to taste primarily like cilantro.

Second, I cut the amount of olive oil WAY down. The recipe as written calls for 2 tablespoons for roasting and another six (!) for the dressing. When doubling the recipe, I probably used 3-4 tablespoons for roasting, but only about two in the dressing instead of the recommended twelve (!?!?!), which I think would have made this more of a soup.

Roasted Sweet Potato and Black Bean Salad with Chili-Lime Dressing
from the New York Times

4 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large onion, preferably red, chopped
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (ed. – more likely, less)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 tablespoons minced fresh hot chili, like jalapeño
1 clove garlic, peeled
Juice of 2 limes
2 cups cooked black beans, drained (canned are fine)
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro.

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put sweet potatoes and onions on a large baking sheet, drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil, toss to coat and spread out in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, turning occasionally, until potatoes begin to brown on corners and are just tender inside, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven; keep on pan until ready to mix with dressing.

2. Put chilies in a blender or mini food processor along with garlic, lime juice, remaining olive oil (ed. – probably less) and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Process until blended.

3. Put warm vegetables in a large bowl with beans and bell pepper; toss with dressing and cilantro. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Serve warm or at room temperature, or refrigerate for up to a day.

Yield: 4 servings.

Tacos in Winter: Suck On That, Alice Waters

(A Note on the Seasonal Appropriateness of Today’s Recipe)

Back when I was first starting to write for Food Junta, Claire politely talked me out of some beef stew recipe on a summer day when the mercury was edging up towards 100 on both coasts. Now, in a similar example of climatic cluelessness, here I am with a recipe that evokes the sun-bleached salt-flats of Baja, and that should roll off the WordPress during the coldest, darkest, wettest, and generally miserablest week of the winter. Brilliant. What’s the secret to comedy, folks? Never mind, I’ll get to that later.* Whatever, I threw some cabbage on top at the end, that shit’s in season, right? Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a little culinary escapism: a plate of shrimp tacos just might transport you to brighter, warmer climes. And considering the massive amount of flames involved in this particular high-proof recipe, I just might mean that literally.

A party last weekend has left my apartment stocked with a veritable frat-president’s-ransom in cheap booze. I’m not complaining, mind you, but I’m now faced with an awful lot of bottles in my liquor cabinet which I don’t really see myself tossing back outside of a party situation. So while “Have Another Party” is the obvious Stage 1 in my apartment’s Long Term Strategic Booze Reduction Plan (the LTS-BRP for you policy wonks), the equally important Stage 2 is to figure out how to cook with the damn stuff.

I’ve pretty much given up hope on the Jagermeister, and Natties Ice and Light might still be useful for oh, I don’t know, boiling pasta? Washing dishes? But it was Jose Cuervo first who stood out from the pack as a promising culinary candidate. I know what you’re thinking: Cooking with tequila? Holy Malcolm Lowry, Batman! Are you mad? Tequila may rank high on lists of Least Popular Things to Drink on May 6^th, or Reasons I’m Buying Limes at the Supermarket, but it hardly seems like something you would want to keep near a stove. Yet even the most rudimentary airport-layover-margarita-factory teaches us that tequila and lime go together like Gallagher and watermelons. So then shouldn’t tequila work with any recipe involving lime? Is this an arbitrary leap of logic? Probably! But who cares? I threw caution to the wind this week, and the result is one more empty bottle and a plate of tequila-shrimp tacos.

Before the fireworks start you will need the following:

1 ½ lb. shrimp

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp lime juice

½ tsp cayenne pepper

½ tsp chili powder

2 Tbsp butter

½ cup tequila

1 green onion, sliced

¾ cup sour cream – If you can find it, use Mexican crema instead; it is neither as sour and nor as thick as good ol’ ‘Merican sour cream, but is more like crème fraiche.

Matches

Fire extinguisher

Emergency contact information

Sliced avocado

Shredded green cabbage

1 dozen corn tortillas

Green tomatillo salsa – Frontera Grill is a great brand, and my main man Barack Obama totally has my back on this one.

1) Peel the raw shrimp and toss in a bowl with lime juice, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and chili pepper.

2) Melt butter in a 12” skillet, then add shrimp and cook at med-high for 3-5 minutes.

3) When all of the shrimp have turned pink turn the heat down to low and then, only then, pour in tequila. Now here comes the fun part:

4) Turn the heat back up to medium-high, strike a match and carefully lower it into the pan at the edge until your dinner ignites. If there are innocent bystanders present you’ll want them to stand clear, and you’ll also want to hit the lights so you can blow their effing minds with the awesome spectacle in your frying pan. Shake your pan over the burner until all the alcohol ignites and the flames die out, and keep in mind that this may take a couple minutes because half a cup is just under three shots of liquor if I’m counting right. Once the fire dies down and the National Guard has been recalled, keep simmering for a couple of minutes to let the sauce thicken.

4) Remove from heat, add ¾ cup sour cream (or crema) and stir until it is mixed in and the sauce is an appropriately shrimp-like shade of pink.

5) Pour into a bowl, top with sliced green onion, and figure out how to serve.

This is the point in the recipe where I looked down and realized that you really do end up with a lot of sauce, and this could be great over rice. But if, like me, you have your heart set on tacos, I would suggest proceeding thusly:

Nuke the tortillas (heating tortillas being one of the few things a microwave does well), and then fill one with 3-4 shrimp. Top the shrimp with salsa, a few strips of thinly sliced green cabbage, maybe a squeeze of lime, maybe another spoonful of your creamy shrimp tequila sauce, and then tell your friends once again to stand back: forget the fire, after so much painstaking assembly the most dangerous place in America for someone to be standing will be between you and your taco.

* Sorry, what? Oh right uh… TIMING! HA! Wait I totally blew that one, let me start over again…