Has it happened to you? With me, many times. That when you are warming up to an evening, the drink at hand is about to get over. And then, however much you try with the refill, to get the same taste in your tongue, or the same intensity of the evening you have reached, it is strangely never like before!
Kushagra Nagrath, co-owner of Firefly, a recently-opened bar-restaurant in New Friends Colony, New Delhi, offers a solution to this nagging problem of mine. “This happens with a lot of people. You want to drink but don’t want to order twice because many times you feel you have settled down to a taste which the refill can’t deliver you. So we thought up a long drink,” he says. The bartender at Firefly, Amit Singh, has named it Orange Caipiroska.
Those who have not been to the South American giant, Brazil, Caipiroska is claimed to be its national drink. The base used here is vodka, not cachaca.
But now, if there is one important thing that is common between Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay besides football, it has to be Caipirinha. Caipirinha is a form of Caipiroska. With many international brands of vodka entering the market of these countries, the drink — at times also called Caipivodka — has become pretty popular. Like different versions of Mojito and Martini in our bars.
Well, coming back to Amit’s Orange Caipiroska, let me tell you how he achieves this tall beauty, ideal for a careless banter, more preferable on a summer evening though. Amit takes a tall tumbler glass, drops 8 or 9 chunks of orange in it. He then adds one bar spoon of brown sugar (about 15 gm), a dash of triple sec “to enhance flavours”, 60 ml vodka, 10 to 15 ml orange juice and crushed ice. Before giving it a gentle stir, he tops the concoction with lemonade. “Mind you, a gentle stir,” says Amit, “Or else, the drink runs the risk of turning bitter.”
Caipiroska ideally is served in an old fashioned glass with a lime wedge thrust on its rim. With the amount of lemonade going into Amit’s Caipiroska, you possibly don’t need a wedge here. What you need for his drink is but an entire evening free and a great conversation.
