Having a last name with an apostrophe is tough. Mine is O’Rourke. It’s that second “our” piece that cause the confusion for people. They haven’t written down the apostrophe because they don’t know what it is. I have given them one “or” and now comes “our.” All I get then is a cold stare: hey, buddy, you can’t even spell your name.
Matt O’Connor might just share my anger at the world. His brilliant new book, The Icecreamists, is an extreme tome fondly devoted to ice cream. I blogged the Cold Sweat ice cream yesterday, the one with chile, ginger and lemongrass. Now, Matt clearly has some ambivalence about ice cream: do you eat it or drink it.
You can eat that Cold Sweat or you can drink it, drink it in the Apocalypse Now.
I do rim my cocktail glasses. With salt, with sugar, with flavored salt, with flavored sugar. You put lemon or lime juice on the rim, then dip into the salt or sugar of your fancy.
In this drink, no citrus juice. No salt. No sugar. You wet the rim with Tabasco sauce, then dip it into dried red pepper flakes. Add the Cold Sweat Ice Cream and top with chili vodka.
Just one word of caution, do not drink this and smoke and the same time. Or you will be smoking, personally, permanently.
I did not adorn my beverage with the chopped chile or ginger he suggests. I was a tad concerned about the heat level at this point and 911 response time can be slow in Olive, New York. [Yes, Matt uses “chile” and “chili” interchangeably and so do I.] I was thirstily impatient and skipped lighting the cocktail as suggested below in the recipe. So my ice cream was pretty cold. I used a spoon and ate my cocktail. It was a first. It won’t be the last.
Apocalypse Chow
Yield: 1 cocktail
Ingredients:
- Tabasco sauce
- Dried red pepper flakes
- 2 scoops of Cold Sweat Ice Cream
- 1 fresh red chile, seeded and finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon finely chopped preserved ginger
- Chili oil
- 1 shot of chili vodka
Preparation:
Take 2 saucers and drizzle one with Tabasco sauce, the other in red pepper flakes. Dip the rim of a martini glass first in the Tabasco, then in the pepper flakes.
Place the ice cream in the glass. Decorate with the chopped chile and ginger, and sprinkle with the chili oil. Serve with a shot of chili vodka poured over the top and set alight.
Source: The Icecreamists by Matt O’Conner
Photo Information: Canon T21i, EFS 60MM Macro lens, F/5.6 for 1/60 second at ISO 3200 [no flash]