Panfusine

Yet another one of my successes that I never got around to blogging..Probably because as fun as it is to steep & infuse your own, I'm not a fan of liqueurs by a long shot. I just serve it up to guests. making these is easy enough, thinly slice a ripe starfruit, place in a tall weck jar with one cup of vodka. Let it steep for 2 weeks, then strain through a coffee filter. Combine with an your specific preferred volume of simple syrup. Add about 1/3rd cup and thereafter keep adding by the tablespoon until the sweetness is to your liking. Of course discretion is called for while testing/tasting. Allow the liqueur to rest for about 3 weeks before serving it.

Did I mention that I have a stash of Vodkas infused with various Herbs & spices? they sit in my bar cabinet, rather like bottles from a Zoology lab, with specimens of the flora variety floating in clear alcohol (that may or may not have imbibed color from the leaves & fruits they're steeped with. One such bottle has an infusion of Galangal, Lemongrass and Thai basil. its rather strong, since the infusion is over a year old and yours truly is kind of conducting a long term storage taste  experiment. This particular concoction is a combination of that infused vodka, juice of half a lemon and topped off with Fever tree Ginger beer. Cheers!

Flavored vodkas are great, but they don't come nearly as close to infusing your own. This way, there is no limit to the different flavors that you can introduce to your mixed drinks. This is especially true if you want to introduce classic Indian flavors to your mixology experiments (Unless of course, Smirnoff decides to come up with these flavors overnight)! I've tried experimenting with about 1/2 a dozen flavors of infused spirits, from fruits to a combination of spices. This drink, the Dirty Desi makes use of a vodka infused with cardamom & dried ginger. The proportions are flexible, I smashed up a 1 inch piece of dried ginger and 4-5 pods of crushed cardamon to 500 ml of vodka, Poured the spirits into a  bottle with an airtight stopper, like this one from Urban Dazzle . Let the spices steep uninterrupted in the alcohol for a week and then filtered out the spices. The drink itself is inspired by a classic beverage described in the Rig Veda, The Panakam , ...