Eat Arkansas

I could do without the mint but the sauce sounds wonderful otherwise.

So when are you gonna invite me to dinner already!?!

Joel's pics always look great.

We grilled this weekend. I got some orange roughy on "sale"--if $7/lb is a good deal, anyway... grilled it with just a little salt and pepper along with some asparagus and sweet corn.

I couldnt think of a good wine to pair it with (I've heard that there's nothing that goes with asparagus and I don't like whites anyhow) so I made some great lemon drop martinis:

about a jigger of fresh lemon juice

jigger of good vodka

about a tbsp on powdered sugar

Shake, strain, serve. Repeat.

Bop was right, the mint did not work as well as I would have liked. Maybe more mint + lemon instead of orange would have worked. For now, I will just cycle other herbage into the vierges I make.

When I make a lemondrop Martini, I use:
1 1/2 ounces vodka
1 ounce (homemade) lemoncello
Shake, strain, up.

I don't like working with powdered sugar in my drinks, so I will use simple syrup. Even when working with mojitos or old fashioneds, I prefer to blend the liquids. In fact, I have about 1L in the fridge right now. The only exception is when there is no other way to muddle something save with the sugar as the abrasive element.

As for wines, try a nice carmenere. Red with enough body and flavor to be interesting but it does not stick around on your palate or be so sharp you lose everything else.

A chilled beaujolais would do nicely I bet.

Or perhaps a crisp Sauvignon Blanc would work well, too. Clean whites obivously work beautifully with white fish.

Joel- I love love love the fresh sauce you prepared for the tilapia. Haven't tried it yet, but it's totally my style. You just can't go wrong with fresh, raw sauces with shitloads of herbs. So delicious and organic. Makes me salivate a little bit just looking at that picture right now.

And I'm not the cocktail connoisseur that you are, but I will have to agree that powdered sugar is totally blah for me on the off-occasion that I have a "proper" drink.

I know the best reason to use sugar crystals is to encourage the breakdown of the mint for a julep or mojito or the citrus pieces in an old fashioned, but when we not there I am a fan of science!

Because of how hard it is to integrate the sugar into the alcohol, I like premixing it as simple syrup. Easy, fast, convenient. Besides, you then have your basic sugar water to play with for so many other things too!