For the third [LIVING ROOM] at tropical papers, Ryoko Sekiguchi invites two guests – Guillaume Aubry and Sterling Hudson – to bring together a sensory experience that tastes like dusk.
Ryoko Sekiguchi is a French-based Japanese writer, poet and literary translator. Author of dozens of books both in Japanese and French, a major part of her work consists in connecting literature with cooking, and the tastes and flavours of the world. Guillaume Aubry is a French architect and artist; he has focused years of research on the aesthetic experience of sunsets. Sterling Hudson is a Paris-based American mixologist.
They share with us all the glimpses of how to drink in a landscape successfully , with a recipe that will bring together (perhaps) several “insularities”, taking us on an aesthetic and gustatory journey from the Japanese archipelago to the Caribbean islands.
Ryoko Sekiguchi / Sterling Hudson / Guillaume Aubry
POSTED: @tropicalpapers_18.11.2021
Following the publication of “Sunset cocktails” (Editions JBE), the trio continues their research on how to assimilate a landscape into the body: how to drink an Okinawan sunset in Paris, or in Bogota, for that matter?
Tropical papers
The idea behind the cocktail was to make the connection between Martinique and the Caribbean islands with Japon rum. The solution was a tiki style cocktail using Japanese rum.
The concept of “tiki” became a part of the American cocktail culture in the 1930, when Don Beach opened the first tiki bar in Hollywood, California. He was inspired by the Polynesian culture. Typically, tiki cocktails use rum with tropical ingredients ex.: banana, coco nut, pineapple, mango, …etc.
COCKTAIL:
Cou Coupé
60 ml /2 oz Japanese rum
20 ml / 2/3 oz Sugar cane juice*
20 ml/ 2/3 oz Lime juice
10 ml/ 1/3 oz Grapefruit juice
3 sliced pieces Banana
rim of Grenadine syrup
* Sugar cane juice
250G sugar
1L water
Stir the sugar in water until it is dissolved
In a cocktail shaker, muddle the banana pieces. Add the sugar cane juice, lime juice and grapefruit juice. With ice, shake well. Filter using a double strainer into a coupette glass. Garnish a banana slice and going around middle / centre, make a rim inside the glass. The grenadine rim references the male cou coupé bird, which has a red ring around its neck.
THE RUM
For this cocktail, we will use a rum from Okinawa Island. The island produces sugar cane, and distilled, one can produce rum. The drinking experience of this rum is that is very delicate compared to other types, in the mouth, the taste of the sugar is less heavy. It is rum that can be enjoyed by itself or in a cocktail.