Rum

In place of fresh pineapple, you can drain two 8-ounce cans crushed pineapple, roast it, and skip making the syrup.

One to two hours before baking, remove the ham from the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature.

This dessert is so simple, yet so tasty. It’s fun to do at a campfire or in a backyard fire pit. Once the pineapple is secured to the spit with prongs, all you need to do is baste it with the rum syrup every few minutes until it’s beautifully golden. The aromas from the syrup and the caramelizing pineapple are mouthwatering! Serve it with a slice of pound cake or, better still, with ice cream.

Even the most modest imbibers insist on a taste of this spiced rum punch. It does indeed pack a punch, so serve with caution.

In the late summer and early autumn, in the interior of the island, the great harvests of pumpkin and squash are preserved by the farmwives in varied fashion. Often the flesh is cooked down to a marmalade and sparked with candied oranges, or poached chunks of it are set to rest in a sweet vinegared brine. Too, thick slices of poached flesh are often rolled around in a sugary syrup and left to dry. Of a most luscious flavor, this candied pumpkin is sometimes used with dark rum and a handful of broken, bittersweet chocolate, to make a tart like the one we were served in the village of Milo. I was dazzled by it. But when I heard of the perplexing process by which the tart’s author had candied the pumpkin (she began by saying that I should gather fifty to sixty pumpkins), I was slightly shaken. I found, though, that simply roasting the flesh of a pumpkin or squash and then bathing it in caramelized sugar gives a flavor similar and perhaps even richer and requires far less drama.

So unlike the exquisitely wrought sweetmeats of other southern pasticcerie, pastry in Basilicata is often in the form of some rustic fried fritter, its batter honey-sweetened and studded with raisins or nuts. The most luscious version, though, is the one that asks for ricotta and dark rum. We found them being made in a small shop with an even smaller selling counter on a little street off the Via Pretoria, just before one reaches Piazza Mario Pagano in Potenza. On more than one iced winter’s morning have we stood outside its doors and waited for the sugar-dusted, crisp-crusted warmth of them.

From Lecce and its environs, quince paste—a deeply bronzed jelly molded into plump squares and tucked inside wooden fruit boxes—is our favorite Puglian treasure to take back to Tuscany. Here follows a lovely sort of pudding made from quince that, though it offers a less-dense dose of the fruit, yields one with all its beautiful, apple-wine sort of autumn savor.

First, know that you are about to bake the earth’s most delectable prune tart. If you wish to make it with fresh plums, you must sugar them, according to their own sweetness and your own need to taste sugar rather than fresh fruit. The same adjustment is necessary should you use fresh apricots or nectarines or peaches. Then simply proceed with the recipe.

Pastry chef Kimberly Sklar came up with this walnut wedge as the ultimate accompaniment to the thick, creamy date shake. It tastes like the best part of a perfectly made pecan pie—toasty crisp nuts suspended in a chewy, buttery caramel. Since this “pie” doesn’t have a crust, make sure to bake it long enough that it holds its shape when you slice it.

This is one of our End of Prohibition party special punch recipes and it was adapted from the Philadelphia Fish House punch, which was a favorite of Generals Washington and Lafayette. We replaced the original cognac with our local Laird’s AppleJack and got something fantastic as a result. We use all seasonal fruits for this—a beautiful feature that also makes it extra tasty.

Dark and Stormy was created specifically for Gosling’s Black Seal rum in much the same way that the Moscow Mule was created for Smirnoff. The original recipe called for Gosling’s, ginger beer, and a lime. This simple combination works very well to create an interesting highball, but to expand on its potential, many mixologists have reconstructed it, and its popularity has approached that of the mojito. Over the years, we have created many recipes for our Dark and Stormy, using varying ingredients such as fresh gingerroot, lime juice, and even walnut liqueur. Today, we have settled on using dark rum, homemade ginger beer, and lime juice with the addition of Velvet Falernum—a clove-almond-flavored liqueur that bridges the flavors of molasses and fiery ginger.

The Mai Tai cocktail is Elvis with a guitar singing in the sunset in Hawaii. It was invented in 1944 by Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron, who mixed Jamaican rum, lime juice, a few dashes of orange Curaçao, French almond syrup, and rock candy syrup. According to Trader Vic history, it was served to some friends from Tahiti, who promptly proclaimed “Mai tai, roa ae!”—which in Tahitian means “Out of this world, the best!” When this drink is made right, it is really, really super tasty. By default this cocktail is in the Tiki cocktail family, which became popular after World War II when soldiers from the South Pacific returned home in the 1940s and ’50s. This trend began in Hawaii and on the West Coast and, then traveled across the nation. Unfortunately, like most cocktails of that era, the recipe was artificialized and cheapened over several decades and even now in Hawaii it is still made with commercial Mai Tai mixers and artificial flavors. At Employees Only, we make our tribute to this Tiki classic with twelve-year-old Flor de Caña Nicaraguan rum, the best French orange Curaçao, Lebanese almond syrup, and fresh lime juice. The traditional rock candy syrup was left out to keep the cocktail balanced, not just sweet.

The British Royal Navy, like every armed force, loves rules and discipline. So in 1740, they issued a rule that every sailor be supplied with a daily ration of grog, which he had to consume. No exceptions! By 1795, the recipe for grog called for rum, water, lime or lemon juice, and sugar. What a splendid idea! You’ve got to love the British; with that act, not only did they cure and prevent scurvy, but they also ensured that the crews had something to look forward to every day on long voyages. It was so popular that it quickly spread across the whole Caribbean and South America. The origins of the Daiquiri itself are somewhat vague, but most clues lead to a bar in Santiago, Cuba, called Venus. Near that bar there is a beach called Daiquiri—hence the name. The drink itself was supposedly invented by an American engineer, Jennings Cox, general manager of the Spanish American Iron Company who while stationed in Cuba ran out of gin and turned to rum to entertain his guests. The original recipe is simply beautiful, relying on the freshness of the limes and the quality of the rum. It is an exercise in balancing sweet and sour while letting the light, grassy, earthy rum flavor carry through.