Adventures with pisco sours

His nibs brought me home a bottle of pisco last night that he found at Beverages and More. (Is he sweet or wot?) He said BevMo had three varieties of pisco on the shelves -- two priced about $17 and the other about $30. He bought one of the $17 bottles because why buy the fancy kind when we were planning to like use it for a mixed citrusy drink, duh.

So ... I took out the blender. Dropped one egg white in and whisked it up. Took about eight ice cubes and put them in a plastic bag and whacked them until they were little bits, because we just don't have an ice crusher to our name.

Squeezed two lemons and poured the juice into a glass to measure.

Added the lemon juice, the ice, and twice as much pisco as lemon juice (using the glass I'd used for the lemon juice to measure) to the blender container with the whisked egg white.

Added 1T of powdered sugar. brzzzng! brzzzng!

Tasted. Whoo. Boy. Tart. Added another T of powdered sugar. brzzzng! brzzzng!

Tasted. Hoo! Still too tart. Added another 2T of powdered sugar. brzzzng! brzzzng!

Tasted. Still tart but not too tart, and I was worried that if I tried adding more sugar I'd get to the point where the whole thing tasted like a lemon drop or a Sweet Tart (not that there's anything wrong with Sweet Tarts).

Poured the result into two bar glasses and dropped some Angostura bitters on top. Who knew we had Angostura bitters in the bar cabinet behind the single malt scotch and cognac? I don't think I've ever in my life used them before. I was prepared to use nutmeg, which is what Destino uses, but was delighted to have Angostura bitters, which I think I like better.

The pisco sours tasted swell. We finished up the contents of the blender container and decided that maybe next time (February 5th is National Pisco Sour Day!) we would use only the juice of one lemon and, therefore, half as much pisco and, maybe, only 2T of powdered sugar.

Good thing pisco sours are a multi-step process (if you're making them at home) or expensive (if you're buying them at Destino). It's as dangerous to know how to make them as it is to know how to make old-fashioned almond brittle and its brethren.