Let's Make a Perfect Spring Margarita

Spring has sprung here in Chicago and I just love going out into the garden to see which are the first herbs that come back. And so that inspired me to show you how to make what I think is the absolutely perfect spring margarita that captures the flavor of those early spring herbs. Okay so I'm going to make a pretty classic one. I'm starting here with a fresh squeezed lime juice which to me is the absolute essential thing. And that was an ounce of the equivalent. I'm going to tell you for one drink the equivalent of an ounce of the lime juice. You could use lemon juice. I was thinking about maybe even doing this with some Meyer lemon juice. Now I'm putting in a half an ounce of Cointreau and a half an ounce of agave syrup. Now that'll be the sweet stuff. So we have the ounce of something really tangy, the lime juice, and an ounce of something sweet which is the combination of the agave and the Cointreau or any kind of orange liqueur. But some of the orange liqueurs are not particularly strong in flavor so you might want to go a little bit higher with that. And instead of tequila I'm going to use a ricea which is an agave spirit also from the state of Jalisco. And it has a flavor that is sort of similar to the flavor of tequila. And I'm making two drinks so that would be two ounces of that per drink. Put that in. Now let's just talk about what I'm measuring with here. Everybody's seen this as the bartender's measurer. This is very useful and very easy but for those of us that really are more oriented toward the kitchen I like to get these little two ounce measuring devices because they're super easy to work with and you can see everything so clearly. So you might want to have one of these around and when you do cross over from kitchen into mixology you've got something that's really easy for you to work with and sometimes people don't know exactly what the quantity is that's in that. Okay the next thing now you see I put it into a blender jar and I'm not making a frozen margarita here. Okay so I'm going to tell you that I want to add one other liqueur to this and super hard to find these days but one of my very favorite things in the whole world is chartreuse but you know there are some alternates to chartreuse that are coming out now. Other herbal liqueurs. So you could get one of those things and I am just going to put a tiny little dash of it here in the blender. So not even what you could quite measure what the bartenders might call a bar spoon of that and if you don't have anything in that category don't worry about it. Now let's talk herbs here. So I got to show you what's here in my from my garden right now. This is lemon balm. This is anise hyssop. These are the two first things that come up and then this is mint that just came up. Now if you happen to have some lavender it probably wouldn't be in bloom with all of this stuff but I have this tiny little greenhouse and so I have a little bit of lavender in there and I thought that could be beautiful with all of this. Now I don't want to go too heavy to make this taste strong and by the way if you're going to make something like this and you don't have anything in your yard or any kind of herbs that you're growing yourself I would just go to the grocery store and get some mint and make it as a mint margarita. Okay so I'm going to put a few leaves of the lemon balm, a couple leaves of the anise hyssop and a few of the leaves of the mint in there. I think I'll put a couple of these lavender blossoms in there. Okay now I'm going to put the top on and just blend it to create a base that is very infused with all of those herbs. So it's a beautiful pale green color here and I have a shaker that is filled with ice and I'm going to pour it in there because this base is not diluted yet and it has to get diluted to the right level to make the perfect margarita and so I'm going to shake it. You want to shake for about 15 seconds or so and the reason for that is to dilute it appropriately but also to chip up the ice so that it will look nice and refreshing and frothy on the top. So after that much of the well after you get that we need to make these to me all margaritas have to have salt on the rim and it's not an addition it's something that is essential just in the same way that anytime you're cooking savory food you want to add salt to it. Why? Because it balances all of the flavors there but if you don't know if your guests are going to like much salt I like to just rub the spent lime along the side of it about half of it or so and this will just moisten the exterior of it and then I have my kosher salt here and I can just roll it back and forth to crust about half of that glass with it. So we've got our two glasses prepared now and look at that gorgeous margarita going in there this is sort of to me the absolute essence of springtime. Salud!