Sometimes things seem to assemble slowly one piece at a time, and you’re not sure if it actually was your own idea or not. Or perhaps neither. This is one of those times.
I think it started with Kevin Kos’ Rossini video: strawberry puree/syrup with a hint of basil and champagne. I happened to have all 3 ingredients left over after a party, so you know it’s the universe telling you something. But I had more than a hint of basil left, so I proceeded to add all my basil. And you know what? Great for taste, not so great for the looks. But whatever, I’m not going to include photos here anyway!
So, then I read in one of my foodpairing books that mezcal and strawberry are a really good combination. I can tell you that this is true. Next up, from a source I cannot remember, Parmesan cheese entered the equation. I’m a big cheese fan, but incorporating parmesan in a tried is a bit more work. Instead, while we’re on the Italian theme, I figured I’d take a traditional italian dish, the Caprese salad and do some substitutions with the ingredients of the Rossini. So instead of tomato we have strawberry and instead of mozzarella we have parmesan. We leave the basil and the balsamic alone, we know those go well with both the strawberry and the parmesan!
This combination has been on my mind for a while, and recently there was a good opportunity to make a whole batch for my friends. First, I’ll give you the specs for the drink, then the recipe for the snack.
The Mezcal Rossini goes like this. Batch the Strawberry-basil puree:
- 340 gr Strawberries
- 11 gr Basil
- 50 gr sugar
And simply blend this to a puree. You could use simple syrup instead of the sugar, but you don’t need to because the blending will incorporate the granulated sugar anyway. I did add some water (10 ml) and xanthan gum (0.2 gr) to help the texture, or at least that was the idea, I have no idea if this did anything.
Make sure to chill the puree and the bubbles, and simply combine the two and add a splash (max 20 ml) of mezcal. This batch made me about 400 ml of puree, which I could serve 15 glasses with (together with a single bottle of bubbles). You will need to stir a little bit to incorporate.
The snack that goes with it goes like this:
Get some high-grade grated parmesan cheese. Take about 10 grams of it, and put it in a hot, dry frying pan, spread it out in a little circle. The cheese will melt together into basically a tiny pancake. At this point, you can take it out and mold it into a shape. Careful! It’s really hot at this point. I took a tiny finger bowl, and pressed the parmesan pancake into it with the back of a spoon. The cheese will cool fairly quickly and become crispy. You know have a cute tiny crispy parmesan shell! Fill it with a basil leaf or two, a big strawberry (or a couple small ones) and add a dash of balsamic vinegar!
It turns out this type of snack is fairly common, you can easily find varying recipes online for how to make parmesan crisps, varying in method, ingredients and shapes.
I really love this snack and also the combination with the Mezcal Rossini. Because the drink and the snack share 2 ingredients the tastes blend very well together while you also get small contrasting notes of the cheese, balsamic, bubbles and mezcal.
In my experimental population, the snack was more appreciated than the drink, and in general it was a bit more of a niche combination. The mezcal is not overpowering at all, the smokiness quite subtle, but not everyone can appreciate that.
That brings us to variation (and combination) number 2 which was universally appreciated!
This was a last minute addition, because I figured not all of my audience would be equally enamoured by the previous one. I did want to stick to the theme of fruit, herb, bubbles and a snack based on the same fruit. Luckily, all the puzzle pieces were already lying in wait!
The peach is of course the source of all these variations, by being the base for the Bellini. Peach happens to pair excellently with tarragon (there’s a tarragon-peach scotch highball recipe I’ll share soon). So all we need now is a snack, and one of my favorite snacks of all time are halved peached from the oven filled with almond crumble.
Again, here’s the specs, in the same order. For the peach puree:
- 465 gr peaches (1 can of halved peaches)
- 1.5 gr of dried tarragon
- 40 gr sugar
Blend together (yielding about 480 ml), and refrigerate. Combine and stir lightly when it’s time.
For the filling of the peaches I used dutch “bitterkoekjes”, which are a somewhat tougher version of english macaroons, I believe. But what matter is that it’s somekind of almond-based cookie. Crumble the cookies up (I used about 150 gr for 17 peaches), and soak it with some Amaretto (“soak” here just means like 40 ml). There are many variations to the recipe where you add other things like egg, orange, almond chips, almond paste, etc. I’m sure they’re all good, pick your favorite. Fill your halved peaches with the soaked cookie mix (put it in the hole left by the seed). I used canned peaches, because that’s super easy. Put it in the oven for something like 15 min, it doesn’t really matter much, you just want the peaches warm and the cookies nicely brown and a little crunchy.
Super easy but also super effective combinations, both of these. As for the naming, the Mezcal Rossini is a bit uninspired, but also describes exactly what it is. The Bellini variation will however proceed under the much cooler Dragon Bellini name. Why? Because dragons of course. No, but really, this plant is named after dragons. The latin name is Artemisia Dracunculus, which possibly refer to the shape of the roots. And in Dutch and Swedish the common name for tarragon is still “dragon” (which does not actually mean dragon, that would be “draak”)! Obviously one cannot pass on this name. Dragon Bellini.