LCBO Food & Drink Summer 2022

Meanwhile, in Cuba... Thirsty Americans flocked to Havana during Prohibi tion. There, they could choose between Daiquiris served straight up and carefully strained into a coupe or else shaken vigorously with shaved ice and tipped into a tall glass, in which the ice slowly melted. Legendary bartender Constantino (“Constante Grande”) Ribalai gua Vert offered both styles at his Bar La Florida, later renamed El Floridita, and had added a third method by 1939, using an electric mixer. The machine was not a blender; it was a milkshake machine, the kind used in American drugstores, where the mixing rod and agitator sticks down into the metal cup. The texture of the cocktails made this way delighted the bar’s most

of sweet Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur. He called the new cocktail the E. Hemingway Special. The other lifelong champion of the Daiquiri (and a seri ous fan of Hemingway’s writing) was President John F. Kennedy. He was known to drink them at The Army and Navy Club, where the bar had long since been christened The Daiquiri Lounge, and at the White House, where Jackie Kennedy’s recipe for the cocktail was stuck up on the kitchen wall. The First Lady knew a nifty shortcut, using two or three parts frozen limeade concentrate in lieu of ice and sugar, putting it in a shaker with two parts rum, one part fresh lime juice and a few drops of spiced Falernum syrup. Just shake until the frozen limeade melts, then pour.

GOING BANANAS

A lot of scorn has been poured onto the Banana Daiquiri, not always unfairly. But a well-made version is a treat. Blend half a frozen banana with 1 1/2 oz white rum, 3/4 oz banana liqueur, 3/4 oz fresh lime juice and 2 tsp sugar until liquid. Add 1/2 cup crushed ice and blend briefly. Pour into a Hurricane glass. Garnish with a slice of banana or lime—or a banana dolphin (see p. 90).

famous customer, Ernest Hemingway. He was a diabetic and liked his Daiquiris made without sugar but with double the rum, a drink he called the Papa Doble. Years later, Hemingway described one of Constante’s masterpieces in Islands in the Stream : “He was drinking another of the frozen daiquiris with no sugar in it and as he lifted it, heavy and the glass frost-rimmed, he looked at the clear part below the frappéd top and it reminded him of the sea. The frappéd part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallowwater over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color....” The Papa Doble is a mighty tart under taking so Constante modified it by adding a teaspoonful of grapefruit juice and another

IN AND OUT OF THE BLENDER

The electric blender was invented in 1937 and quickly caught on with bartenders as a way to crush ice and mix a frappé. This has proved a blessing and a curse. Careless blending produces a slushie not a cocktail, with none of the textural nuance of Constante’s mechanically mixed creations. The blender also opened the door to innumerable frozen “Daiquiris” using fruit other than limes. In 1971, the Playboy’s Host & Bar Book listed 10, including exotics such as soursop, guava-orange and sesame seed

liqueur—though not banana or strawberry, oddly enough. The book’s instructions for blending a frozen Daiquiri are spot on: Use 1/2 cup of already crushed ice and blend for only 10 to 15 seconds at low speed.

FOOD & DRINK SUMMER 2022 87