A Cocktail in Honor of LOST: The Smoke Monster

Part of what I want to get at in this blog is making interesting things out of what you have, without having to buy too many expensive ingredients.  By going with recipes that are mostly pantry items with one or two things you pick up from the grocery, you'll find your shopping dollars stretch farther in each week of menus as long as your pantry is reasonably stocked. 

For instance, I'm making that ribs recipe today for a LOST-watching party that we're having tonight (thematically, I think we'll call them "Locke's Boar Ribs") and all I really had to do was buy the ribs themselves which are surprisingly inexpensive.  A repertoire of recipes and a well stocked pantry also allow you to take big time advantage of sales at the grocery store.

For LOST tonight we thought it would be fun to come up with a signature cocktail to drink, and since I've been practicing my martini's lately we've got some Vodka, and just happened to have some Kahlua as well.  This is what I came up with:

The Smoke Monster

Ingredients:

Vodka

Dry Vermouth

Kahlua

An Orange

Ice

Tools:

A shot measure

A cocktail shaker

A knife or peeler for the orange

Martini  glasses

Peel the orange so you have a few strips of peel to use as garnish.

Moisten the walls of the martini glasses with a dash of vermouth.

Rim the glasses with the orange, squeezing so a bit of orange juice drips down the interior for flavor.

Fill the shaker with ice and shake about 2-3 shots of Vodka per drink in it with the ice, pouring it out into the glasses - there should be some frosty ice bits floating on top.

Pour a half-shot of Kahlua into the glass and do not stir, so it floats near the bottom in a black cloud (get it??).

Garnish with the orange peel slices.

We've got some mini martini glasses that make novelty cocktails a lot easier to experiment with on a work night, so I do a half-size version since this is strong anyway.  But as a fun thing to throw together I think it'll work great and I only needed to pick up an orange to make it happen.