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THE MARDI GRAS MARTINI
Laissez les bon temps rouler - Let the good times roll!
Ingredients: Light Rum, Dark Rum, Passion Fruit Juice, Orange Juice, Lime Juice, Simple Syrup, Grenadine, Rainbow Sugar Crystals, Orange Slice, Maraschino Cherry
The cocktail most associated with Mardi Gras is probably the famous Hurricane created at Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans. Of course, being a port city with a colorful pirate history, New Orleans is well known for it's rum cocktails and the Hurricane has rum in abundance.
Created during World War II when many spirits were hard to obtain, the Hurricane and many other now famous Mardi Gras cocktails featured Rum which was readily available and cheap.
Here I have basically cut down the size of the measurements in order to fit the Hurricane into a martini glass but the flavor is all Carnival!
My favorite part of this cocktail is the fun way I suggest you rim the glass. Taking sugar crystals in a whole rainbow of colors you dip a portion of the rim in one color at a time until you have rimmed the glass. This gives you a rainbow effect on your glass rim!
If you really want to put the Mardi Gras spirit into your martini, wrap one or two strands of Mardi Gras beads around the stem of the glass and toss a gold foiled candy coin into the drink!
WHY IS IT CALLED FAT TUESDAY?
Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday aka Shrove Tuesday. It is the culmination of the Carnival celebration that begins on Epiphany and ends the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday which is the beginning of Lent.
It's called Fat Tuesday because it's the last day before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season and is therefore a day of feasting. The alternate moniker for this Tuesday before Lent is Shrove Tuesday which derives it's name from the verb "to shrive", meaning to obtain absolution for one's sins.
Traditionally celebrated by parades, parties, masked balls and general abandoned merriment where beads and gold coins are tossed from floats, tops are lifted up and decorum is left on the street along with the trash (which, btw, is weighed every year in N'awlins to measure how successful the party was), Mardi Gras is the biggest, longest lasting party on this planet!
Mardi Gras has become associated with New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro but it is celebrated the world over, especially in areas where the Catholic Church held influence.
Throwing a Mardi Gras Party?
Check out my Party Appetizers, Canapes, Tapas & Amuse Bouche!
You might enjoy my other Holiday Martinis
or my other Rum Martinis
