This afternoon’s cocktail…

I saw this recipe in the July 2016 issue of Food and Wine magazine and my mouth started watering. I went shopping the same day to get the ingredients I needed; I had to try this one! The end result was sweet, tart and spicy (due to the addition of the Tajin). The only thing that could have made this cocktail better was being poolside!

I’ve listed the recipe here, along with the tweaks I made to make it my own…

Basil Syrup

½ cup sugar

½ cup water

About 10 springs of basil

Bring water and sugar to a boil, continuously stirring until sugar has resolved. Add the basil leaves for about 10 seconds and then pour into a blender to cool. Cool about 3-4 minutes and then puree until smooth. Strain the puree into a shallow bowl and place in the freezer for about 5 minutes to chill.

Margarita

4 cups (~ 1.5lbs) chopped honeydew, frozen (I put mine in the freezer overnight)

1 cup fresh lime juice

1.25 cup white tequila (I used Cabo Wabo Blanco)

6 tablespoons of basil syrup

Add all of the ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. I stopped the blender after about a minute and tried to shift the honeydew around a bit. It took about 3 minutes to puree the honeydew until it came to a good consistency.

Serve

To serve, I rimmed the glass with Tajin and another squeeze of lime. You can also garnish with basil, but I saved my extra basil for tonight’s pizza (more to come…)

Salute!