…I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain…
Today, vodka was my friend. We hung out together for the entire evening. We we did that. We bathed in a Purple Rain cocktail, oops…a couple of Purple Rain cocktails!
It was great. For vodka. I was amazed at the number of variations of this drink. My Purple Rain cocktail ended up being a loose interpretation of a few recipes. One recipe called for grape juice (that seemed to make sense visually, but I didn’t want it to taste like Koolaid), another called for cranberry juice and most all called for Blue Curacao.
Blue + Red, Right?
In elementary school we learned that blue and red makes purple, so I swapped out the grape juice for grenadine to create the perfect purple and because honestly, I was freestyling, it took a little time to get the purple I wanted.
I tried one with pineapple juice. It tasted great but aesthetically, it looked like a royal hot, muddy mess. So, I played around until I landed on the clear, royal purple. If you try it and don’t care so much about looks, try it with the pineapple juice,. I have to admit, it’s tasty. Although it’s not a fruity drink, it kind of reminds me of the Berry Vodka Smash.
I also happened to have blue sanding sugar (seriously, who has blue sanding sugar hanging around in their cabinet?). I tinted the blue sugar with a few drops of grenadine and got a shade of purple close enough to match the drink that was a beautiful royal purple. It was so pretty, I didn’t want to drink it. Ok, that’s not true and boy I’ll tell ya, for a vodka drink, it was really good!
Homemade Food Junkie created a stunningly beautiful Purple Rain cocktail. Here’s my version of the Purple Rain cocktail.
Ingredients
2 oz. vodka ¼ oz grenadine ½ oz. blue curacao 2 oz. club soda Juice of ½ small lime
Optional to rim glass: 3 TBSP White sugar 1 TBSP Simple syrup Few drops of grenadine Few drops of blue curacao Lime wheel
Mix sugar, grenadine and blue curacao well until you reach the desired shade of purple. Dip the rim of a glass in simple syrup and roll the rim in the sugar until the entire rim is coated.
In a cocktail shaker, fill halfway with crushed ice, add vodka, grenadine, blue curacao, club soda and lime juice. Shake until well chilled. Pour into glass garnish with a lime wheel and sip slow!
You want to do yourself a favor? Do yourself some jerk chicken! Jerk is a uniquely Jamaican style of cooking and you can’t fake the funk. This style of cooking is a mouthwatering blend of spice, sweet and heat. Traditionally, this method of cooking uses either a dry-rub or a wet marinade and it’s grilled over green pimento wood in a jerk pan on a half-barrel grill.
A drum or pan isn’t necessary for delicious jerk chicken. All you need is a decent recipe and an idea of how good jerk chicken tastes to get close to the real deal. The ingredients are all very easy to get your hands on, even Walkerswood marinade, which is indisputably the marinade of choice and can be found online or at any Jamaican grocery.
Making jerk chicken is straightforward, not the Chef Du Jour thing I made it out to be the first time I seriously took a stab it. There’s no value in over-thinking it. I find it falls in the ‘simple is sophisticated’ category. The ingredients come together so beautifully, it’s not complex. Green seasoning is also used in jerk wet marinade, as with many standard Jamaican dishes, and includes fresh thyme, green onion, garlic and other seasonings. Green seasoning is definitely a staple in most Jamaican households and everyone has their own way of making it. I like this one from Recipes from a Pantry.
Third Time is the Charm!
Although I’ve tried my hand at this dish many times, I had been faking the funk! But, this was my third serious go at it in order to get that perfect characteristic flavor because of course, I don’t want to post anything that I haven’t tried myself and gotten at least close to perfection. In the past, I just played around with it and called it jerk chicken.
As great a cook as you might be, perfecting some of the simplest dishes can sometimes elude you. That happened to me with jerk chicken and with my Aunt Josephine’s All Butter Pound Cake. And really all it usually takes is a simple tweak and you’re good!
Some Islanders’ may say “oh, you got it all wrong, man!”, and to that I’ll say my buddy Yolanda and her daughter, who grew up on Jamaican food came by and taste-tested the chicken and my fried plantain, rice and beans. She and her daughter said I nailed it. I’ve eaten her food so I take her and her daughter as the word of authority and I don’t argue with authority!
ripe plantain is sweet and not super firm, while green plantain is hard and starchy.
Try the optional ingredients in the recipe to kick up the flavor. (Note: I do not receive any compensation for any links in this post.)
Jerk Chicken Dinner
Menu Jerk Chicken Rice and Beans Fried Plantain
Jerk Chicken
Ingredients: Whole chicken, cut up White vinegar Walkerswood jerk seasoning (mild or spicy) Green seasoning (recipe) Salt Pepper Maggi seasoning Lime juice Optional Ingredients: Ground pimento (allspice) Browning Ginger Nutmeg Garlic
1. Wash chicken in water and and vinegar. Rinse chicken in water and lime juice, pat dry. 2. In a bowl, season chicken with salt, pepper, garlic powder, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg. 3. Using your hands, mix in jerk, green and maggi seasonings and browning until chicken is well coated. 4. Wrap bowl in cling wrap and let marinate at least one hour to overnight. 5. After chicken has marinated, chicken can be grilled or baked in the oven for 1 hour at 350 degrees. If chicken is baked, cover pan in aluminum foil for the first half hour of cooking. 6. Once chicken is done, remove from oven and cover with foil again to let rest so juices can redistribute.
Beans and Rice
1 bag, Dark red kidney beans, washed and sorted 1 cup, Jasmine rice, rinsed 1-1/2 cup water or chicken stock 1 1/2 can of coconut milk 1T Green seasoning
Couple sprigs of fresh thyme 2 cloves garlic, smashed 1 Scallion 1 Scotch bonnet or habanero pepper Pinch of sugar Salt and pepper, to taste
Once beans have soaked (preferably overnight), in a heavy bottom pot, cover beans with water or chicken stock. Add thyme, garlic and scallion and cook beans until soft (smash between fingers to feel for doneness).
Add coconut milk, green seasoning, scotch bonnet or habanero pepper, salt and pepper and let simmer for about ten minutes.
Add rice and cook until rice is done and fluffy (about 20-minutes).
Fried Plantain
Ripe plantain Cooking oil Optional ingredients: Salt and pepper, to taste Cinnamon Honey
Heat frying pan and add oil.
Choose ripe plantain. (Green, firm plantain are hard and starchy. the darker the skin, the sweeter the plantain.) Peel plantains and cut into thirds. Slice each third in half.
Place cut plantain in hot oil, cut side down. When lightly browned, take out of pan and lightly smash the plantain slices.
Put plantain slices back into hot pan to lightly brown on the other side.
What’s better than icy cold ice cream on a hot summer day, huh? Not much. My favorite is a large vanilla/chocolate swirl cone, double dipped in magic shell. But, my favorite Dairy Queen closed last year and, being at home a lot more because of the dreaded COVID, it’s hard not to feel like you are being deprived and deserve to treat yourself to something yummy. So, I finally did it. I made homemade ice cream and this homemade vanilla ice cream that’s actually tastier than store bought ice cream!
As kids; my sister, brothers, friends and I would lose our little minds when the ice cream truck came down the street. We had supersonic hearing that picked up the ice cream truck bell and music a half a mile away. We’d beg for ice cream money and sit on the stoop waiting for the truck to make it to our block.
If, on the rare occasion, the truck had driven past our house, we’d chase it like our lives depended on it until we could make it stop. Hey, we got our ice cream!
A lot older now, I haven’t chased an ice cream truck in at least a year-½ to two years and my Dairy Queen is gone. Thinking about it now, I have to say I’m not really that sad about either being a thing of the past for me.
The ice cream truck still comes down the street. But somehow, and it may just be me (you can check me if I’m wrong), those trucks look a little grimier now. I’m more than a little apprehensive to get a cone off a truck because my imagination runs wild and forces me to wonder, “when was the last time they ran anything through their ice cream machine to clean it?” “Have they washed their hands?” “How often do they clean their little serving area?” Now, as these questions swirl around in my head, in an instant, I’m essentially looking at vanilla swirl tetanus on wheels. If they are sanitary and turns out I’m wrong, well God bless them. But, I’m not taking any chances. I think the same thing about Dairy Queen these days, too. But still, let’s face it…
No ingredients you can’t identify
I try to be a little more careful what I put in my body these days. So. Since we grew up on homemade ice cream as well as being ice cream truck chasers, I still feel that I shouldn’t be deprived. I had been wanting to make homemade ice cream for years but made so many excuses that made me feel better about not doing it, it stayed on my bucket list. No churner? Oh well. It takes sooo looong! It doesn’t, really. I’m on a diet. I mean really, who’s not?
Well, I fixed all that (except the diet part, I’m always on a diet!), and I finally made some of the most delicious ice cream, I can hardly stand it!
Making homemade ice cream isn’t rocket science (the cooling process is a little sciency, though if you’re a nerd). When we were kids (again?!), My mom made homemade ice cream a lot in the summer. The kids in the neighborhood loved coming over when they saw the ice cream machine sitting on the porch. It was the hand-crank kind and if you had to crank it, it practically killed you before the ice cream froze. It was a labor of love and it was the best.
These days, we worry about fat, sugar, carbs, bug life crawling through the ice cream machines, blah, blah, blah. I do worry about that stuff but, in order to make good ice cream…I mean, real good ice cream, you’re gonna need some of that stuff (not the bugs).
Super easy, super delicious!
I have two recipes that are my new go-tos for the best tasting homemade ice cream going. Here’s one. It is a french vanilla and the other which will be in another post, is a little lighter as it uses less yolks and more milk/cream. I love them both. Don’t think for a minute that churning your own ice cream is going to save money, though. I spent $20 on two vanilla beans!
It can get pricey! But, what you get when you make your own is the comfort of knowing what’s in it. No artificial ingredients, commercial stabilizers or starches and colors you are likely to find in store-bought ice creams unless you’re into that kind of thing. The added bonus is you can add whatever the heck you want to your ice cream!And, it’s wonderful with my All Butter Pound Cake that can be found here.
A few tips to make your homemade ice cream CRUSH most store brands:
Don’t take shortcuts. Chill your custard. It’s best if it is chilled overnight. Some ice cream recipes don’t require over night chilling but, this is how you’ll get your best results.
If you have a bowl in your ice cream freezer, freeze it overnight. Before you add your custard.
If you have a metal canister, you should freeze it at least for a few hours before churning.
Over churning your custard will create large ice crystals and a grainy ice cream. Once your machine stops rotating, your ice cream is done. It should be the consistncy of soft serve. It willl harden up in the freezer.
A little vodka, Everclear or any other alcohol (around 1 TBSP per quart) will keep your ice cream from getting too hard in the freezer. Vodka will not alter the taste of your ice cream. Many other alcohols will.
This one weighs in at a hefty 940 calories per serving! But, it’s so good.
An electric ice cream maker removes the time-consuming task of hand turning the cream to freeze it, so homemade ice creams and sorbets are easier to make. Note that this recipe requires an extra day for the custard to chill.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups milk
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise
8 egg yolks
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
Directions:
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the milk, cream and 1/4 cup of the sugar. With the tip of a knife, scrape the seeds from the vanilla beans into the pan, then toss the pods into the pan. Place over medium heat and bring just to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and let steep for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, vigorously whisk together the egg yolks, salt and the remaining 1/2 cup sugar until the mixture falls in a thick, wide ribbon when the whisk is lifted. Remove the vanilla pods from the milk mixture and reheat to a bare simmer. Slowly add the milk mixture to the yolk mixture while whisking constantly. Pour the custard back into the pan and cook gently over medium-low heat, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until thickened enough to coat the spoon, about 3 minutes. Draw a finger across the spoon. The custard is ready if it does not immediately bleed back together. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean storage container, let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate overnight.
Pour the chilled custard into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to a tightly covered container and freeze for at least 6 hours before serving. Makes 1 1/2 quarts.
Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Family Meals, by Maria Helm Sinskey (Oxmoor House, 2008).
This ice cream would be delicious with buttered pecans or chocolate chips. If you use mix-ins, put them in close to the end of churning your ice cream.
If you try the recipe, leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Enjoy!
I guess the only downside to blogging for Retta Cooked It is that eventually, I’m going to wind up becoming a fat, drunk.
I have to taste everything I cook and every cocktail I mix to be sure I’m posting the best recipes. I enjoy that. A lot. And, I like playing with my bar tools.
I haven’t posted in a good while, but when I ran across this drink it was so pretty I had to give it a try. I won’t lie, I’m not a fan of white liquor so I am always skeptical of cocktails that include them. But, not everyone is in love with whiskey and while I like living on the dark side sometimes you have to go to the light. So, I gave it a try.
If you like gin and creamy drinks, you’ll like Angel’s Delight. Gin pairs well with hard cheeses, and chocolate and if you want to try Angel’s Delight, in my opinion, you’ll want to try it with an appetizer. Because of the cream, Angel’s Delight is a thick, dessert-like cocktail. I don’t recommend having it during dinner, that’s too much.
One tip, don’t overdo the grenadine! More than two or three dashes is more than enough to get the pale pink hue characteristic of this drink. Any more and it will look like a glass of Pepto-Bismol and who wants that!
Angel’s Delight
Ingredients:
1/4 oz Triple Sec
3/4 oz Gin
1 oz Cream
2-3 Dashes Grenadine
Directions:
Combine all ingredients into a shaker with ice. Shake well, strain into chilled martini glass. It doesn’t get any easier than this. Check out other great drink recipes in the Weekend Water section of Retta Cooked It. Sip slow!
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