|| Manhattan style | Milk washed | Pistachio, Fig ||
I always like to make something special for the holidays, preferably premixable so I can bring it to every occasion I go! But the flavour idea for this has been lying in wait a couple of months, ever since I went to an Italian restaurant and had this excellent dish: salmon with a fig and pistachio and onion sauce. It was amazing. Excellent flavour combination. Of course pistachios are all the rage lately, in just about everything. Dubai chocolate this, dubai chocolate that…
Now pistachio has been one of my favorite flavours since I was a kid, so I guess this trend is right up my alley, but with fig.. that was a new one for me! So I definitely needed to make a drink with that.
I did make it difficult for myself, because the onion part of that sauce also did not leave my mind, and my sights were set. Fig, pistachio, and onion. I’ve done some pistachio or fig recipes before, with decent results that taught me this could get a bit finicky.
When I found a red onion jam/marmalade thing during my hristmas shopping the challenge was definitely on! Now, my pistachio liqueur is a cream liqueur, and this jam has all kinds of chunks in it, which was not going to make for a pretty drink, and you gotta have something pretty for christmas. Milkwashing seemed like the most straightforward way to filter the chunks and get a nice clear liquid.
So that means a sour style cocktail right? Or does it…? I wanted something heavy on the sherry/vermouth side, that wine component would really give it that hearty dish character, so… has anyone tried milkwashing a manhattan yet?
And it turned out someone has! Apparently, vermouth has just enough acidity to make the milk washing work. Perfect! Manhattan-style it is.
I start with the standard template, and I add home made Figoncello (no fancy recipe here, you can google how to make it from fresh figs) and a small amount of the pistachio liqueur (because I knew from the previous experiment it can be overpowering).
I added the cream and a teaspoon of the onion marmalade, which is quite smelly actually! Putting it in the fridge to let it curdle and settle, I did taste it before filtering, gingerly using a pipet to get some liquid without curds in it. It wasn’t quite right yet. Too aggressive. Not enough complexity nor hearty base. So I added extra Amontillado sherry. Much better.
The fully mixed concoction you can see here. Exactly as gross looking as you would expect. After filtering through a coffee filter it has a nice slightly greenish yellow color. Still a little smelly though! The taste is good but also still a little in-your-face, it would be nice if it were a little smoother…
In which case there is a very obvious solution, a little absinthe spray! Works perfectly.
The full recipe is thus as follows, for a batch of 5 servings:
- 200 ml Rye Whiskey
- 100 ml Sweet Vermouth
- 100 ml Fig liqueur
- 50 ml Amontillado sherry
- 25 ml Pistachio cream liqueur
- 50 ml cream
- 1 tsp red onion marmelade
To serve, stir on ice well for proper chill and dilution. Some drops of a barrel aged bitter like Jerry Thomas is optional but improves it a little. Serve up, spray with absinthe mist.
I really like that this actually worked. The flavours are in balance. If you know it’s fig, pistachio and onion you will recognize it, but none of them are easy to blind-taste (I tested that with friends and family). But it’s intense and silky and fits very well with a cheese platter. It’s got character and stays interesting and it’s even kinda smooth now!
When you can work a good pun into your descriptive title you know you’ve got a keeper, and hence the Pistachio ConFiguration is born. I even feel that “configuration” without is in itself is kind of a fitting descriptor!