the dirty applepicker
After a brief and unintentional hiatus from LBV, I finally found myself back home in the lounge last night. The Dirty Applepicker immediately caught my eye because I am madly in love with another apple-based drink at LBV, The Biting Of The Apple. (And also because Marie kept pointing at it and saying, “that drink totally sounds like you.”) Yum. This drink oozes autumn. It is delicious.
Every fall I think I am going to make caramel apples and every year I decide not to after re-discovering that you need a candy thermometer to make them. Fortunately, The Dirty Applepicker gives you the joy of a caramel apple without needing a candy thermometer (and without getting caramel all over your chin and stuck in your teeth.)
I was initially leery of the caramel in the drink. I expected it to taste like the caramel flavor shots at Caribou or Starbucks, which always taste artificial to me. But the caramel in The Dirty Applepicker tastes just like caramel should. It’s smooth, it’s rich, but it’s not too sweet. And the drink is made with Honeycrisp apples, the darlings of the produce aisle and Minnesota’s claim to fame (well, one of Minnesota’s claims to fame after the Anderson trifecta: Loni, Richard Dean and Louie).
The martini is garnished with bleu cheese-stuffed grapes. Seeing the hollowed out grapes reminded me of a dinner party I threw several years ago at which I served feta cheese stuffed cherry tomatoes. Just the memory of hollowing out all of those damn tomatoes with the mini melon baller filled me with frustration as if I was doing it all over again. So when I saw the stuffed grapes I had to ask Johnny how he hollows them out. Answer? A drill bit. Fucking brilliant.
I love this drink, so much so that I had more than one. But how many more than one is anybody’s guess.
Lush Jen