by Paul Adams<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Welcome back to Cooking Issues. It\u2019s been a while. The blog here got a little bit snowed under with male-enhancement spam while the staff\u2019s attention was on other things, but I volunteered to come shovel it out\u2013I spend my days at Popular Science<\/i>\u2013and now posting shall resume!<\/p>\n What\u2019s Dave been busy with? A year ago, he opened a cocktail bar, called Booker and Dax<\/a>, and that\u2019s been going pretty well. Stop by if you\u2019re in the area! Now I\u2019ve been burdened with the terrible, arduous job of drinking the drinks that the bar serves and writing them up.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the Bangkok Daiquiri, which is delicious, simple, ingenious, and very pretty to look at. Ingredients: Thai basil, lime juice, white rum. Technique: cryomuddling.<\/p>\n Muddle up basil or many another leafy green herb and it immediately starts to a) turn drab in color and b) acquire that unfortunate swampy overcooked-spinach off-flavor. Both of these are caused by enzymatic action: busting up the cell walls of the leaves releases polyphenol oxidase (PPO), an enzyme that causes the tasty phenolic compounds in the basil to oxidize, making the basil sad.<\/p>\n There are a few clever strategies for getting fresh herb flavor into a drink without the nasty oxidation products. You can rotovap<\/a>; a colorless but tasty basil distillate; or quick-infuse with nitrous<\/a>. Or you can just be real gentle with your herbs: Harold McGee has pointed out that the aromatic compounds in basil and mint mostly reside in hairs on the undersides of the leaves, so smacking or rubbing or two leaves together without crushing them releases good flavor and minimum PPO.<\/p>\n For service at the bar, a wholly different technique is used. Meet cryomuddling, a.k.a. nitromuddling.<\/p>\n Drop your basil leaves into your muddling glass and then immediately pour in a dose of liquid nitrogen and swirl it around to freeze the leaves. THEN you muddle them to your heart\u2019s content, because no browning reaction is going to happen while the enzyme is inactivated by the intense cold. The leaves are brittle and the muddling has the feeling of walking crunchily through dry, cold snow. It\u2019s easy to muddle them down into a fine powder. Fine powder equals lots of surface area equals quick flavor release.<\/p>\n Pour the rum over the basil powder (having drained off any remaining liquid nitrogen) and it comes alive with bright green. At this point the ethanol deactivates the polyphenol oxidase. (Dave suspects that the enzyme may be permanently denatured, but further testing is needed.) A great percentage of the plant\u2019s PPO has been liberated from its cells, so enzyme action is no longer a concern as the drink comes up to non-cryonic temperatures. It stays bright green and fresh-tasting.<\/p>\n If the basil is muddled into a less fine powder, the drink does get a little browner, likely because there\u2019s still PPO inside the leaves that the ethanol doesn\u2019t get a chance to work on before oxygen hits it.<\/p>\n Double-strain the basil-y rum, shake with lime juice and simple syrup, serve in a chilled coupe.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have liquid nitrogen at your bar or home (probably your nitro delivery guy is just late) you can make a Bangkok Daiquiri in your blender that Dave says is \u201c90 percent as good.\u201d <\/p>\n For two servings: Blend the basil with the rum into a slurry\u2013don\u2019t overdo it\u2013then immediately add the lime, then the simple. Strain before shaking.<\/p>\n Booker and Dax puts about a centigram of salt in every drink too: a couple drops of 1:5 saline solution. Dave believes it rounds out and brightens the flavor. We can test this notion in another post.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Bar](\"https:\/\/cookingissues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/bangkok-500x333.jpg\")
15-20 leaves of Thai basil
5 ounces white rum
\u201ca fat 1.5\u201d ounces lime juice
\u201ca skinny 1.5\u201d ounces 1:1 simple syrup<\/p>\n