Sitting in the yard, listening to Celia Cruz, just finished off a nice stong mojito. What’s a mojito, you ask? Hold on, Wacky Girl just asked me to write something about her. She is 6 1/2. She loves to ice skate. She looks good in any color. She is blonde with blue eyes. She’s really good at forward stroking, one foot snow plow stops and forward cross-overs. We’re working on t-stops, back crossovers, back stroking and hockey stops. She’s doing her first competition in a week and a half. She did an exhibition of her routine on Saturday at the rink. We’ve skated every day since.

Okay, back to the mojito. It is a traditional Cuban cocktail. It’s a very sweet, minty refreshing thing that goes straight to your head.It’s basically sugar and rum. The sugar puts you into diabetic shock just before the rum hits you. We had them at Andina the other night before going to see a play. So I picked up a bottle of rum (I’m usually more of a vodka guy) yesterday and gave it a shot. The recipe I started with was far too limey and not sweet enough. Wacky Mommy and I got looped off of them anyway. So today, for lunch (it’s five o’clock somewhere), I perfected the recipe. Here it is:

Several sprigs of mint
2 1/2 oz. simple syrup (see below for recipe)
1 1/2 oz. light rum
1 small lime wedge
ice
soda water

Save a little sprig of mint for a garnish, and put the rest in a glass with the simple syrup. Mash it thoroughly with a spoon. Squeeze the lime in, add the rum and lots of ice. Top with a splash of soda, stir well, and garnish with a mint sprig. At Andina, they served it with a stick of sugar cane. You can make them stronger if you want, in which case I highly recommend buying some decent rum. I don’t know rum, but I know the Bacardi I bought was pretty harsh tasting compared to what they used at the restaurant.

To make simple syrup, heat equal parts water and sugar until it almost boils, stirring to make sure all the sugar disolves. Cool before using. Make lots and put it in the fridge for tomorrow, since you’ll be drinking a lot of these. I’m going to post this at Wacky Mommy, too. Here’s another recipe, perhaps more traditional.

Okay, Wacky Mommy, you’re not the only one around here that can post recipes.

Made a big pot of this for dinner tonight. My goodness, it’s good and tasty. Cholle is a North Indian garbonzo bean dish. It’s very easy to make and very tasty. The only “exotic” ingredient is garam masala. If you can’t find garam masala, don’t despair. It’s just a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and cardamon.

I used a ton of garbonzos I had cooked previously and frozen. They were in a 12 cup freezer container. With that many beans, the unit of measure for the spices was 1 tablespoon. So where it says “1part cumin”, I used 1 tablespoon. You could certainly use more, but this seemed about right to me. I used about an onion and a half, a couple tomatoes and nice chunk of fresh ginger, about the size of my thumb.

Read the rest of this entry »