These have been delayed for too long… (General Zod, Venom)

I’ve been treating these characters unfairly… their cocktails have been ready for quite a long time now, but somehow I was always compelled to publish something else first: “okay, I’ll cut the line with these two drinks, and Zoddy and Venom get published next time… oh, wait…” and so on.

No more delays, here they are!

 

GENERAL ZOD

“Kneel before Zod!”

2 parts reposado/gold tequila

2 parts De Kyuper Sour Rhubarb

1 part orange juice

Shake with ice and strain to a cocktail glass.

First, about the colour… as I’ve mentioned before, this blog’s cocktail are based on characters in comic books, not the ones in movies. So the colour is not the dull metallic grey Zod sports in “Man of Steel” 2013 or the black Terence Stamp wears in his legendary role in Superman II 1980.

General Zod wears black in comics, I give you that… but sometimes he is wearing red armour. I decided not to care about the colour at all (as I’ve ranted before) and decided to focus on the taste: taste so empowering, you can see your subjects kneeling before you… well, maybe after drinking another one… ;P

Couple of months ago I praised De Kyuper’s Sour Rhubarb, wrote how I will be using it with so many cocktails to come,,, well, this drink was originally created back then (delayed for too long, yup). No, I don’t publish my cocktails in the same order as I design them.

Anyway… Sweet ‘n sour of De Kyuper’s Rhubarb collides nicely with reposado, or even with cheapo gold tequila (don’t use tequila blanco for this drink, “too raw” for the purpose). Orange juice is there to tie things together, cut down the alcohol content a little and to create different kind of sourness, in addition to rhubarb. You might be tempted to add some lemon: go ahead, and you’ll see why it is not included in the recipe.

 

VENOM

6 parts full-bodied sweet red wine (see below)

2 to 3 parts Cynar

1 to 2 parts tequila (see below)

1 part honey

dash of black food colouring (see below)

Stir with ice and strain into a suitable glass. Shake with ice if you want to emphasize a muddy appearance (otherwise stir). “Why I would want that?” Please read on…

Red wine: Even if you’re not a friend of sweet red wines, please use it for this one; yes, even when we are adding quite a lot of honey in the drink. I personally prefer glass of red wine on the drier end of the spectrum when reading comic books on cold winter nights… but in this cocktail the aroma is “too thin” with my regular dry wines.

The colour of the cocktail is deep, deep red (but see “black colouring”, below): it’s not black, very close to it… but it can be thought to represent the blood and gore rampaging Venom leaves behind.

Black food colouring: “Of course Venom The Cocktail should be black. Let’s just add some E153…” Surprise, surprise! Black colouring turns everything, well, black… except red wine?!? First, it’s black… and after a few minutes you’ll notice the colour is very, very dark brown, and matte. Yes, it looks like water in the dirt pool on the side of the road.

So, you might want to skip this… unless you want to emphasize how revolting Symbiote is 😀

Anyway, as usual: shaking something with red wine gives “muddy look” for the cocktail (until microscopic air bubbles dissipate), stirring results in more decent look. In either case: black colouring with red wine gives you something abhorrent from outer sace.

Tequila: This cocktail works well enough with reposado tequila, but it’s way more better with Skittles tequila.

Cynar: There’s no way around this, you’ll need Cynar… Jägermeister doesn’t function as satisfying substitute. Remember to check out Black Mamba when you open the Cynar bottle.

So what’s the cocktail like? It’s very “bull-bodied”. I tried to simulate the sensation when you’re overcome by Symbiote: you’ll try to fight it any way you can, but still it suffocates you… combination of sweet, bitter and sour (tequila sour, sharp citrus sour kinda “breaks the spell” on this one)… At first I wasn’t satistied with the colour, “the alchemy” of red wine and black colouring surprised me… but with time I’ve grown content with the “alchemical anomaly”: the colour is close enough to black, it’s up to you if you want to emphasize all the gory glory of Venom or the loathing of Symbiote.

 

Here we are, two cocktails that finally got published. So what’s next? It’s August, so I guess it has to be something to cool down with in late summer afternoons…