Painkiller
Dark rum, pineapple, orange and coconut cream, buried under fresh nutmeg.
At a Glance
Story
Cream of coconut and coconut milk are not interchangeable and this is the drink where people learn it the hard way. Cream of coconut is coconut cooked down with sugar into something closer to condensed milk, thick and sweet and built for exactly this job. Coconut milk is unsweetened and thin, and swapping it in gives you a pale watery thing with no body at all. Shake the tin before you open it, because it separates on the shelf into oil on top and paste underneath.
Ingredients
- 2 oz dark rumPusser's is the original, any decent dark rum works
- 4 oz pineapple juice
- 1 oz fresh orange juice
- 1 oz cream of coconutCoco López or Coco Real, not coconut milk
- crushed ice
- whole nutmegfor grating
Method
Tiki is a wonderful idea and a ghastly amount of work, all those syrups and falernums and little umbrellas. This one is four things and a grater. It comes from the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, which has no dock, so you swim ashore and pay with wet money.
- Fill a tall glass with crushed ice and set it aside to frost.
- Shake the rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and cream of coconut hard with ice for 15 seconds. It wants a proper shake, not a stir, because the coconut needs beating into the juice or it hangs about in ribbons.
- Pour everything, ice and all, into the frosted glass.
- Grate a great deal of fresh nutmeg over the top. More than feels reasonable. The whole drink is sweet and round and the nutmeg is the only thing giving it an edge, so a pre-ground dusty jar will not do.
More to cook
A lasagna with a short fuse
The golden lasagna's wilder sister, all smoky sausage and charred poblano with a chipotle streak, cooled by a lime drizzle.
Golden lasagna
A carrot lasagna so light you could eat the lot and still fancy pudding.
Spatchcock chicken over leeks and greedy bread
One bird on a bed of leeks, and torn baguette underneath drinking up every drop.
The tomato pasta worth the airfare
Three kinds of tomato, a whisper of anchovy and enough lemon to keep it honest.
Bagna cauda for the anchovy-shy
The warm garlic and anchovy bath that quietly wins every party. Melting, not fishy, and gone before the coats are off.
Chunky chimichurri for steak night
Parsley, oregano, garlic and vinegar, chopped not blended. The steak's best friend.
Five-minute harissa yogurt
Smoky, cooling and quick. The yogurt does the calming, the harissa does the talking.
One-pot Pugliese sausage and potatoes
Peasant food that minds itself in the oven, as happy on a Tuesday as it is at a three-hour lunch.
Salsa cruda for peak tomatoes
Grated ripe tomato, garlic and basil. The less you do to it, the better it is.
Salsa verde, anchovy and all
Sharp, briny and green. The Italian one, not the tomatillo one.
Grated tomato and Calabrian chili
Grated tomato with a Calabrian kick and a lemon lift. Sauce or dip, your call.
Za'atar yogurt with sumac
Herby, tangy and green-flecked. The cooling spoon for anything off the grill.
Zhoug with a proper temper
The Yemeni green sauce that bites back. The cardamom is the tell.
Lemon pesto spaghetti, all zest and no juice
The Amalfi trick: zest steeped into the pasta water and pounded into the pesto, toasted almonds underneath, not a drop of juice anywhere.
Shrimp in a fish sauce caramel
Sugar taken to the edge of burnt, then doused with fish sauce: Vietnam's sweet-and-savoury backbone, wrapped around shrimp over jasmine rice.