The last couple of weeks, here in Wisconsin, have been unseasonably warm. We hope for days in the 70′s in May, though often it only gets into the 60′s, but the last week or two has seen temperatures in the upper 80′s and even lower 90′s. Looking for ways to cool off I decided to make a few drinks based on rhubarb, seeing as I have a huge patch of the stuff just begging to get used up.

Rhubarb has the same tart quality that makes citrus fruits such wonderfully refreshing drinks when the weather gets hot. Unfortunately it doesn’t contain much sweetness so the first thing I needed to do was create a syrup with the rhubarb to sue as a base for any drinks I made. After doing some experimenting I decided on pairing the rhubarb with sugar and lime to form the syrup from which I would then create a couple of drinks.

For the alcoholic version I wanted to create I decided to use rum as the liquor. After numerous experiments and tastings (oh, the sacrifices I make for this blog) it was determined that standard white rum worked best. While, generally, I am more of a fan of gold or dark rums, I found that these rums had too much character that tended to overpower the taste of the rhubarb. Rhubarb may be quite tart, but its flavor profile is rather delicate and can easily be overwhelmed by other strong flavors.

Rhubarb Lime Syrup
2 pounds rhubarb, cut into chunks
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 cups water
1/2 cup fresh lime juice

Combine rhubarb, sugar, and water in a nonreactive sauce pan, bring to a boil and allow to simmer for 10 minutes or until the rhubarb starts to fall apart. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Strain liquid into a pitcher and add the lime juice. Chill until ready to use.

Rhubarb Spritzer – nonalcoholic

4 oz. rhubarb syrup
seltzer water

Fill a glass with ice. Add rhubarb syrup and top with seltzer water. Give a quick stir and garnish with a lime wedge.

Rhubarb Rum Cocktail

3 oz. rhubarb syrup
2 oz. Bacardi rum
1/2 oz. grenadine (preferably homemade)
seltzer water

Fill a Collins glass with ice. Add the syrup, rum and grenadine. Stir to combine. Top with seltzer water and garnish with a lime wheel.

In my long career, in the restaurant world, I’ve held most every position there is, from dishwasher and busboy to chef and manager and pretty much every job inbetween. While I have enjoyed cooking the most, my second favorite job has always been bartender. I love the interaction with the patrons and enjoyed the showy aspect of creating a good cocktail. I took pride in the drinks I poured and would handcraft each one.

While this country may be experiencing a “cocktail revolution” or “re-awakening” I still am disappointed by the number of bartenders that really have no clue about how to make a proper cocktail. To them, it’s just a matter of throwing some booze in a glass, adding a premade mixer, stirring it up and maybe adding some soda. There’s no thought behind how the drink is made and the general mindset seems to be “the stronger the better.” While this attitude seems to be changing, at least in the cities and at higher end places, it’s still business as usual at the vast majority of bars. That’s way I mostly drink beer. It’s pretty hard for a bartender to screw that up, but ask for something as simple as a Manhattan or Old Fashioned and all bets are off. And forget about any of the more complex drinks that require precision in measuring and a little technique. To most of today’s bartenders, the word jigger is a bad word and most would rather be dead than caught using the measuring device. Unfortunately though, well made cocktails need to be measured out. Without measuring there is virtually no way to get the proper balance a drink needs.

But even measuring doesn’t do much good when you add crappy ingredients to a cocktail. Bottled sour mix, OJ from frozen concentrate, and a whole host of packaged bar mixes might help to speed things along at busy bars, but the certainly have no place in the making of good cocktail. It saddens me when I see someone order a margarita with a premium tequila only to watch the bartender ruin it by using a bottled mix instead of fresh juice.

That said, today I was playing around with cocktails at home. I had this crazy idea that I wanted to come up with a way to combine gin and fresh tarragon, one of the first herbs to come up in my herb garden. There wasn’t much out there, on the web or in any of my cocktail books to guide me in combining these two items so I was on my own. Grapefruit seemed like a natural way to bridge the gap as grapefruit pairs well with tarragon and all citrus fruits pair well with gin. I then needed a sweetener. Grenadine would work perfectly in this aspect, providing sweetness, flavor, and a little color to the cocktail, but I refused to use the store bought stuff as it tastes nasty and has no resemblance to pomegranate, which is what grenadine was originally made from. So I decided to make my own.

Homemade Grenadine

12oz POM pomegranate juice
12oz sugar
1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a large container with a tight fitting lid. Shake the mixture until your arms feel like they are going to fall off. Allow to settle for about 30 minutes and if there is undissolved sugar settling on the bottom, repeat the shaking process. Continue until all sugar is dissolved. Store, tightly covered in the refrigerator. Will last for about 3-4 weeks.

Once that was solved I decided I wanted to give my cocktail an old fashioned look and texture to it. I wanted a nice foam to top the cocktail and I wanted it to have a nice velvety texture to it. There is only one way to achieve the look and feel I wanted-raw egg white. Okay, I know what you are thinking, “Gross!!!” but egg whites have been used for years in cocktails, and trust me, by the time the cocktail has been properly shaken you won’t even know it is there.Many drinks relied on egg whites, the most familiar being the Ramos Gin Fizz and the whole family of Sours (Pisco Sour, Whiskey Sour, etc.). Nowadays, bottled sour mixes achieve that foaming action through the used of chemicals and additives. I think I’d rather take my chances with the raw egg white. If you are worried about food poisoning you can always use pasteurized egg whites but let’s look at the reality. Statistics say that about 1 in 20,000 eggs is infected with salmonella. That means you a 20 times greater chance of dying by drowning, 4 times better chance of dying by choking on your food, and a 3 times better chance of dying from a slip and fall, than you do from contracting salmonella. Even then, if you are a healthy adult the chances of actually contracting the illness is even much slimmer. But again, I urge you to try this cocktail using the egg white, even if it is pasteurized. It is just not the same without it.

I have titled this drink “The Dragon’s Tongue Cocktail” as an old name for tarragon is Dragon’s Wort. Make sure you go lightly on the tarragon. It is an assertive herb and can easily overpower the other flavors in this drink.

Dragon’s Tongue Cocktail

2 oz. Gin (I used Tanqueray)
4 oz. grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed
1/2 oz. homemade grenadine
1 small sprig tarragon (3-4 leaves)
1 egg white

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add ingredients and shake for at least 1 minute. Don’t skimp on the shaking as it is this shaking that will create the lovely foam that sits on top of the drink. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and serve.

One January 1st, I posted about the dish, Hoppin’ John, and how, in many households, it is eaten on New Year’s Day to bring good luck. I could have chosen any number of recipes, from around the world, that are eaten for the same reason- to bring luck in the new year. I think one of the reasons I chose Hoppin’ John is because I’ve been thinking about my time down South for a few weeks. What got me thinking about my time living in Atlanta and New Orleans is the fact that a few weeks ago I got a craving for Hurricanes.

Anyone who has spent any time in New Orleans should be familiar with the bright red, potent drink carried all through the French Quarter in gigantic plastic “to-go” cups. It’s the drink that made Pat O’briens famous. The story goes, that in the early 40′s Scotch and Whiskey were hard to come by because of the war. Liquor distributors down south would force bar owners to purchase numerous cases of cheap rum, from the Caribbean just to get a case or two of the other liquors. Pat O’brien, facing a mountain of rum created a new drink using rum, orange juice, passion fruit syrup and lime juice, put it into hurricane shaped glasses (so named because they resembled hurricane lamps) and thus created the Hurricane. The drink became very popular among sailors as it was cheap and potent and remains popular today, not because it is cheap-Pat O’briens charges a hefty price-but because they still pack a mean kick.

As a young cook in New Orleans, me and my friends usually tried to stay away from the touristy spots in the Quarter, most often seeking out those shady, less wholesome (and that’s saying a lot in a town not known for its wholesomeness) bars that border the Quarter. Occasionally though, we would venture into the the heart of the Quarter in search of young ladies who had come to New Orleans to party. Hey….I was 23 years old, unattached, and we lived by the motto “work hard, play hard.” We struck out way more often than not, but that was okay in our minds. We still had a great time….I think. Many of these nights found us hanging out at Pat O’briens, throwing back hurricanes with wild abandon. Luckily, my roommate and I lived just off of one of the major bus lines that ran 24/7 so we always had a ride home no matter what time of night or morning.

Looking back on those nights, at Pat O’briens, those hurricanes were pretty nasty. All alcohol bite with a lot of sugar and just enough fruit juice to make them palatable. The drink has come a long way from it’s early days and unfortunately it hasn’t weathered well. Nowadays, you can even purchase a powdered drink mix so that you can take the taste of New Orleans home with you. Don’t bother unless you are the kind of person who also doesn’t mind subsitituing orange Kool-aid for orange juice in your Screwdrivers, Mimosas, or Captain & OJ.

Searching the web for recipes is quite confusing also. While there are a number of sites that give some great recipes, there are also a ton of sites out there that are offering up recipes, for Hurricanes, made with vodka, gin, tequila, amaretto, or worse, all of those alcohols together, in the same drink.

Just because a Hurricane is potent doesn’t mean it’s an “everything but the kitchen sink” kind of drink like a Long Island Iced Tea, Bahama Mama, or Alabama Slammer. Like so many of the cocktails created in the first half of the 20th century, the Hurricane requires only a handful of ingredients, mixed in proper proportion to create a well balanced drink. Be careful though, this drink is still quite potent and it’s easy to overdo it as they don’t taste nearly as strong as they are.

Hurricane
4 ounces gold rum*
3 ounces passion fruit juice or puree (I use Looza brand juice as that is what I can get most often, if you can get puree, then even better though if you use puree you might want to also add a splash of simple syrup as the puree is rather tart)
2 ounces orange juice
1/4 each lime
2 Tbsp. grenadine

Fill a hurricane glass or pint glass with ice and set aside. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add all the ingredients. Shake to mix then strain into prepared glass. Garnish with a cherry and orange slice.

*Many tropical style cocktails benefit from the use of gold or dark rums as opposed to white rums as gold and dark rums bring much more flavor to the drink and add a nice complexity. While this drink would still be good made with white rum, personally I would never substitute more than half the rum with white rum.

Today was the first big snow storm of the season. 12+ inches of wet, heavy snow, accompanied by high winds, shut down schools and businesses across Wisconsin and, according to news reports, across a good portion of the nation.

Living 45 minutes away from where I work, there was little chance that I would be making it in. A call to the jail administrator, where I work, confirmed that driving would not be in my best interests as long as I made sure there was enough staff on hand to feed the inmates. Luckily most of my staff lives much closer and they were able to make it to work. While I would still be doing some work from home, that meant a full day of hanging with the wife and daughter, the former also not able to go to work and the latter, kept home from day care.

First priority though would be shoveling out the driveway, a task I was not looking forward to considering the amount of snow we received and the heaviness of said snow, but it had to be done. My wife and I have a very set division of labor when it comes to shoveling snow; I shovel and she makes the Hot Chocolate for when I am done. Somebody is getting the better deal out of this and I don’t think it is me, though a cup of homemade cocoa is a nice reward for an early morning workout. I’m not talking that crappy, instant Hot Chocolate, but the real deal, made from scratch.

I don’t know why instant Hot Cocoa is so popular. First off, it tastes like crap. I don’t care how much of the stuff you use, it always tastes watery and insipid. Secondly, homemade cocoa is not that hard to make and it doesn’t take that much longer than the instant. Even the simple recipe on the side of cocoa powder containers is 100 times better than the instant stuff so why do yourself the disservice?

As you can probably tell, I am sort of a closet Hot Chocolate snob. It’s true. I can admit it, and I have numerous recipes to prove it. many of my recipes are rich, decadent adult versions of Hot Chocolate but I also have quite a few less sinful recipes, for every day consumption, that will please all tastes.

Since the whole family is home the recipe I offer up is a great all around cocoa recipe. It is rich enough and has just a hint of a bitter edge to please adults, but is still sweet enough and not so overly rich, that kids enjoy it also.

Every Day Hot Chocolate

3 cups Whole Milk
1 cup Half and Half
1 cup Semisweet Chocolate Chips
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
1/4 cup Sugar
1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
1 pinch Salt

Combine milk, half and half, chocolate, chips, cocoa powder, and sugar in a pot and heat over medium high heat, stirring regularly so that the chocolate doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn. Once the chocolate has melted simmer for 5 minutes, then remove from the heat. Stir in the vanilla and salt. Serve immediately with your favorite garnish.

Back in 1993 I moved to Atlanta, a good 12 hour drive from Indiana and my family. Luckily, I wasn’t there long before I made many friends, many of them in the same position I was in with the holidays coming up and no family to spend it with. It was then that I decided that I would throw an annual Thanksgiving potluck get together. The premise was simple. I would cook a turkey, the dressing, and the gravy, and everyone else was to bring their favorite dish from their Thanksgivings at home.

The first year I did this we had a modest amount of people drop by. I think it was in the 12-15 person range but it quickly grew and by the time I left Atlanta I as hosting 30-40 people who would drop in throughout the day, with the main meal seating anywhere from 15 to 25 of my friends. Not only were friends with family far away attending, but friends with family right in Atlanta opted to skip the family drama and spend the holiday with us.

This was the start of my Bloody Mary holiday tradition. As the size of the group grew so did my cooking chores. I was still only doing the turkey, dressing and gravy, but now with so many people I was cooking 2 birds and numerous pans of dressing. Since all I had was a standard home oven I had to start pretty early in the morning to get everything cooked in time. I needed a way to help me pass the time and since I was, and am, a big fan of Bloody Marys, I figured they’d be the perfect diversion. I was right, they were the perfect diversion to the long hours of watching over the turkey as my friends slept in, fighting their hangovers from the pre-holiday festivities of the night before. And since I was usually suffering right along beside them, the drinks made a great “hair of the dog” cure to my self imposed ills.

Now, some of you might question the intelligence of consuming large quantities of alcohol while working around large pans of hot food and very sharp knives. While I don’t necessarily recommend this to everyone (I am a professional I will remind you) I can say I made it through all those holiday meals without any major scars. Nowadays though, I limit myself to just a few early morning Bloody Marys while preparing our Thanksgiving feast, and maybe just a few more if someone else is doing the cooking.

So I offer up my version of the Perfect Bloody Mary. I say “my version” because, for Bloody Mary aficionados, a Bloody Mary is a very personalized thing. Luckily this is my blog so I get to give you my favorite version. Feel free to offer up yours in the comments section.

Pete’s Perfect Bloody Mary

3 oz. Vodka (either plain or pepper infused-or create your own infused vodka)
6 oz. Tomato Juice
1/2 tsp. Horseradish
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
1 tsp. Dill Pickle liquid
2-6 dashes Hot Sauce (depending on the heat level you like, I usually go for 4-6)
2 wedges Lemon, cut into 1/8ths
Black Pepper
Celery Salt
1 each Celery rib, 1 1/2 – 2 inches taller than the glass

Fill a large glass with ice. Pour in the vodka. Add the horseradish, Worcestershire, pickle liquid, hot sauce, juice from one of the lemon wedges, and a couple of shakes of black pepper. Top with tomato juice. Pour entire contents between a cocktail shaker and glass a few times to mix, leaving drink the in the cocktail shaker. Use the remaining lemon to moisten the rim of glass. Pour some celery salt into a dish just large enough to accommodate the rim of the glass then crust the rim with the celery salt. garnish glass with lemon wedge and add the celery stick. Pour contents back into the glass and enjoy.

A few words about garnishes. Just about anything goes when garnishing a Bloody Mary; celery, pickle spears, olives, pickled Brussels sprouts, pickled mushrooms, poached shrimp (nice in a Cajun Bloody Mary or in one using Clamato juice), lemons, limes, etc. In Wisconsin they even like to garnish them with beef sticks. Just avoid the temptation to turn your cocktail into a salad bar. 1 or 2 garnishes is sufficient. I hate getting a Bloody Mary that is so heavily garnished I have to eat my way through to be able to get a drink!

Summer is upon us and that means many things to each and every one of us. To me it means swimming, blended margaritas, watching baseball, dinner outdoors, picnics and a whole host of other things. It also means sun tea. I love sun tea and personally feel that tea, brewed by the sun over a couple of hours makes the best tea for iced tea. Come to our house in summertime and you will find a jar of sun tea either in the fridge or brewing on the deck. Like a good boy hailing from Indiana, who take their cue from Southerners, I prefer my iced tea sweet, though not as sweet as they do in the south. I also like my tea accented with mint, Spearmint to be exact. I just find it so refreshing and rejuvenating after an afternoon of mowing or yard work.

Sun tea is not hard to make, just fill a clear glass jar with cool water and toss in a few bags of tea leaves. I usually add 10 bags to a gallon jug. Place outside in direct sunlight and allow to steep for 2-4 hours. Remove tea bags and chill. To add mint, rinse the mint, after picking and place it in the jar before adding the other ingredients. With a wooden spoon bruise the mint to help release its essence then precede with the above instructions. To sweeten the tea, while the tea is brewing dissolve 3/4 cup of sugar in 1/2 cup of water over high heat. When all dissolved remove from heat. Add simple syrup to the sun tea when you remove the tea bags. That’s all there is too it. Enjoy!!

And now for my rant. Do a web search on sun tea and you will come across numerous sites spouting the CDC (Center for Disease Control) warning against making sun tea. Because the brewing tea sits right in the middle of the temperature danger zone (the zone at which bacteria grow like wildfire) there is a risk of foodborne illness. Okay, I admit, in theory they have a point. It is possible to get sick from sun tea, and I am sure there are some cases on record to prove their point, but I have never in my life heard of anyone getting sick off of sun tea, and many in my extended family have been making it for years. Sure there might be a risk, but there’s a risk with just stepping outside every day, crossing the street, driving a car, etc. If you listen to all the CDC and the FDA has to say then no more soft set or sunny side up eggs, all steaks and burgers would be cooked well done. Forget about sushi, sashimi, carpaccio, and steak tartar. As it is, they won’t let you make your own decisions about whether you want to drink unpasteurized milk or eat cheese made with unpasteurized milk if it has been aged less than 60 days, all to keep you safe. Don’t get me wrong I think people should be made aware of the risks involved in eating and preparing certain foods, but so many of these statements come across as scare tactics. They often are made to sound dire, like “Drink this and die!” What they won’t tell you are the stats. It seems to me we’ve become scared of our own shadows. Thanks for the warning CDC, but I think I can handle the risk factor of sun tea and just to up the ante, I think I’ll order in some sushi also.

Years ago, when I attended New England Culinary Institute there was a little, local distillery that made a cucumber flavored gin. We had discovered it by accident, but I was glad we had as it made the greatest Gin & Tonics I had ever tasted. While the juniper flavor was still there it didn’t overpower and the combination of the cucumber, lime and tonic created a wonderfully refreshing beverage meant for chasing the heat of summer away. Veranda Gin was well ahead of its time. It was one of the few well crafted gins being created in small batches and using flavors beyond juniper to give their drink a unique taste all its own. Today many distilleries are experimenting with gin and flavors besides juniper, but it took them 10 years to catch up to what Vermont Distillers had created. Unfortunately, I believe that Vermont Distillers no longer exists as I’ve spent a number of hours searching the web to find any information on them. Most references I find are dated from the mid 1990′s and earlier. I had never forgotten those Gin & Tonics though and over the years I have perfected my own cucumber accented Gin & Tonic, which I happily share with you all.

Cucumber Juice
1 1/2 Cucumbers
2 Tbsp. Water

Peel the whole cucumber, but leave the 1/2 cucumber unpeeled. Roughly chop and place in a blender along with the water. Blend until as smooth as possible (about 1 minute). Strain through a fine mesh strainer pressing down on the pulp to extract as much liquid as possible. Depending on your cucumbers this should yield approximately 2 cups-plenty for a night of drinking with friends and then some unless you’re a lush like me!

Summertime Gin & Tonic
1 1/2 oz. Gin (preferably one with a little less juniper flavor such as Plymouth’s or Tanqueray 10)
2 oz. Cucumber Juice
2 wedges Lime (cut into 1/8th)
Tonic Water

Fill a tall Collins glass with ice. Add the gin and cucumber juice. Squeeze 1 wedge of lime into the glass and drop the lime in also. Fill with tonic water and garnish with the additional lime, allowing your guest to add more lime flavor if they want.

Last night Wanda and I headed up to Appleton, WI to attend the first “Grilling with Beer” cook-off presented by Wisconsin Distributors and held at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel. It may have not been the most romantic of dates, but we were childless for the next few hours and what’s not to enjoy about beer and grilling? The weather was perfect, warm but not too hot, and the courtyard of the hotel was filled with the mingled scents of grilling meat and charcoal. The cook-off featured 10 chefs, from various styles of restaurants. Each chef was to prepare at least part of their dish on grills during the event and each chef was given a specific beer which they were to use in the creation of their dish, as well as pour during the event. The beers ranged from the mundane such as “Bud Light Lime” and “Landshark” to quirky such as Bud’s newest, “Wild Blue” a blueberry flavored beer, to sublime such as the 2 offerings from New Belgium, “Fat Tire” and “1554.” The food too, ran the gamut from uninspired and poorly executed, such as the boneless rib on a stick that was so tough I couldn’t chew through it try as I might, to well thought out and perfectly presented.

Of all the dishes I tried, three stood out among the rest and 1 tried really hard but just fell short. That dish was a flank steak served with basmati rice and an Indian inspired sauce. Since they were pairing with an IPA (Indian Pale Ale) I thought the Indian influence would be nice, but over cooked basmati and the choice of beef made the dish fail. How often do you see beef in Indian cuisine. They would have been better off with Lamb, which would have been great, or even chicken or pork-anything but beef. The three stand outs that night were the “Urban Shrimp with a 3-1-2 Punch,” the Grilled Pork Eye presented by “Big Tomatoes,” and the Grilled Elk with New Belgium’s “1554.” The shrimp were butterflied open, stuffed with a sliver of jalapeno, wrapped in bacon then grilled and glazed with a sweet BBQ sauce accented with Goose Island’s 312 Urban Wheat Beer. It’s only failing was the couscous salad it was served on. The Israeli couscous had been over cooked and had turned mushy, so on my second trip up to try a shrimp I just tossed the salad aside and ate the shrimp. “Big Tomatoes” Grilled pork was sauced with a Pomegranate BBQ Sauce accented with New Belgium’s “Fat Tire” and served with Grilled Corn and Poblano Ragout. The grilled elk, presented by Stone Cellar Brew Pub had been marinated in “1554″ and served with 2 sauces and marinated artichokes all of which had included “1554″ in some way or another.

We never did get to see who eventually won, though my guess is the shrimp dish, as our time was running out and our daughter was waiting for us to pick her up. We reluctantly grabbed one last nibble, cast our votes for the people’s choice and headed home.

I might have missed the Kentucky Derby but that’s no reason not to enjoy a Mint Julep every now and then. As an aficiando of Bourbon I usually prefer it straight with just an ice cube or two to chill it down and add just enough water to help open up the bouquet. I do make a couple of exceptions to this rule, though, for Juleps, Manhattans and Old Fashioneds, the latter two being my choice most often. Every once in awhile though I love a good Mint Julep, but it needs to be made right. I’m picky about my Juleps and since most bars, at least here in Wisconsin, can’t make a Manhattan or Old Fashioned properly, I can’t expect them to make a good Julep so if I want one I have to make it myself. The very first consideration when making a Mint Julep is Bourbon selection. My favorite Bourbons are Basil Hayden’s and Woodford Reserve, but these are Bourbons meant for drinking straight. They are too nuanced and expensive to use in a cocktail, so I usually turn to Maker’s Mark. Whatever you do stay away from Jim Beam. It might be fine in some cocktails, i.e. Jim and Coke or Whiskey Sours, but just doesn’t cut it in a drink where the Bourbon really shines through. Next is mint selection. Please use Spearmint and not Peppermint for your creation. One of these days I want to try Lemon Balm (one of my favorite “tea” herbs and a relative to mint). When I do I will update you all. A final word about ingredients, some recipes call for powdered sugar. Stay away from it. Most “powdered” sugar contains some cornstarch to keep it from clumping and this will cloud your drink. Use regular granulated sugar or superfine sugar if you can find it. Now Mint Juleps are one of those very selective things. Ask 20 experts how to make one and you’ll get 20 answers. I won’t claim this is the “proper” way to make a julep or that it is even the best way. What I will say is that this is how I like them the best, and after considerable “research” over the years I feel I have a pretty good grasp. Okay, let’s start: First don’t worry if you don’t have a tradition julep cup, it will taste just fine in any old fashioned tumbler or highball glass. Once you have your glass drop in about 4-7 mint leaves, depending on size and your tastes and add about 1/2 tablespoon of sugar. Don’t add too much sugar, this isn’t supposed to be a sweet drink! Muddle the sugar and mint just until the mint starts to break up. Next add crushed ice, not shaved ice as it melts too fast for my taste. To crush the ice I like to take about 8 ice cubes, place them in a ziplock bag and gently pound them with a hammer. You want a good mix of medium sized pieces (to keep your drink cold for a time) and pulverized shards (to melt immediately providing the right amount of dilution). Don’ beat it all to a fine snow!!!! Add this to your glass then pour in 3oz of Bourbon. Stir to mix and chill the Julep. Garnish with a fresh sprig of mint. Do not skip the garnish as the aroma of the mint garnish helps to reinforce it’s flavor in the drink. Now sit back, in a rocker, relax, and enjoy life!!