Jessica B. Harris - Rum Drinks: 50 Caribbean Cocktails, From Cuba Libre to Rum Daisy

Rum Drinks

50 Caribbean Cocktails, from Cuba Libre to Rum Daisy

by Jessica B. Harris

photographs by Tara Donne

Text copyright 2009 by Jessica B. Harris.

Photographs copyright 2009 by Tara Donne.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-3274-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available under:

ISBN 978-0-8118-6699-6

Designed by Brooke Johnson

Prop styling by Lili Diallo

Food styling by Liza Jernow

Typesetting by Janis Reed

The photographer wishes to thank Andrew Camp.

Vintage photographs and ephemera from the collection of Jessica B. Harris.

The consumption of raw eggs is not recommended for those who have compromised immune systems.

Chronicle Books LLC

680 Second Street

San Francisco, California 94107

www.chroniclebooks.com

dedication

I pour three splashes of clairin on the ground and dedicate this book to the ancestors, to my parents, and to the members of my personal bar association with whom Ive sampled more than one taste of the history in a glass that is rum.

ACHE

Papa Docs tomb and the eternal flame was flickering in the torrid wind the first time I tasted rum. Id arrived in Port au Prince, Haiti, the previous evening and been whisked off to that gingerbread hotel, the legendary Oloffson, celebrated by Graham Greene in The Comedians . The hotel was every writers dreamwith the flotsam and jetsam of the island circulating at cocktail time. Modern-day pirates rubbed shoulders with pale-skinned newcomers, their sharp eyes evaluating the worth of each summer cotton frock and gold-braceleted arm and calculating schemes and scams. Paint-daubed artists sought solace in the bottom of glasses, weary island-exiled writers fled from the blank page, socialites fought ennui, and white linensuited Aubelin Jolicoeur, the model for Greenes character Petitpierre, hovered: a celebrity in search of an audience. The sophistication was palpable.

With the hindsight of three decades, it seems somehow fitting that there, at the mahogany bar in the main room under the whirling ceiling fans, I had my first taste of Rhum Barbancourtthe first rum that I sipped in the Caribbean. Served in a snifter, the beverage was the color of good Georgian amber and it flickered in the glass. The taste, a combination of caramel and molasses, was deceptively light and the intense aroma of the alcohol would soon reveal that this was a drink to savor and sip.

No matter where you had your first Caribbean cocktail, whether it came in a coconut freshly lopped off the tree or in a frosted glass of etched Waterford, the sweet molasses flavor of rum was more than likely an ingredient. The memory may have faded, but the taste of rum will forever conjure up warm breezes, fluttering palm fronds, lilting bawdy calypsos, haunting bigines , deep turquoise sea, and romance.

I had my first Caribbean cocktail back in the days when every islands airport welcome came complete with a plastic cup of something pinkish-orange, rum-infused, and wonderful enough to make even the most crotchety tourist forget the travails of baggage claim and hotel check-in. The concoction was never truly memorablebut it was always strongand it signaled ones arrival into a universe of cocktails that were and are legendary.

Since those halcyon days, I have traveled the Caribbean region through and through. Ive sampled superb pia coladas at their alleged birthplace in Viejo San Juan in Puerto Rico, and savored how they can truly be transformed into the sublime when prepared from freshly made coconut cream, chopped fresh pineapple, and aged rum and served in a coconut shell on a pristine beach. Ive become an honorary member of more than one of the regions bar associations and indulged in my share and more of the drink called Corn and Oil (rum and falernum ) with locals at Letzies in Christ Church, Barbados, the island where rum began its Caribbean journey. Ive visited Hemingways Cuban spots and had a daiquiri or two at La Floridita and mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio way before they turned up in pallid versions on almost every bar menu, back when travel to Cuba was legal for a few brief minutes under President Carter. Ive stood on the lawn of Rose Hall in the evening amidst ghosts from the Jamaicas plantation past while sipping a version of rum punch that harked back to those days. I savor the rhum agricole of the French islands since I learned to correctly dose out my white rum, sugar, and lime juice to make a ti punch and to create my own passion fruitflavored rhum arrangs .

Ive visited rum factories too numerous to note and been stuck behind cane trucks bringing the harvest home. Ive learned to recognize the parallel row of palm trees that usually signal the placement of a former sugar estate, and know the smell of burning bagasse (cane waste). Ive watched the cane growing cycle of tiny green shoots peeking from the rich chocolaty soil to the feathery flowers that signal the approach of harvest. Ive judged bartending competitions and savored snifters from the Bahamas to Venezuela and Ive even seen the green flash... twice! I remain intoxicated not only by the beverage, but by the history that is contained in each amber glassful.

Before there was rum there was sugar. Man has long evidenced a yearning for the sweet. This taste has been satisfied by sweeteners ranging from the maple syrup of the northeastern United States to the bees honey around the world. None, though, have attained the international primacy of cane sugar and its by-product, rum. Sugar from cane is so much a part of our lives now that we take it for granted. One has only to go into the nearest deli or Starbucks to note the abandon with which we use the little white and brown packets, and the prices in the supermarket attest to the fact that this commodity is no longer considered scarce. We consume a staggering 66 to 88 pounds of sugars and syrups per capita in the United States and are still considered slackers when compared to the upward of 100 pounds that are the norm in countries like Australia, Brazil, and Fiji, and the 120 pounds-plus currently ingested in Cuba. (Statisticians dont tell whether these figures include rum drinking; if so, the figures become a bit more understandable.)

Sugar gets taken for granted, but it is very much a part of who we are in the Americas, and its presence explains why some of us are here at all. Rum is a major New World part of the story of sugar, a story that is strung across hemispheres and borders. The powdery white substance was once as rare and as controlled as others like cocaine and heroin are today and its evolution and history equal the most circuitous of drug routes. Its by-productrumlubricates every aspect of our history.