Holiday Madness

Well, holiday madness is finally here and luckily it's almost over for us at Rodney's. We've been covered up with Christmas parties for weeks now and luckily we will be off to spend time with our families on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and New Year's Day! I've had very good success with my fall cocktail menu that I was working on from my last post. The B(V)LT was not as big of a hit as I expected and the Pickled Caesar turned out to be the star of the show! Let me tell you this drink was a happy accident. When I was creating the menu I really wanted to do something with pickle brine. I had been talking to one of my regulars for the summer from Wellington, Florida and she had been to Canada and had what the Canadians drink as their version of a Bloody Mary: a Caesar (vodka with celery salt on the rim and Clamato.) I didn't want to have too many Bloody Mary-type cocktails on my menu so I thought I'd better combine the two ideas to make one drink. Also I wanted to use a different type of hot sauce since I already used Tabasco in my Dirty Mary martini. So there's the background and here's the result: I mix Tito's vodka with Clamato, Worcestershire, Sriracha and dill pickle brine with a celery salt rim to make the Pickled Caesar, my new favorite drink (and everyone else's too!)

On another note, for the holiday season I did the 12 Cocktails of Christmas once again, but for the third year in a row I changed all the recipes! I think it's safe to say that this year all of them have been much more popular than they have been the two years prior. Chef Rodney says it's because I'm a better mixologist now than I was before, that I keep getting better each year. Not to brag, but I think so too!