Brian Bondy
 
We first discovered Limoncina’s stronger brother drink, Limoncello, while visiting the Amalfi coast with Mary Helen and Natalia.    I brought home the recipe on a kitchen towel purchased on Capri.
 
It’s a great after dinner drink.    As an alternative to sipping, try pouring a shot over lemon sorbet or mix with seltzer water over ice.

6 Ripe Lemons
2 1/2 Cups Vodka
2  Cups Sugar
2 Cups Water
½ vanilla bean.

Wash the lemons well. Carefully remove the peel only, cutting away as much of the white pith as possible.  Use a carrot peeler.  Put the rind in a sterilized glass jar with a lid, and pour the vodka over top, add the ½ vanilla bean. Cover, and store for 10 days. After 10 days, prepare sugar syrup with the sugar and water. Bring them to a boil, and then simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool. Filter the vodka and lemon peel, by pouring through cheesecloth. Mix with the syrup, and leave for about 10 days to mature. Place in the refrigerator before serving. This liqueur will keep for months and makes a great holiday gift or hostess gift.

Note:  Chill and serve in chilled liqueur glasses; it is a refreshing summer after dinner drink. Use Grain Alcohol (same recipe) for Limoncello, which can be stored in freezer.

​Intro – January 2020
 
The New Year usually gets off to a very wet start—champagne or eggnog or punch, etc.  My personal preference to greet the New Year is hot-buttered rum.
 
This is a very old libation much loved by the American colonists, but it probably descended from drinks imbibed at the time in Merry Olde England, whose citizens loved quaffing hot spicy drinks in Winter.  One Colonial practice was to warm the ingredients by plunging a red-hot poker into the mug.  Rum was cheap and originated in nearby Caribbean islands, where sugar cane was grown with slave labor.  The cane was cooked down to molasses which was shipped to New England, where distilleries were built to turn molasses into rum.  Nowadays, the entire process usually takes place close to sugar-cane production not only in the Caribbean but also in Latin America.
 
Recently, good friends and I gathered around a blazing fire burning in a firepit set up in the snow and drank hot-buttered rum.  We did not feel the cold.
 
National Hot-Buttered Rum Day is coming up soon--January 17.  Get ready to celebrate by mixing up a batch of spicy hot-buttered rum mix per this recipe

​This drink is wonderful on a cold wintry day especially in front of a roaring fire—indoors or out.  It can be given to children without the rum, and it will soothe sore throats and reduce coughing.  A covered batch of hot-buttered rum mix can sit in the refrigerator for months and still be good.  Developed by a bartender in Oregon, this recipe was published in Gourmet magazine in the ‘60s.