Water Dragon Margarita
If you invite me over for a pool day, I bring cocktails. And sometimes a chicken. You've been warned.
Fortunately for me, this particular pool already comes with some dependable drinking buddies, in the form of a pair of goofball pitbulls and one Sarah of VerySarie.com (who took all of these gorgeous photos--Sarah, not the pitbulls). So I brought these Watermelon-Dragon Fruit Margaritas, which shall henceforth be known as Water Dragon Margs.
And yes, I also brought a chicken (who had special free-range time separate from the aforementioned goofy pitbulls). And also rosé. Because sometimes you need to chase your margaritas with something.
W A T E R D R A G O N M A R G A R I T A S
Makes one cocktail.
2 oz. fresh watermelon juice (instructions below)
.5 oz. fresh lime juice
1.5 oz. silver tequila
.5 oz dragon fruit syrup (instructions below)
.5 oz dry curaçao
2 slices fresh dragon fruit + 1 slice for garnish
black lava sea salt
To make your watermelon juice: throw cubed, fresh watermelon in a food processor/blender and blend until watery and smooth. Strain through a fine mesh strainer and discard the pulp. 2 cups of cubes yields approximately 1 cup of juice.
To make your dragon fruit syrup: chop one whole dragon fruit into small chunks, leaving skin intact. Add 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar into a medium pot and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring. Once sugar has completely dissolved, add dragon fruit pieces, cover, and remove from heat. Allow to steep for at least 30 minutes. Before straining, stir and mash up fruit a bit to release seeds. Strain through a fine mesh strainer to remove fruit pulp but allow some seeds to go into the syrup. Store in fridge.
To make your cocktail: Prep glass by running a lime wedge along the rim and dipping in course black salt, and fill glass with ice. Add watermelon juice, lime juice, tequila, dragon fruit syrup, curaçao, and 2 slices (cut into quarters) of dragon fruit into a shaker over ice. Shake until chilled, and strain into prepped glass. Garnish with two dragon fruit halves. Or three. I don't care.
And for the record...I did not try to put the chicken in the pool. She just had lots of lovely supervised free-range time around the yard surrounding the pool. This might shock you, but chickens don't particularly like to swim. However, they do particularly like to rock itsy-bitsy yellow polka dot bikinis like it's no one's business. Just in case you were wondering.
