NIK BLASKOVICH/NEWS-PRESS
Thanksgiving is over, but we are not in any way done with cranberries. For some, they are tied to the holiday, but for us in the Drink of the Week camp, cranberry means cosmopolitans!
Joe Andrieu, one half of Repeal Day Santa Barbara (yes, it’s a blatant plug! Check page D1 for more shameless self-promotion), arrived at a recent holiday party bearing a small tub of cranberry granita (an Italian variation on sorbet). Giving props to Alton Brown, who first introduced the idea to him (by website), Joe made us cosmopolitans consisting of nothing but granita, lime juice and vodka. The granita, being straight from the freezer, provided the chill of ice without the ice. The resulting cocktail was thick with cranberry flavor, way more than any “cranberry cocktail”-filled cosmo we’ve had. Needless to say, many of these were ordered at the party, and poor Joe never left the kitchen, having no assistant available to give him a break.