Behind the Stick
In Behind the Stick, Ottawa bartenders are tasked with creating a wholly original cocktail using an oddball ingredient. We’ll be highlighting one bartender, their spot and an ingredient per column, at...
Behind the Stick
A Chilling Labuyo
Camille Hopper-Naud of Supply and Demand and Coupe and Mixer shakes things up with cool melon and Bird's eye peppers for a chilling yet spicy cocktail
Wellington West’s handmade pasta and seafood joint Supply and Demand isn’t only a place to grab a memorable and always on-point dinner. Rather, sidling up to the bar is a great option for a quick cocktail, an oyster or two, some of their cloudlike focaccia and maybe another cocktail for good measure.
Camille Hopper-Naud is the brain behind the bar’s small-but-mighty cocktail menu that leans heavily into gin-forward classics. Beyond working behind the bar, Hopper-Naud runs Coupe and Mixer, an in-home cocktail workshop in which she’ll focus on a certain style of cocktail (tiki or classics, for example) and teach techniques that go with them.
At Supply & Demand, she works with the kitchen to use byproduct ingredients that would otherwise be destined for the trash bin. Apart from the house cocktails, her creative drinks change fairly frequently. Hopper-Naud’s inspiration comes from the ingredient itself, and she builds the drink off a particular flavour profile in a way that heightens and elevates it.
As such, a challenge such as Behind the Stick, in which one bartender challenges another to make a drink using a tricky ingredient of their choosing, was right up her alley. She has used such ingredients as pea shell juice at Supply and Demand and was quick to hammer out a deliciously refreshing drink with the challenged ingredient of Siling labuyo peppers.
It would be easy to confuse this chili with the more common Thai bird’s eye; however, this Filipino staple is visually different if you’re holding the plants side by side. Bird’s eye chilis droop down while they grow and have a slimmer and longer profile. The Siling labuyo’s fruit is spicier, stubbier and points upward while growing.
After having searched around in Kowloon Market and Filipino grocery store Divisoria, Hopper-Naud reached out to the restaurant’s food supplier and found out that, since there isn’t a high demand for Siling labuyo, it is often replaced with bird’s eyes. Luck would have it that although the supplier didn’t carry them, its warehouse off the highway happened to have a plant growing on the property.
“I wanted to make something cooling, but with a spicy finish that would highlight the contrast between hot and cold,” Hopper-Naud says. She used honeydew and coconut water to provide a clean and bright flavour to the drink, while her lime and Siling Labuyo cordial amped up the heat to a pleasant tingling. “There's only a little bit [of the cordial] so it’s really cooling to start, really refreshing, nice and green — and then has a spicy finish that lingers.”
While she was still trying to locate the fresh peppers, she came across a Siling Labuyo pepper sauce, the more traditional manner in which to find the pepper. The issue with the hot sauce was the high vinegar content; the tart and acidic nature would have thrown off the balance for her cordial, resulting in a more pickled spiciness than the fresher, tangy heat she was after.
To add to the flavour, she chose rum as her spirit, something that plays lovingly with heat and unquestioningly screams of the tropics. Using honeydew juice and coconut water in the shaker, she took care to keep shaking on ice to a minimum. Too much shaking and dilution would throw off the balance; with just enough, the drink would be chilled down without turning watery.
Strained over ice in a wide-mouthed wine glass allowed a perfect presentation, with the aromatics leaping from the drink. Bright melon and salty coconut water notes balanced out the subtle rum funk and subdued pepper spice. Hopper- Naud’s showstopper garnish was a thinly sliced honeydew wheel formed into a flower with a whole Siling labuyo standing in as the flower’s stamen. An enticing drink to stare at, her Chilling Labuyo went down quickly — the heat from the peppers coming in on the back end without overpowering the overall refreshing nature of the cocktail. Hopper-Naud says to keep an eye out for this tropical treat in the warmer months — which can only mean you’ll have to sidle up to the bar more often, in hopes of getting one.
Supply and Demand
1335 Wellington St., W., Ottawa, Ont.
supplyanddemandfoods.ca | 613.680.2949 | @supply_ottawa
Chilling Labuyo
2 ounces 3-year-old Havana rum
2 ounces coconut water
2 ounces juiced honeydew
3/4 ounce Siling Labuyo lime cordial
Short shake, single strain into an ice-filled tulip glass. Garnish with a honeydew wheel and Siling Labuyo pepper.
Siling Labuyo lime cordial
500 grams lime juice and zest of the same limes
375 grams cane sugar
5 Siling Labuyo peppers, chopped
Muddle sugar, peppers and zest. Add juice, let sit overnight refrigerated. Finely strain.
Behind the Stick
In Behind the Stick, Ottawa bartenders are tasked with creating a wholly original cocktail using an oddball...
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