Spring is tomorrow. You know, spring. Sun. Flowers. Warmth. Scents.
I’m looking out my window now at the pre-spring landscape. Not a lot a green leaves yet. There is, actually, eight inches of snow. I can’t drive anywhere. The roads are ice. And I’m listening to an NPR program on global warming.
I would open my window and scream, “I’m mad as hell,” but it’s cold out there and I don’t want to disturb the deer. There are six of them ten feet in front of the house, standing in the snow and eating the last remnants from Suzen’s herb garden. They are lucky Suzen is not here to see this because I can assure you that when it comes to deer-eating-her-plants, Suzen is not a pacifist.
What am I to do? Fortunately, I have strawberries. It may not be spring here, but it is somewhere. This strawberry margarita is not just good but really, really wonderful. This weekend Suzen was careful to pick strawberries that were ripe and naturally sweet. Not over the hill, not meekly red. Strawberries just perfectly ready for our Vitamix.
For this beverage I used “Silver” tequila. Silver means new. It’s a waste to use more aged tequila here because that richer flavor will actually compete with the strawberries.
Brian’s Strawberry Margarita
Yield: 1 cocktail
Ingredients:
- 2 ounces Silver tequila
- 1 ounce Mandarin Napoleon Liqueur [for orange flavor]
- 2 ounces freshly squeeze lemon juice [not lime!]
- 2 ounces simple syrup
- 8 stemmed strawberries, fresh is better but thawed is okay
- 1-2 cups of ice cubes
Preparation:
Put the ingredients in your blender, liquid first and the berries last — particularly if they are still frozen. You want your blender blades able to start up unimpeded.
Process until smooth. Add the ice cubes to your taste. More ice is colder but diluted.
Garnish, if you wish, with a floating strawberry. And, you can rim that glass with sugar or salt.
Source: Brian O’Rourke