Little Shark

Boxes and Booze is on location again, this time at the beach, and I’m thinking about the ocean. Nothing gets the heart pounding, the people running, and the imagination spiraling quite like the sight of a dorsal fin gliding its way along the waves. Sharks are ancient creatures, dating back 455 million years according to the fossil record. In fact they fossilize quite well, despite having no bones at all. Sharks are “elasmobranchs” – fish made entirely of cartilaginous tissue. They have excellent eyesight and night vision, and even “ampullae of Lorenzini” near their eyes – special electroreceptor organs that allow them to sense electromagnetic fields. You’d think all this would make them very good puzzle solvers, and while I’m sure you are right, it’s the shark that’s got me puzzled this time.

Osamu Kasho of the Karakuri Creation Group is a wizard at creating clever mechanisms and hidden secrets in his puzzle boxes. His whimsical creations are full of charm and nostaligia, and his animal boxes are adorable. For his end of year offering last year, he had it in mind to make a little shark. He seems to enjoy the ocean, having previously made a set of cute whales, a pelican, and even a little ship. He says he struggled with the idea for a while, until he was bitten by a stroke of genius. “I think many people thought it may be broken as you thought. Actually some people asked me whether it's broken or not. I was confident that people must be tricked on it, but on the other hand, I was very nervous if it's really broken. It was very hard to make a new trick, as always. I just had nothing but an idea of the shape of shark at the beginning. I couldn't get any good idea for weeks but finally got this trick.” Little Shark may look cute, but he’s got some serious teeth. There isn’t much going on here, but it is so well hidden that many people have been stumped by it for a very long time. This simple elegance seems to appeal to a lot more people than me, because it won Karakuri’s Box of the Year competition for 2021, and well deserved. It’s one shark I’d love to swim with anytime.

Any self respecting shark cocktail knows it needs to be blue. Of course, there is no naturally blue spirit, or even fruit juice, for that matter, that actually exists. Blue cocktails get their distinctively nautical hue from food coloring, and some brilliant marketing attributed to the Dutch distillery Bols from the nineteen twenties and thirties. Blue Curacao is simply blue tinted curacao, an orange flavored spirit which originated on what was originally an island in the Dutch Antilles and is now its own nation. Valencia oranges, brought to Curacao by the Spanish, grew into sour and bitter fruits on this more desert like island, and the groves were left to their own devices over the centuries. In the late eighteen hundreds, a Dutch distillery ultimately thought to turn the dried orange peels into a liqueur, and the rest is history. The Bols company does not claim to have invented the blue version, but did popularize it.

Kitschy blue cocktails had their heyday in the eighties, but like all things vintage, have made a comeback. Bartender John deBary is credited with bringing back the blue in modern times, at the respectable New York speakeasy bar PDT (Please Don’t Tell). deBary created the festive tiki drink for his friend and PDT regular Jacob Briars, and named it after another PDT bartender, Sean Hoard, whose nickname is “Sharky”. The drink is based on butter-infused rum, using a technique known as fat-washing, also invented at PDT, and features a riot of flavors including hazelnut and pineapple. For my offering, I left out the heavy cream from the original, and steered the drink more towards the daiquiri template. Like most high proof, rum heavy tiki drinks, the recipe seems to lean too sweet based on all the juice and sugar present, but this ends up giving the heavy rum the balance it needs and the results will make your head swim. You’re going to need a bigger boat – cheers!

Shark a Daq! (adapted from John deBary)

1 ½ oz butter washed white rum

½ oz overproof rum

1/3 oz orgeat

1/3 oz blue curacao

¾ oz lime

¼ oz pineapple

¼ oz falernum

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into an old fashioned glass over a large clear cube with a lime peel shark trapped inside.

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