Wheatgrass, Tequila, Hibiscus and Lime

Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita

  • Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita
  • Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita
  • Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita
  • Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita
  • Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita
  • Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita
  • Arley’s Wheatgrass Margarita

NOTES

For the hibiscus rim, get the best quality dried hibiscus blossoms at your local grocery or spice store. They are usually sold as tea. You can buy flats of wheatgrass at the health food store, or you can get wheatgrass juice already pressed at most juice bars. 

INSTRUCTIONS

This cocktail can be either blended with ice to make a slushy, or served over ice.

Put your glasses in the freezer to give them a nice frost.

Add tequila, wheatgrass, lime juice and Combier to blender or shaker.

Add ice to shaker or blender. You can measure the proper amount by filling the glass you will be serving the cocktail in with a good portion of ice. This should yield a nice slushy texture if blending, and provide enough ice to give a good shake if you are serving the margarita on the rocks. Blend until totally smooth but still stiff, or shake vigorously for 20 seconds and let it sit.

To make your hibiscus rim, blend in Vitamix or clean coffee grinder till it becomes a very fine powder, with a consistency of powdered sugar or flour. Mix sugar with the powder and spread evenly on a small plate.

Remove glasses from freezer. Cut a lime in half and use it to wet the rim of your glass. Hold the peel side in your fingers and draw it across the glass. Dip glass into hibiscus powder and twirl to adhere powder to all sides of the glass.

Add your blended wheatgrass Margarita to your chilled glass and garnish with a tuft of wheatgrass and a bit of lime zest. if following the shaken recipe put fresh ice into your pretty glass and strain the shaken cocktail over the fresh ice.

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

HARD

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SERVES

2

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Ingredients

  • 2 
    oz 
    Herradura tequila blanco
  • 1/2 
     
    lime
  • 1 
    oz 
    fresh wheatgrass juice
  • 3/4 
    oz 
    fresh lime juice
  • 3/4 
    oz 
    Combier liqueur d’orange
  • 1/2 
    cup 
    dried hibiscus flower
  • 1 
    tsp 
    raw sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

This cocktail can be either blended with ice to make a slushy, or served over ice.

Put your glasses in the freezer to give them a nice frost.

Add tequila, wheatgrass, lime juice and Combier to blender or shaker.

Add ice to shaker or blender. You can measure the proper amount by filling the glass you will be serving the cocktail in with a good portion of ice. This should yield a nice slushy texture if blending, and provide enough ice to give a good shake if you are serving the margarita on the rocks. Blend until totally smooth but still stiff, or shake vigorously for 20 seconds and let it sit.

To make your hibiscus rim, blend in Vitamix or clean coffee grinder till it becomes a very fine powder, with a consistency of powdered sugar or flour. Mix sugar with the powder and spread evenly on a small plate.

Remove glasses from freezer. Cut a lime in half and use it to wet the rim of your glass. Hold the peel side in your fingers and draw it across the glass. Dip glass into hibiscus powder and twirl to adhere powder to all sides of the glass.

Add your blended wheatgrass Margarita to your chilled glass and garnish with a tuft of wheatgrass and a bit of lime zest. if following the shaken recipe put fresh ice into your pretty glass and strain the shaken cocktail over the fresh ice.

I know it might seem like I am just pilfering contacts from the RISD Alumni catalog for the blog, but truth be told, some of the most creative and compelling people I know formed the better part of their identities in Providence Rhode Island. (No, RISD is not sponsoring Salad For President, but they should). That said, I met Arley Marks in college, but then, he disappeared. He took four years off from his furniture design studies to train with a sushi chef and experiment on his own with video art and sculpture. In 2008 he resumed his studies in the sculpture department, and upon graduation, spent an entire year traveling around China and Southeast Asia. Broke and unsure of his next steps, he got a job bartending.

Hosting intimate cocktail parties for friends led to a gig designing cocktails for Eckhaus Latta‘s party for Fashion Week in 2009. Through that fateful event, he met a few guys who were planning to open a little restaurant called Mission Chinese Food on the Lower East Side. Arley developed their opening cocktail program, and the restaurant was promptly voted #1 restaurant in NYC by the NY Times in 2011. Now, Arley works as a consultant, developing signature drinks and cocktail menus for restaurants, bars and private events

Arley in His Own Words

Julia: You have done food projects as well as cocktail projects. I remember you had your own sushi cart in Providence. Tell me about that.

Arley: Oh yeah! That was a really fun project that I worked on with the artist Jonathan Mosca when we were both taking time off from RISD. We built a bicycle drawn cart from which to serve vegetarian sushi. It’s a lot of work making sushi from a small cart — we became so popular, we had to make runs back home to replenish our ingredients multiple times day. After the cart, Jonathan and I ran a sushi bar on Block Island at a friend’s hotel. We would go spear fishing in the morning and then serve our catch at the bar!

Julia: When did you get excited about cocktails?

Arley: I have always been interested in making drinks, but before learning to bartend I would make liquid concoctions and potions that were more like small, potable sculptures.Cocktails are like exotic sculptural bouquets, each one entirely unique. I am interested in creating multi-sensory experiences that alter one’s perception and have a lasting effect.

Julia: Is a cocktail kind of like a salad, in that can be as simple or as complex as you like, and it is all about excellent ingredients?

Arley: Cocktails and salads have a lot in common. Sometimes both the best cocktail and the best salad is the simplest one.  But, there is a real beauty at either end of the spectrum of simplicity and complexity. Julia: You have worked on numerous photo shoots with food stylists and chefs. Has that had an influence on how you compose a cocktail?

Julia: You have worked on numerous photo shoots with food stylists and chefs. Has that had an influence on how you compose a cocktail?

Arley: On photo shoots, the process of cooking and making drinks is a purely aesthetic endeavor. There seems to be a mysterious art to making something look as delicious as possible, a lot of that technique is achieved through garnishing. I love garnishing drinks, I often look at the garnish as a compliment, something unexpected. I have noticed that in the New York contemporary mixology scene, garnishing is often understated. I think the synthesis between food and drink at the edge of the glass should be something to be explored and expanded upon.

Julia: You are making your own cocktail tool wraps that will be sold through the forthcoming Salad For President online store. I love this idea. What are the top 3 tools every aspiring mixologist should have on them at all times?

Arley: The tool kit contains a nice stirring spoon with a long handle, a simple measuring jigger a pair of wooden chopsticks, a zest peeler and a paring knife. This will all be rolled with a canvas wrap that will fit into a Koriko weighted Japanese shaker.