The Decoy Cocktail

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, one and all. For your Monday night Happy Hour pleasure, I give you The Decoy Cocktail a.k.a. Duck, Duck, Drink. So what’s the trick behind The Decoy? Well first of all, it’s about as Irish as I am, which is to say, not at all. But it has whiskey (single malt Scotch) in it. I’m not going to lie, The Decoy Cocktail is going to be both a pain and an expense to assemble, but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to make you want to anyway, once you hear about the, wait for it, Mexican food that inspired it. The Decoy is both really cool, and it’s REALLY delicious. The smoky cocktail served “up” makes it perfect for another SNOW DAY (I just can’t make any more Snowstorm Hot Chocolate– it would break my heart) like the one we had in Philly today. Of course, a drink like this has one helluva back story. I mean, I don’t go out of my way to design the most expensive hard to assemble drinks possible. That said, I do keep a deep liquor cabinet and people buy me unusual ingredients as gifts so I did have everything on hand, but I recognize that’s not reasonable. So how did we get to The Decoy?

The Decoy is inspired by an amazing meal I had at Taco Maria, in Orange County. The night was perfect; it started off with wine and cheese tasting with my sister, moved on to meeting up with a close childhood friend for some reminiscing about Door County and scheming on how to raise chickens with blue eggs, and featured a gorgeous and exciting four course tasting menu of unexpected, elevated, and artful Mexican dishes created by Chef Carlos Salgado. I’m not sure what the highlight was, but his duck featuring, braised endive, burnt vanilla and hibiscus, which was smoky, bold, subtle and smooth all at once, made it home with me as inspiration for The Decoy. The four course meal was paired with some very cool wines and curated by little chats with Chef Carlos that made it clear he knows a lot about a lot including where to buy the coolest fruit (limequats from the Santa Monica farmers market), a cocktail party explanation of stochasticity (randomness), and sensible advice on hominy. The Decoy relies on the Scotch (I can’t say it enough, peat is key… don’t skimp on quality) to create the sensation of the meaty richness of the duck, as well as the smoky quality of the burnt vanilla, the Rhuby botanical and rhubarb bitters balances out the Scotch and fills in for the endive; the hibiscus, which has a slightly citric taste and the vanilla are fairly straight forward. Once you’ve got The Decoy assembled, invite over your very best friends. They’re in for a treat.

Cry for help: When it comes to me and Scotch, it’s all about the peat. If anyone can recommend a peaty Scotch that isn’t so dear, I’m all ears. That said, I’ve done a lot of research and I’m still shelling out for Laphroig.