March Drink of the Month: What the Dickens? Cocktail

Not a lot of writing to go with this month's cocktail. I've spent the past two weekend clearing out years worth of brush from our back yard, having now rented two roll-off yard waste dumpsters and filling both of them. However, I didn't want another month to go by without a drink for my three devoted readers, so I offer for you this drink from the folks at Imbibe online, which I have been making for friends and family all month.

Fresh Thyme market opened up this month in South Bend, billing themselves as an "indoor farmers market." They have great produce deals, and I've been able to find fresh pineapple on sale for the past few weeks. There are plenty of great tiki drinks that you can make with fresh pineapple juice, but last month I found a recipe for the "What the Dickens?" cocktail from the folks at the Corner Office bar in Denver. It has plenty of tiki notes (lime, pineapple, rum) but compliments these flavors with cognac, an unexpected ingredient. If you can find fresh pineapple, by all means, use it in this drink! It is 100% superior to canned pineapple juice. Pineapple can be an intimidating ingredient to use, just because it takes a couple of minutes to clean and prep a pineapple for juicing, but it is worth it! Here is my pro tip: while you can use a juicer to extract pineapple juice from the fruit, it often leaves you with frothy juice (or at least my juicer does). For a quicker, cleaner method of extracting pineapple juice, simply cut up pineapple into chunks and place them in a citrus press (above). You get much clearer juice without all that by-product, and it's quick! As a bonus, you don't have to juice the whole fruit in order to make it seem worth your while to clean out the industrial juicer. You can just juice a few chunks and save the rest for eating, garnishing, or juicing at a later date.

Here is the recipe for the "What the Dickens?" Cocktail:

In a cocktail shaker, combine:

1 oz rum (I used Flor De Cana 7 year - I liked aged rum better to accent the flavor notes of the cognac)
0.5 oz Cognac (at least VS, or why bother? VSOP is better)
0.75 oz simple syrup
0.5 oz lime juice (fresh squeezed of course)
1.5 oz pineapple juice (see above)
3 dash Peychaud's bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a Collins glass filled with crushed ice.

A pair of What the Dickens? cocktails on my new bar top

I hope you enjoy your What the Dickens? cocktail!