The Madras

We have switched to orange juice concentrate at my house. This is to save money and trips to the grocery store during the stay at home.

Concentrate reminds me of my mother who, while she spoke eloquently about loving the finer things, was also a sucker for anything instant. Her special onion rice? White rice with a sachet of Lipton Onion soup mix thrown in. She once substituted that for rolls at a Thanksgiving dinner and my wife said she would divorce me right then. Coffee? Always instant. Unless we ha guests then she made some in the hard geometry of her Italian stovetop espresso machine. Orange juice was concentrate except the time she bought a sack of oranges from the fruit hustler outside the gas station. Then we ha the pulpy kind made with her 70s mod whiz bang electric juicer. Bottled orange juice was a novelty to me when I moved to the mainland.

We also had plenty of orange concentrate because it was key to my mother's favorite drink.

The Madras.

She swear she invented it and then got it to become the default family get together drink. At Titi's house down the street. At Aida's house off the highway in Yauco. At every cousin's house in Mayaguez, they were drinking The Madras.

The Madras was measured in fingers. 2 fingers of vodka. A finger of triple sec which was always Cointreau (And good for Mami as that is a pricey yet easy brand) and four fingers of cranberry juice cocktail. This is effectively a Cosmpolitan and my mother thought herself a Puerto Rican Carrie Bradshaw during my highschool years so its easy to connect the dots back to the inspiration. But then she would scoop a teaspoon of orange juice concentrate into the glass and stir. That was The Madras.

And the concentrate, which doesn't freeze in the freezer but doesn't melt easily in the open air (That stuff really is beyond magic) would just blob to the bottom of her martini glass until each sip broke it up into citrus globules.

Is it a good drink? If you like Cosmpolotians then yeah. Its a more acidic yet sweeter version of it. Citrusy but not super clean tasting. Its a drink cooked up CC6 Daisy Street so take that. I invented a drink there. The Grasshopper. Which was Creme De Menthe, Sprite, and Triple Sec. It was awful and I got no one hooked on it like Mami's Madras.