Pirate's Cocktail

Keeping in line with some of the themes I've been playing around with--savory cocktails, summer drinks, pirates--I thought I would share with you fine people a delightful cocktail that is fairly simple and yet deeply satisfying.

Pirate's

adapted from Epicurious

-1 1/2 oz. dark rum

-3/4 oz. sweet vermouth

-dash angostura bitters

-3-4 ice cubes

Stir ingredients in a cocktail shaker and strain into a cocktail glass.

What you'll find is a cocktail that is not unlike a Manhattan but with a more tropical twist. It's warm and spicy but also oddly refreshing. The name is also appropriate. After my first sip, I felt the urge to yell out "Avast! Shiver me timbers!" I didn't yell it, but I encourage you all to.

While in Pennsylvania, we decided that we needed to invest in a bottle of dark rum. No more excuses. I'm tired of it being a thousand degrees this summer and not being able to take advantage of things like dark rum. Last week's cocktail called for dark rum and I had to use Bacardi instead. I let you all down and I'm sorry. After scoping out all the choices at the state store, we went with a rum called Gosling's, an 80 proof dark rum from Bermuda.

As Heather, her mother and I were waiting at the bus stop for our New York bound bus, (it was an hour late) Heather and I got bored and decided to sample the rum in the car, much to the disgust of my dear mother-in-law. It was a bit spicier than I expected it to be. I think I would have appreciated a more syrupy texture along the lines of a Myer's Dark rum, but it was pretty good. Plus it has a little cartoon seal on the front of the bottle balancing a barrel of rum on its nose.

I imagine that with the weather continuing to be as kiln-like as it is, we'll go through this bottle pretty fast and need to get another. We'll probably try a bunch until we find our favorite. Who knows? We might even go crazy and get one of those bottles that spells it "Rhum." Only time will tell. In the meantime, all that's left for me to do is work on my swashbuckling and pillaging. You know what they say--practice makes perfect.