Monkey Toes
Dare I say it? I'm a fiend for mojitos. The main problem with this habit, however, is that they're rather expensive. In an attempt to save money, I turned to the internet. The Food Network's and Bacardi's recipes were in agreement, so I got the relevant ingredients and we devoted much of Saturday night to trying to make a drinkable mojito from scratch. We failed.
The online recipe calls for fresh mint, fresh lime, sugar, club soda, and rum. It says to first muddle the mint, slices of lime, and sugar, and then add the club soda and rum. The result, however, as one witness put it, "tasted like mint club soda".
The next day, when I mentioned this failure in several phone conversations, it was suggested (more than once) that the online recipe was wrong to include club soda as an ingredient. It was also suggested that using limeade concentrate is an easy way to avoid having to create the sugar and lime mixture oneself. My initial reaction was to dismiss these suggestions. But, upon consideration, I decided that some field work was in order. One of my interlocutors, a more consistent DC resident than myself, suggested an Adams Morgan location that, he claimed, has the best mojitos in DC: the Rumba Cafe. So, last night, we went and observed.
To be honest, our observations were more participatory-anthropologist and less detached-sociologist. We did not, in any sense, try and understand our subject "from outside".
My interlocutors were triply right: the bartender at Rumba Cafe included limeade concentrate and excluded club soda. And his mojitos were really good. Here's how he did it.
Begin with a couple of stalks of mint and put them in what (I guess) is a 10 oz. glass. Add three fresh lime wedges, a tablespoon of sugar, and a splash of melted limeade concentrate. Muddle this mixture in the glass itself, with the goal of crushing the mint leaves without crushing the mint stalks. Add ice, and then rum, filling both to the top of the glass. Then shake the glass vigorously, in that way that bartenders do it, with another larger glass on top, and pour the resulting mixture into the original 10 oz. glass. Serve.
The size of the glass is important. When I tried following this recipe at home, the glass I used was too large and the ensuing mixture was a glass of mint rum. So I'm going to wait until I have a proper sized glass, as well as a proper muddler and shaking glass, before trying again.
posted by Charles P. Everitt at 9:05 PM
10 Comments:
Maybe I've never had a good one, but I've never much cared for mojitos. To my palate, mint + sweetness + alcohol = mouthwash. (Although I guess this doesn't explain why I do like a good mint julep.)
I hesitate to say it, but if your palate cannot distinguish between mojitos and mouthwash, you might want to try doing some palate-enhancing exercises. Can you taste the difference between the rolls at Subway and a decent baguette? After all, they're both bread.
8:35 AM
This is a clear case in which a reductive description of the item in question does not suffice to bring out what is appealing about it. For instance, I don't think your special lady friend would be very happy if you gave her a lump of coal, on the grounds that it is the same chemical composition as a diamond.
Poor man's mojito:
Give 7-up a try, in place of the sugar and concentrate. Crush the mint leaves, add ice and rum, and then the 7-up. Don't shake it.
My little equation was an attempt to be pithy and was not meant to suggest that "a reductive description of the item" would sufficiently explain my disdain for the mojito. My aside about the mint julep was, in fact, intended precisely to suggest the inadequacy of a reductive description.
On the other hand, I think your zinger about Subway bread & baguettes is based on a bit of rhetorical slippage--but in a way that points me toward what I really do find distateful about mojitos. As you yourself point out, Subway bread and baguettes really do belong to the same category (bread) whereas mojitos and mouthwash belong to categories that, while sharing strong affinities (both are liquids that go into the mouth), are quite different (I would never want to think of my mouthwash as a pleasant beverage). And so, a more accurate analog would have been so suggest, say, Subway bread and a chew toy. And the issue isn't so much whether I'm unable to distinguish between Subway bread and a chew toy, but rather, if I, for some reasons that may or may not be sufficiently captured by a "reductive description," I found that the experience of eating Subway bread reminded me of putting a chew toy in my mouth, then I'd probably have pretty good grounds for saying that I find Subway bread unpleasant.
The real issue, I suppose, is whether I'm right in claming that Subway bread is reminiscent of chew toys or, more to the point, that mojitos are reminiscent of mouthwash. Again, I never intended to claim that my little description was sufficient grounds for such a claim, but I do think it gets the point partially across.
The long response above has a number of stylistic and grammatical infelicities. I wrote it in a hurry.
Do mojitos really taste like mouthwash to you? (I guess I just find it hard to believe, at a phenomenological level, that they would taste similar to anyone.) I grant that they have similar components, it's just hard for me to imagine that they would *taste* the same. Maybe you've just had really, really bad mojitos. The mojito I had at Versailles my last night in LA was truly horrible, but it didn't taste like mouthwash. It tasted more like Sprite syrup.
Gattling-Fenn,
Your 7-Up concoction sounds horrible. I'm going to stick to the limeade concentrate plan.
Charles
A few things.
First, the witness referred to in the initial post says that the claim was that it tasted like "carbonated mint water".
Second, I myself have worried that monkey toes are like mouthwash. But I have what I suppose amounts to a horriffic confession: I am sometimes tempted to drink mouthwash. By this I do not mean to refer to the natural temptation to swallow what is in one's mouth, as with, say, a piece of gum. Rather, there is something pleasing (?!) about the taste of mouth wash. Point is, assimilating monkey toes to mouthwash is not entirely ridiculous, but not just for e. fiction's ingrediential reasons. Instead, monkey toes and mouthwash have a similar phenomenal quality, especially if one uses spearamint mouthwash as I do, since it is (I believe) spearamint that is used in monkey toes.
Of course, my palate can distinguish between monkey toes and mouthwash. And, perhaps more importantly, my sense for gustatory-aesthetic norms keeps me from drinking the latter. However, the threat to monkey toes as a consumable (indeed enjoyable) beverage is that if poorly executed it will be like that stuff one puts in one's mouth in preparation for (or as a conclusion to) a good flossing, and then spits into the sink. (This suggests that the baguette-Subway roll analogy is inapt.)
It is relatively easy to ostend a good monkey toe, but perhaps something would be gained by articulating what a good monkey toe is like. (Notice that the strategy up to this point has been to ostend a good toe and attempt a reconstruction. However, when this fails, the diagnostics have been wanting. What *exactly* has gone wrong? What should it taste like? What must be done differently?)
you can also try a simple syrup in place of the sugar/soda. I make a mint infused simple syrup (2 cups sugar dissolved in 1 cup water, brought to boil, let sit with as much mint as you want in it for 1/2 hour. chill), it eliminates the problem of sugar not dissolving, and it keeps for a month or so - so mojito yumminess anytime, even if you don't have a handful of mint on hand.
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