What are the words I dread to hear at a dinner party? “We’re out of sangria.”
You see, while you can easily whip up a cocktail, sangria is another story. Sangia is not just wine with fruit and maybe some additional liquors added. No, there is a critical time factor. Once mixed, that sangria has to chill and steep so the flavors can evolve. This week I posted a Summer Melon Sangria:
https://cookingbythebook.com//blog/recipes/summer-melon-sangria/
And, on Saturday night, that’s the one I ran out of. Our guests found it delicious, but it was soon gone. I could not just make more, because the melon flavor truly needs at least two hours in the fridge to saturate the wine.
I was not in the Boy Scouts, but I was prepared. And I think cleverly.
I had already put a half a watermelon through the blender, strained the juice, and frozen the juice in ice cube trays. Now I had to just empty out the watermelon juice cubes into my trusty blender, add some in some booze and sugar syrup and I was ready. Best of all, the consumed sangria had left chucks of watermelon in each person’s glass. Now I could just refill each glass by topping it off with this red, watermelon slush that complemented the sangria’d fruit.
This drink is sweet and complicated. There is a rush of flavors here that, combined with the coldness of the watermelon cubes, simply overwhelms the palette. It’s one of those drinks that make the imbiber simply stop and ask, “What is this?” Just augmented watermelon.
Brian’s Watermelon Slush
Yield: 4 drinks
Ingredients:
2 cups fresh watermelon chunks [about 1” on a side]
4 ounces simple syrup
4 ounces Midori melon liquor
4 ounces Svedka Clementine Vodka [or other orange flavored vodka]
1 large lemon
Red food coloring, optional
Preparation:
At least two hours before, put the watermelon chunks in a blender and process until you have watermelon juice. Strain the juice through a sieve and pour into an ice cube tray. A typical tray holds a cup of liquid and 2 cups of 1” chunks reduces to just over 1 cup. Freeze the cubes. [You can do this days ahead of time, and use the cubes as you need; just be sure to save them in air tight freezer bags].
Empty the tray of ice cubes into your blender. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. Serve immediately.
The color of this drink is a muted red, because of the relatively high proportion of intense green Midori. I don’t recommend cutting back on the Midori, but you can intensify the color with a couple of drops of red food coloring.
The original recipe I found for this beverage used half the sugar syrup, half the Midori and twice the vodka, but unflavored vodka. You, too, can experiment with the proportions. I find that equal amounts of sugar syrup, Midori, and orange-flavored vodka yield a more distinctive drink. And, just as on Saturday night, this beverage is a great passage up from a sangria beginning to a stronger flavor and different texture before leading on to dinner.
Source: Brian O’Rourke