Friday, April 29, 2011

sbagliato grosso

1 Strawberry (hulled)
1 1/2 oz Cognac (Martell VS)
1 oz Campari
1 oz Sweet Vermouth (Vya)
1/2 oz Pastis (Henri Bardouin)
2 dash Angostura Bitters

Place strawberry in a rocks glass and gently press to crush and extract juice (do not muddle). Add rest of ingredients and ice, stir, and garnish with a lemon and an orange twist.

On Wednesday, to utilize the strawberries I purchased to garnish the Manischewitz Cobbler, I made the Sbagliato Grosso from Left Coast Libations. I had been holding off on that recipe until I had strawberries in house, and the Cobbler certainly gave a good excuse to buy some. The cocktail was created by Damian Windsor of the Roger Room in Los Angeles, and the best I could translate the drink's name was "fat blunder." A similarly bungled Negroni was written up in the New York Times yesterday under the name Negroni Sbagliato; that one uses sparkling wine and orange slices instead of the Cognac, strawberry, and bitters here.
Once assembled, the dual citrus twists contributed greatly to the drink's aroma. The sip contained fruit notes from the sweet vermouth and the crushed strawberry, while the swallow possessed the herbal complexity of the Campari and pastis. Indeed, those two liqueurs did a good job of balancing each other so that neither one took over the drink's flavor.

3 comments:

Rowen said...

This looks swell. I really gotta play with strawberries in drinks more.

frederic said...

There'll be 2 more strawberry recipes up in the next week or so and there are a few other strawberry recipes on here -- hope that helps to make the most out of a purchase of a pint of berries before they go bad.

Alternatively, you could use the rest of the berries to make tequila por mi amante (Charles Baker describes that infusion and can be found on the web) or make a syrup.

It seems that if you can't get locally ripened fruit, the fruit that looks overly ripe and you'd probably skip over actually makes for some rather flavorful and aromatic drinks. Just don't garnish with it.

Paul said...

This drink had a real interesting flavor profile where a lot of levels were co-acting with each other. The pastis was really noticeable and its herbiness came through loun and clear but the Campari's bitterness was accentuated in a new way. It's interesting how different spirits can dance so well together when brought together. It's like you have got used to waltz and all of a sudden you get to experience foxtrot. You make the everyday life get a silver-lining through your blog Frederic and for that I will be always thankful.