Celebrating Fat Tuesday with Fassionola Syrup and Hurricanes

As a kitchen witch, I love a good food holiday. There’s nothing quite like taking the time to spend a full day cooking for the people that you love – lovingly crafting a set of dishes from start to finish. Enter Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) – a day meant to celebrate excess (and potentially clean out your cupboards of all of those tempting foods and drinks) before the Lenten season. I by no means consider myself to be a Catholic witch but I do come from a large French Catholic family (as does my coven mate Dora) and our third coven mate’s family was “born from the Mississippi mud” – so Fat Tuesday is a great holiday that we can all celebrate together as a means of ancestral veneration if nothing else. Plus, I have a love affair with the trappings of Mardi Gras (jambalaya and king cake are SO GOOD!) and I have been obsessed with good versions of the Hurricane cocktail since my first trip to NOLA in 2011.

I’ve been obsessed with the Hurricane since I tasted one a Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop on Rue Bourbon on the advice of an over-zealous tour guide. This was not the candified blue slush nonsense that I had been served elsewhere in the quarter but a (very strong) rum-based punch. My partner and I were intrigued and have been trying to replicate it ever since. So it should go without saying that I have tried a LOT of Hurricane recipes in the last ten years. Since the “original recipe” for the Hurricane has been lost to time (if it ever existed), we are always up for some experimentation. I’ve also “experimented” by ordering any rum punch on a menu that sounded anything like what we drank that day. Most were too much like a tiki drink – I love tiki drinks but it doesn’t seem to me that pineapple juice belongs in a Hurricane. Too much and you’ve basically just created a Mai Tai (a drink that I adore) – no, the Hurricane and we had and remember so fondly was something else entirely! I even tracked down some Falernum syrup in the hopes that would be the secret ingredient (it wasn’t).

Finally, I came upon references to the idea that the long-lost “secret” ingredient to making a hurricane is Fassionola syrup, a cocktail syrup that has mostly gone out of style. Even the recipe for Fassionola syrup in its original form has been lost but most people suggest (and there are some references to it being called passionola syrup which lends credence to this claim) that it was made from a combination of passion fruit, hibiscus, and berries. Color me intrigued. The one ingredient (other than rum) that stands out in my memory from that lovely Hurricane experience was passion fruit juice. Since I happened to have passion fruit juice, frozen raspberries, and dried hibiscus in the house – I decided to give it a shot.

I don’t have an exact recipe as I didn’t measure beyond the standard 1:1 ratio of liquid to sugar needed to make a simple syrup – I simply added a handful of raspberries and dried hibiscus and cooked on the stove. Because of my familial connection to Fat Tuesday and the fact that I was sharing the drinks with my chosen family, I empowered the syrup with a strong family blessing.

I cannot even express to you how fabulous this syrup is. I highly recommend making some if you’re into traditional tiki-style drinks as it’s an important ingredient in a number of them.

Now, for the cocktail. Since I was spending the time to make such a luscious cocktail syrup, I wanted to use a relatively simple group of ingredients. Aged rum, lemon juice, syrup – that sounds about right. Though you can use any type of rum (or a mix as is more often used in the making of a hurricane), I strongly suggested getting yourself a decent aged rum for this one – it makes all of the difference. We used a bottle of 12 years aged Ron Zacapa ámbar but you don’t need to go that far, we just happened to have it on hand.

The Hurricane

4 oz. aged rum
2 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
2 oz. fashionola syrup

Shake over ice, serve in a highball or hurricane glass with ice. Add a fancy cocktail umbrella and a good cherry if you’re feeling fancy. This recipe makes one drink.

As you can see, at 4 oz. a drink, this recipe is not for the faint of heart. Please drink responsibly and enjoy the Lenten season. – Minx