Recipe: Neal Caffrey's Prison Wine Sangria
Hello, Collars!
This weekend, of course, has been the big White Collar Chicago Meet-up, and it has been as fun and rewarding and one of the best experiences of my life, and I want to do it again sometime. How's everyone for NEXT WEEK?!?
Anyhoodle, to fuel our efforts, we decided on Saturday night that some sangria would be a mighty lovely beverage to enjoy, but how to whip some up in an unfamiliar city? Why, you make do with what you have, my lovelies, so we stopped at a liquor store and got some cheap wine, some OJ and whatever fruit we could find (a lemon and a lime) and whipped up some of what we started to call Neal Caffrey's Prison Wine Sangria. The results were surprisingly...acceptable.
Here's the recipe we used:
1 bottle cheap red wine
1 pint orange juice
10-12 sugar packets
1/2 lemon, large dice
1/2 lime, large dice
Mix above in a pitcher and serve over ice.
By Sunday, we got fancier, stealing some apples and oranges off the "breakfast" buffet, scoring some more sugar, and hitting a nearby convenience store, where elrhiarhodan had the brilliant inspiration to pick up some canned pineapple. The results of our second batch were pretty kickass.
So, for future reference, or something, here's my real sangria recipe; ganked and then refined from a famous Portuguese restaurant in Newark, NJ:
1 bottle cheap red wine* (srsly, don't ruin good wine on sangria; use a crap merlot, or beaujolais works well too)
1 pint orange juice
1 orange, diced
1 apple, diced
1/4 cup brandy
1/4 cup sugar
Place fruit, sugar and brandy into the bottom of a pitcher and mush around with a wooden spoon. Allow to sit at room temperature for at least a half hour, but 2-3 hours in the fridge is better. When ready to serve, add wine and juice, stir and serve over ice. Garnish with cut fruit and maraschino cherries (surprisingly delicious with red wine - no, really), and enjoy on June's terrace with the sexy, blue-eyed ex-con of your choosing.
* You can use white, but I have a separate recipe for white wine sangria I will post at another time that kicks even more ass...some day.