cocktail: caipirinha

so i was going to make myself a delicious cocktail this evening to celebrate not falling off my bike and breaking something, but i found out to my horror that i was out of cachaça. this is a big deal, because the caipirinha is far and away my standby drink. it is overwhelmingly strong but overwhelmingly not fiery - i know this is an emasculating thing to admit, but the immediate and burning queasiness that most strong drinks cause is not a favorite sensation.

if you decide to buy a bottle of cachaça, i'd strongly recommend avoiding the cheap industrial versions out there - the relatively huge brazilian population in coastal southern MA greatly increases our artisanal cachaça options. for those of you without ready access to brazilians, i don't know what to tell you. you're probably out of luck. the house bottle these days is rochinha, which is a 5 year single barrel and runs about $20 at yankee spirits. note that this is not the IBA-approved formula - you can find theirs on wikipedia and compare, if you like.

2 1/2oz cachaça
1 smallish lime
1 1/2T sugar
3 ice cubes

i normally am very laissez-faire about washing fruit, but in this case if your lime looks particularly waxy, you should probably give it a quick scrub. you're drinking the rind, after all. either way, cut off the top and bottom of the lime. cut and discard four equal-size slabs of peel off the face of the lime - i know this is hard to describe, but you're basically removing some-but-not-all of the peel, and this is the best way i can think of to do it. if you leave on all the peel, it'll come out too bitter. trust me. so you should have a basically cube-shaped lime at this point. cut it in half, then the halves into quarters - eight little lime-cubes. toss these into a cocktail shaker. add the sugar, and muddle it really hard. i have a giant wooden pestle i bought from the lao for $1. it is amazing. i'm sure you can buy a much lousier one from williams-sonoma for $20. once it's totally muddled, pour on the cachaça and add the ice cubes. jam a lowball glass onto the shaker and shake like hell. the goal is to puree the lime and sugar and bust up the cubes into crushed ice. if you have a source for crushed ice, by all means use it. finally, pour your caipirinha into the lowball and serve.

one of these is lovely, two in a row troublesome, and three dangerous. they are very easy to overdo. so, of course, i urge moderation.