Top Chef, Episode 12: Off to the Island

... Ellis Island, that is, where our culinary competitors cooked their hearts and souls out in a family heritage challenge. Everybody got through to the final, which was no surprise: how could the judges auf a chef whose mother was in the room? The episode was most notable for the news that Top Chef Masters will be starting in April, oh joy! oh rapture! We also discovered that the All-Stars are relocating to the Bahamas next week for island cuisine of a strikingly different kind.

Not lost on me was the synchronicity of this change-of-venue announcement. Although I have never been to the Caribbean, the Diva is heading off in that direction in just a few short weeks and will be beforehand coming up to my own sunny corner of Pennsylvanian paradise for a gala mozzarella-making and cocktail-quaffing pre-vacation sendoff.

Our Island drinks of choice? Yellowbirds and Rum Swizzles, of course.

Yellowbirds are one of the Diva's favorite tipples and that, naturally, is sufficient reason to serve them up by the bucketful during our formaggio fandango. However, they have additional significance in our house, because one of these cocktails was the Kid Squid's first-ever flirtation with mixed drinks. I remember the occasion vividly. During a family vacation in Bermuda we presented ourselves at Hamilton's Cafe Cairo for a festive evening of tagines, couscous (this was before my gluten-freedom fighting career, obviously); cushion-reclining; sensemia music; and general North African jollity and brouhaha. Yellowbirds and rum swizzles flowed freely, as I recall, and until you've paired Gosling's dark rum with roast lamb and eggplant, don't knock it - it's a powerful combination, I can tell you. Anyway, after three sips of somebody else's drink the Squid more or less collapsed into a pile of giggles, not to be heard from sensibly again until much later in the evening. It was one of those turning points a parent never forgets.

The Diva and I will need to spend some time refining our Yellowbird technique, since an authoritative recipe is not that easy to find (the Kid Squid will no doubt provide valuable critical input). It is beyond question that the cocktail must include white and/or dark rum; creme de banane (luckily, we still have some left from the above-mentioned trip's airport duty-free raid, during which we also acquired sherry peppers, ginger beer, and Bermuda Gold liqueur, distilled from loquats and best served in a warm glass); Galliano; orange juice; and pineapple juice, in a roughly 1.00:0.25:0.25:2.0:2.0 ratio. I'm guessing we'll be adding more rum, but who can say? That's why it's called research.

Delightful though these drinks are, my absolute favorite island indulgence is a rum swizzle, fabricated (according to Gosling's official website) from dark rum, amber rum, pineapple juice, and orange juice (4:4:5:5), plus 6 dashes of Angostura bitters and 2 oz. of falernum. Now, falernum (strangely enough) is not to be found in any of my local branches of the Liquor Control Board's praiseworthy mercantile system. One can use grenadine, I suppose, but it's not the same. I have never made the spice-infused elixir myself, but if we are going to do this thing properly, I think it is appropriate to give it a try. The most intriguing recipe I have been able to find is by Paul Clarke: it is titled Falernum #9, which sounds to me like a very expensive bottle of perfume, and looks to be full of typos, except a number of authorities say it's all true and bona fide.

There's only one way to find out: the real question is whether we will retain enough of our good senses to be able to make some cheese.

I will need to prepare the Falernum in advance, thusly:

• 2 tablespoons of blanched, slivered almonds
• 40 (yes 40!) whole cloves, crushed
• 6 oz white rum
• the zest of 9 limes
• 3" of fresh ginger, peeled and julienned

The almonds and cloves need to be toasted in a frying pan for five minutes or so. They subsequently go into a non-reactive container with the rest of the ingredients and sit, covered, at room temperature for 24 hours.

In a jar, 1.5 cups of superfine sugar must be combined with 0.75 cups of warm water and shaken vigorously to combine (this is not a heated simple syrup, apparently, which gives too 'heavy' a result).

The rum mixture gets strained and added to the jar, together with 3 tablespoons of lime juice and 0.25 teaspoons of almond extract. Kept covered in the fridge, the falernum should last for weeks and weeks.