July 4th Holiday

Given how busy we have both been at work lately, we weren't planning to hold our usual all-day grill-fest for this year's 4th of July. The weather was looking pretty sketchy as well -- we've had a record shitty June here in Boston with low temperatures and tons of rain -- but at the last minute we hatched a plan with our good friends Etienne and Angelique to have a small, relaxing cookout. To our great delight, the weather cooperated and it turned out to be a really nice day.


We started off with a large pitcher of mojitos. We have been enjoying this particular libation with increasing frequency as the need to control the mint in the garden becomes more and more pressing. A simple recipe -- fresh lime juice, a ton of crushed (muddled) mint leaves, Bacardi white rum, seltzer and simple syrup made from unrefined cane sugar (recipe below). Along with requisite fresh guacamole and salsa, it made a great start to the afternoon.


Etienne, Angelique, Amanda and I enjoy ourselves over mojitos in the lush summertime green of the courtyard and garden.


As usual, Lily joined in the fun...


Etienne did a bang-up job preparing the pork loin skewers for the grill. His own secret BBQ sauce recipe includes smoked chipotles and cayenne pepper -- how did he get inside my head? Melissa prepared an avocado, tomato and romaine salad with balsamic vinegar, some beautiful sweet corn and her signature grilled eggplant. As usual, we had more food than we needed, but better too much than not enough, no? The same goes for wine, so we had shiraz and merlot (both of the Yellowtail variety), a Chilean cab sauv (2008 Cono Sur), and some chardonnay (2006 Santa Barbara Landing, a TJ's special from CA) open for the main course -- a great lineup of inexpensive cookout wines.


Unbeknownst to me, Melissa had put together a nice selection of cheeses for dessert, and the cheese board was so beautiful that we all had to take a moment to admire it before we dove in. Montagnolo Blue from New Jersey, a nice French brie, grana padano and tallegio from Italy, fresh sliced peaches, fig jam and fresh-picked basil and thyme from the garden. In lieu of baking our own bread (seriously, who has the time for that?), we have been buying a lot of Take-and-Bake lately -- 10 to 15 minutes in the oven and you've got worm, fresh-tasting bread. The baguette is quite good.



Here's a shout out to our two newly minted citizens on their first Independence Day as official Kiwi-Americans. Congratulations Melissa and Amanda!



Recipe for Mojitos

60 gms of raw sugar
~1/4 cup of water
450 mls of freshly squeezed limes (~12 limes)
~1 cup of mint leaves

450 mls of white rum
450 mls of soda water
2 fresh sprigs of mint for the pitcher
2 or 3 fresh mint leaves for each of the glasses
Ice

In a small saucepan heat the sugar and water until all the sugar is melted and it has become the consistency of a thick syrup (aka simple syrup). Combine the lime juice and mint leaves and simple syrup in a suitable vessel. Crush/muddle the mint leaves to release minty taste. I did this in advance and let stand in refridgerator for an hour or two before guests arrived.

To serve

Strain the lime juice mix into the pitcher and discard muddled leaves and lime pulp. To the pitcher add cold rum, soda water and stir. Add fresh spigs of mint leaves to the pitcher for garnish. Add fresh lime leaves to the sides of the glasses and fill with ice. We decided against also filling the pitcher with ice so as not to dilute the mojitos before they were poured.

The guys added a little more rum to their glasses, but the overall mix for me was just right. The mint growing in our garden is not your usual spearmint, but instead what seems to be a hardy variety of variegated ginger mint. It's nice because it survives the New England winter, and also nice is the fact that we have to drink a lot of mojitos to keep it from taking over the garden ;-)