The Spirits #77: The Cantaloupe Frappé

~ Cantaloupe, you do not get a plus one! ~ The Anise Phase ~ An Elephant on the Beach ~ Sunsets vs Paychecks ~

~ THE CANTALOUPE FRAPPÉ ~

Two slices of cantaloupe melon
One wedge of lemon
50ml cantaloupe rum (see below)
5-15ml golden sugar syrup (to taste)
5ml absinthe (optional… but actually not)
Crushed ice

Cut a fistful of cantaloupe pieces from the rind, saving a fetching little wedge for the garnish. Muddle with the rum, sugar, lemon and absinthe. Now, whip shake with just a couple of ice cubes until they rattle no longer. And fine-strain into a glass filled with ice (crushed ice if at all possible). Stir and heap more ice on top. Garnish with melon, mint and/or lavender, whatever you happen to have.

Some Cantaloupe Frappé notes:

1) If you are impatient, you can make an instant, paler version of this drink with basic light rum. In fact, you can make a cocktail in this mode with most soft fruits (melon, mango, papaya, kiwi, strawberry, peach, etc). You can also liquidise cantaloupe for 30 seconds or so and you will get a thickish juice. Just not honeydew, please:

2) Nevertheless: using homemade cantaloupe-infused rum adds a luscious floral-musky depth to the drink that the fruit alone will not impart. To make cantaloupe rum, you will need a cantaloupe melon (slightly overripe is best), white rum (or, vodka will do), some additional sugar syrup and a clean jar (the one I used was approx 700ml). You will thank yourself in a week’s time for this is a truly wonderful concoction.

CANTALOUPE RUM

Cut the melon flesh into pieces and place in the jar. Don’t pack too tight. Fill with rum, so the melon is completely submerged. Give it a good shake and store out of direct sunlight for 24 hours at least. Shake and wait another day; shake and wait another day… it will still be passably cantaloupy after that first 24 hours but be warned, but melons have a high water content, so it does take a while to really draw out the flavour. Strain off the liquid (pass through a coffee filter to remove any remaining particles) and add about 10ml sugar syrup to every 50ml spirit. This gives you an infusion that will be good to sip neat. If you want it to be more liqueur-like, by all means add more sugar. Either way, will keep in the fridge for a few weeks at least.

3) I have experimented with 20ml French vermouth in this; works quite well? But I didn’t want to over-complicate.

4) As I say, that teaspoon’s worth of absinthe is optional but also… it’s what makes the drink. See below.

5) I came this close to sending out this whole post with it spelled as ‘canteloupe’.

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🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here. 
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.

And you like The Spirits, do please forward this to your friends.

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The Cantaloupe Frappé is, I’m afraid, a Godwin Original. But then again, nothing is entirely original. Take this picture of an ibis in the style of the American ornithologist John Audubon, recently imagined into being by the artificially intelligent art generator, Dall-E 2. Impressive! But only possible because the computer has processed 650 million images to arrive at a decent approximation of what an ibis painted by Audobon might look like. I am not saying that my creative output is as impressive as this - but I bet it tastes nicer.

So, disclosure, the Cantaloupe Frappé - musky fruit with an absinthe thorn - is in fact a remix of an Absinthe Frappé prompt that I once inputted at Filthy XIII right here in Bristol (and which, by the looks of things, is back on the menu right now). It sounds perverse, but when I’m somewhere I feel the bartenders know what they’re doing, I’ll often choose the thing I least like the sound of because I know it will be working harder than the ‘twist-on-a-Manhattan’ drinks that usually catch the eye.

Sure enough, the Absinthe Frappé was a revelation. Firstly, because I realised, a bit like Winston with his gin-scented tears at the end of 1984, that the struggled was finished. I had won the victory over myself. I loved absinthe. Honestly, I really used to find that anise taste repellent. Is it something that one appreciates with age? Or have I slowly been weaning myself in that direction, fennel seed by fennel seed, Sazerac by French Pearl? Who knows? But suddenly I can see why old men in Mediterranean countries sit there drinking pastis, ouzo, raki and anisette all afternoon. Not sambucca though. That stuff is fucking disgusting.

But I digress! The second reason that Frappé frapped me so hard was that the absinthe had been cleverly paired with a canteloupe melon liqueur (I think?) and mint to create a drink as deeply as refreshing as the sea is to this dehydrated octopus. Indeed, the combination of melon and anise comes up surprisingly often in culinary contexts; I now wonder who came up with that?

In my home experiments, I found that the melon flavour was a little lost when I majored on absinthe - hence my turning this into a cantaloupe cocktail with a splash of absinthe rather than the other way around. Still, by all means, play around and report back. I think you will find this to be just the thing for when the sun goes down after a day of apocalyptic heat. Serve with serrano ham and fennel crackers for full effect.

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HOUSEKEEPING

I am about to be on holiday for a couple of weeks. (In the UK. Just as the weather breaks). However: there are many enticing summer cocktails I still wish to lay before you. So, instead of disappearing altogether, I will instead provide a skeleton service over the next few weeks. Expect just a recipe and a photo, with the full textual/musical posts returning mid-to-late August, I should think.

In the meantime, I am very happy to hear your feedback, suggestions, enticing recipes I haven’t thought of built on our 12-bottle principle.

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PLAYLIST

I was just beginning to pull together an “it’s hot isn’t it” playlist when my old friend Alex Chadwick happened to send me a playlist he had made with precisely vibe I was after via WhatsApp. He called his Elephant on a Beach. Alex is one of those friends whose musical taste I find unerringly good and surprising (we were in a school band together!) and so, I thought I’d share it with you here.

THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download/’like’ it and return to it each week in your Spotify to find a suite of new songs. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the massive ongoing archive of past playlists.

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CABINET POSTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

🌿Green Chartreuse
🍒 Maraschino
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🌷Cynar
🏝️ Falernum
🌵 Mezcal
🐂 Sherry

Coming soon: Crème de cassis

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

Refreshing cocktails (and mocktails!) for a steamy summer. (The Times) Features a good use for the pistachio orgeat, should you have some left over from last week.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

The far-right’s new-found obsession with art criticism (Dazed)

The BoJack Horseman Subreddit. God I miss that show (Reddit)

The Dark Side of Fantasy Football (Mr Porter)

Why it’s really hard to learn languages (The Road to A.I. Is Harder than You Think)

‘A bigger paycheck? I’d rather watch the sunset!’ by Elle Hunt. (Guardian) I thought this was a good take on the emerging post-pandemic anti-ambition culture (which I’ve been writing about too, in a couple of pieces yet to be published). It’s a very real phenomenon. And yet what I’ve noticed from interviewing various workers in the throes of these dilemmas is that the conclusions people are drawing about life, career, happiness and purpose are highly individual (partly as a result of everyone having spent a lot of time alone these last couple of years). What I thought was good about Elle’s piece was how she contrasted her own pandemic burnout as as an early 30-something with Maeve, an early 20-something, about to embark on a career and determined to make happiness her primary ambition. IAs an early 40-something with debt and dependents, a bigger paycheck would do me just fine.

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SHOPPING LIST

Absinthe (or pastis). Plain yoghurt. Cucumber. Sugar syrup. Mint (or dill, if you like it).

🍃