RECIPE: Horchata!

Horchata has been around for eleventy billion years (or at least a lot of centuries) so I'm not sure why I never discovered it until about four years ago. We were at Blue Tortilla in New Hope (one of my favorite Mexican restaurants) and the owner peer-pressured us into ordering a pitcher. (I was knocked up at the time, and he won me over by whispering in my ear, "Don't worry, zee milk eez pasturized." He knows how to sweet-talk a paranoid preggo!) I love rice, and milk, and cinnamon, and vanilla, so horchata pretty much blew my mind.

But for all my extensive burrito consumption, I haven't had the best luck finding places that serve horchata. So I've been relying on our yearly trips to New Hope, and the one time at Rutgers Day when one of the Latin-Am student clubs had a huge cooler of horchata and the girl running the table was like, "We have a lot left over, so take as much as you want" and I swear I heard church bells.


Anyway. I decided to make my own. And guess what? NAILED IT! On the first try, no less! O-freakin'-lé!


You'll need:

• 1/2 cup uncooked rice (anything non-instant...I used basmati)
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon (heaping)
• 1/6 cup sugar

Soak the rice in the water for about 45 minutes. You'll end up with murky rice-water like this:

Dump it into a blender and puree for about 30 seconds.

Then pour it into a pitcher, using a strainer to separate the rice water from the rice.

Throw the rice chunks away. Add the milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and sugar to the pitcher. Stir it up and serve it cold. As Backpack would say, "Om nom nom nom nom, delicioso!"

P.S. Random fun fact: In Valencia, Horchata is called orxata, as in "Or, xata!" or "Gold, darling!" :)

RECIPE: Smores Fun, Part 1: Smores Pseudo-Martini

The other night, my hubby was like, "Make me a nightcap!" Then he went back to chewing on his pipe and reading through his monocle. Or maybe not. His actual request was, "You should make me a fancy drink and then blog about it" -- always keeping the idea mill running :)

So here's what I came up with, despite that fact that my bartending experience is limited. (This is an understatement. I only have a 70% success rate working a bottle opener, let alone preparing actual drinks.) I was going to call this a "smores martini," but I think a martini has to have vermouth...? Whatever. It's a delicious smores-inspired beverage served in a martini glass.

You'll need:

• 1 oz. tasty vodka (chocolate, vanilla, marshmallow)
• 1 oz. Baileys Irish Cream
• chocolate syrup
• 1 oz. half and half
• 1 oz. milk
• graham crackers and marshmallows (for garnish) (I just like saying "for garnish")

Obliterate the graham crackers. Rim the glass with the cracker crumbs. You can use milk or icing to make it stick.

Squeeze some chocolate syrup into the bottom of the glass.

Mix the beverage-y stuff in a shaker (or in your gym water bottle, whatevs) and pour into a martini glass. Dress it up nice with some marshmallows on a skewer et voila*, you have a smores martini that's not really a martini.

Cheers!

* No idea if I used that correctly.