Monthly Archives: August 2009

Midway through our trip, we rolled through a town called Puigcerdà (pooh-chair-DAH) in the Pyrenees in northern Spain.  For dinner, we tried Restaurante Asiàtico – yup, Chinese food.  Why?  2 reasons – it’s fun to see how the cuisine compares in different countries and we needed a brief respite from tapas.  Fear not – the menu still had items with fun titles like “crispy noodles with three deliciousness”, but the real kicker came at the end of the meal.

The server brought 2 bottles of booze and 4 shot glasses to our table.  I didn’t see this happening at the other tables, so I thought she may have been trying to make up for the fact that right when we sat down she dropped the encyclopedic menu on my water glass, scattering shards of glass everywhere.  Thinking back on it now, however, it seems she may have been having a chuckle at the expense of some turisticos, because while one bottle was plum wine, the other was this:

Not one dead lizard, but two

These lizards were wide-eyed, scaly and decomposed, but for the sake of this blog, I forced myself to take a sip.  It could have been the power of suggestion, but it tasted faintly of how formaldehyde smells.  The worst part was that it didn’t taste nearly strong enough.  I was expecting a full-on throat-burner, but no such luck.  It should also be noted that the 2 shot glasses she gave to the ladies at the table had pictures of men at the bottom and when full of liquid, these men became naked.

sure beats a lousy t-shirt

My niece traveled around Europe this summer and all I got was…a thoughtful gift of limoncello. 

Most of this Italian lemon liqueur is produced in Southern Italy, but my gift was produced at the Cavalin Distillery, in the heart of the Veneto region.  The Sorrento lemon is often used, but the varieties vary by region. 

The ingredients are pretty simple – lemon rinds, alcohol, water and sugar.  It tends to be bright yellow, bordering on fluorescent.  No lemon juice is used, so it’s fairly sweet.  I came across a recipe to make it at home from Giada De Laurentiis, but the process she recommends won’t extract a lot of flavor from the rinds.  Most vodkas on the market are around 80 proof and you really need to start with alcohol in the 90s to extract all the oils.   Yes, I realize vodka is easier to come by than moonshine, but your choice of base alcohol will impact the final flavor of your product. 

I recently met Lisa Averbuch, founder of Loft Organic Liqueurs.  She liked limoncello so much, she started a whole line of liqueurs made in the same way.  She produces fun flavors like Spicy Ginger Cello, Lavender Cello and Lemongrass Cello.  She purchases her alcohol at a very high proof and through the addition of various flavoring ingredients, gets all of her liqueurs down to 25% abv. 

Her products, just like limoncello, can be used as an aperitif, as a digestive or as a fun mixer in cocktails.