A couple of weeks ago She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were strolling through our local fruit and vegetable market, weaving among the orchard pallets of mostly apples and pears when I spied a crate of those smallish, round, ‘personal’ watermelons.
It’d been months since we’ve seen watermelons of any sort in these parts and we grabbed three thinking we’d craft some sort of watermelon based beverage (envisioning some version of an agua fresca) for a Mexican food themed family celebration that evening.
Long story short, Jake did some digging and found this recipe for the In-Sandiary, a very simple watermelon, lime and tequila concoction that we later deemed extraordinary.
According to Serious Eats the cocktail was originated by Joaquin Simo of Death and Co. in NY, the name a play on the spanish word for watermelon (sandia) and ‘incendiary’ inspired by the chile spiked salted rim.
We know summer’s still a ways off but these make picking up a few of those early season watermelons a real treat. Note we’ve tweaked the recipe a bit, opting for the ‘back of the throat heat’ of chipotle powder for rimming the glass and a bit more lime juice to sharpen it just a smidgen.
Rim the Glass
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. chipotle powderThe Good Stuff
1 cup (generous) cubed watermelon (no seeds)
2 ounces blanco tequila
Scant 2/3 ounce fresh lime juice
1/4 ounce simple syrup
ice
Rim those glasses. Mix the salt, sugar and chipotle powder and place in a saucer; moisten glass rims with the lime juice and dip into the salt/sugar/chile powder mixture.
Cocktail time. We found that using a food processor to coarsely puree the watermelon, which we then strained to remove solids and the occasional renegade seed, made things easy.
Now into the shaker go 2 ounces of the watermelon juice. the tequila, lime juice, simple syrup and ice. Shake well, strain into ice filled glass and go to it.
Enjoy.
