Fruitzilla

It is that kind of an experiment which was conceptualized as something else but resulted in something completely different.

Fruitzilla was not a "thought through" recipe, it was justa a "Change of Mind". The cocktail was never planned to be around fruits, the fruits just happened to be in my fridge and that's why in the cocktail. The main hero of the cocktail was oats infused Bourbon, and I was building a recipe which would highlight the flavors and notes of it. But then, it was a nice, hot summer evening; my body craved for some summer-ish, fruity cocktail, and I was too eager to use this experimental Bourbon - So "A Fruitzilla" was made!

"The fruits just happened to be in my fridge and thats why in the cocktail. The main hero of the coktail was oats infused Bourbon"

Now why this oats infused Bourbon? For that, you might have to take a deeper look at the pictures of the cocktail here. Do you see that green-ish garnish on it? Those are rice stocks from from my house plant. Yup...don't ask me why, but one fine day, I randomly sowed some brown rice from my pantry in one of my spare planters. To my surprise, it grew into these beautiful ears of rice stock. They looked so pretty that I wanted to use them as a cocktail garnish. But then, I follow an unsaid rule of using the garnish which has some meaning to it; that complies with the ingredients or the theme of the cocktails.

So I started thinking on the lines of using "grains" as a theme, which made me think of Whiskeys and Bourbons as they are made from grains, and as those were the only liqours I had at home that time :P (thinking of it now, I could have used Sake). With that base liquor for the cocktail in my mind, I still wanted to include more "grain-y" elements in it. Then I thought of using one of the techniques that I was curious to try from some time: the technique of soaking oats in alchohol overnight to make the alchohol more polished and smoothier in taste.

And why oats? Because oats are made from?...you got it, grains! :D

The oats experiment did not quite work as dramatically as I expected it to, but it did take out some sharpness from the Bourbon and made it smoothier to consume.

The Cocktail: Fruitzilla

Ingredients:

• Bourbon

• Oats

• Fruits of your choice

• Lemon

• Sparkling wine

• Sugar

Recipe:

• Soak 2 tablespoon of oats in 50 ml of Bourbon in a mason jar overnight.

• Add 1 teaspoon of sugar in a cocktail glass and strain the oats soaked Bourbon on it and stir.

• Squeeze a dash of lime over it and stir again.

• Fill the cocktail glass with ice cubes and fruits, use your creativity to make it look pretty.

• Pour sparkling wine over it

Enjoy the cocktail! And next time, if you have a spare planter sitting in your home, try to sow a few random grains from your kitchen in it; you might get surprised with some beautiful things growing from it, and some beautiful things it could make you do :) Cheers!