DISSECTING A COCKTAIL

My earliest recollection of a frozen daiquiri dates back to 1993-1994, when I lived on Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. There were many Saturdays that my parents, brother and I would go to the bowling alley in the late afternoon. There was a bar counter that served food and drinks, and behind it was a medium-sized black machine that had two neon colors of frozen slush rotating up and down, back and forth.

“Frozen Daiquiris” the machine read.

I vaguely remember sneaking a sip of my mother’s one night. “Eww, disgusting!” I thought. In a million years I would never have believed that a daiquiri would be my favorite drink in the world. But here we are. The frozen daiquiris of my bowling alley days were indeed disgusting. Artificial ingredients, corn syrup, and zero balance — one might wonder why this was even a thing. But frozen cocktails were most definitely a thing, especially the banana daiquiri.

Quoting from Garret Richard and Ben Schaffer’s book, Tropical Standard: Cocktail Techniques & Reinvented Recipes, “Harry Yee (who is known for the famous cocktail Blue Hawaii), has claimed to have been the first to put a banana in a daiquiri, in the 1950s.” Yee, who spent more than 30 years as head bartender at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, started adding bananas to blended daiquiris, helping to put Hawaii on the exotic drinks map. Yee-haw to that!

These days, there are bartenders who use high-quality banana liqueurs in their daiquiris (I’ve gone this route), leaving the blender behind. But Richard’s adaptation of Yee’s daiquiri was all the rage in my kitchen a couple of years ago. There is chemistry in these ingredients — some of my favorite rums have notes of banana. Pro tip: Make sure to keep the rum in the freezer; this will help the temperature drop quicker in the blender with less water dilution. You’ll notice that the banana liqueur is optional in the specs — it’s something I like to add to Richard’s recipe.