Black as midnight? Don't be frightened by this dark culinary trend

[jpak]

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/03/31/dont-be-frightened-by-this-dark-culinary-trend/

Keenan Davis, the bar manager at Five Fifty-Five in Portland, occasionally likes to surprise the restaurant’s clientele with something they’re not expecting. So about a month ago he started working on the “Midnight Sour,” a play on an old-school whiskey sour that’s a blend of cognac, rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, bitters, Benedictine, egg white, lemon and cuttlefish ink in simple syrup.

Wait, cuttlefish ink? Yes, and both the taste and appearance of the black-colored cocktail have shocked Davis’ customers, who usually prefer classic martinis and Manhattans. The taste is surprising because the brain warns the taste buds to expect something different, and maybe a little overwhelming, Davis says, but the drink still tastes like a whiskey cocktail.

“I think they expect a color to it, but they don’t expect it to be so black. They say ‘Oh my god, what is that?’ ” said Davis, who developed the black cocktail after watching the kitchen staff create a salmon dish with a squid ink-mustard emulsion. (The cuttlefish and squid are cousins, and both produce black ink.) Davis hoped to sell five Midnight Sours a week. He sold five on the first night.

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While black cocktails are mostly a result of playful bartenders trying to set a mood, chefs want flavor as well as visual pop from their black foods. Squid ink, Hernandez said, “smells like a tidal pool. It has that flavor, but not in a bad way.” Rather, he said, it is like a pool of warm saltwater that has a way of enveloping the senses. Sansonetti and Ilma Lopez, co-owners of Piccolo and Chaval in Portland, have put black foods on their menus for years because they are a part of traditional Italian and Spanish cuisine. Squid ink, Sansonetti said, gives “a nice salinity to things.”

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[Phentex]

1. Damn hipsters!

Here they are selling glow in the dark ramen. Well, go for it!

[TlalocW]

2. There's something about this cocktail that's so black

It's like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none... none more black.

TlalocW

[jpak]

3. The New New Black

http://alturl.com/p749b