Just a few of us hung around the kitchen following a wonderful late-afternoon party at Sarah and Sam Bell Steves’s San Antonio home. Sam’s son, Tres, stopped by and we started talking margaritas. Tres broke out the family’s personalized sterling silver margarita shakers, a pretty good sign that we’d stumbled into in the hands of a margarita-making marvel. We politely asked for seconds—just to make sure. Then we asked for the recipe.
Recipe information
Yield
makes 1 drink
Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) tequila (the Bells suggest Tres Generaciones silver)
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) Cointreau
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 ounce (1 tablespoon) Grand Marnier
Ice cubes
Coarse salt
Preparation
Combine the tequila, Cointreau, lime juice, and Grand Marnier in a cocktail shaker along with a small handful of ice cubes. Shake, shake, shake, until the mixture is “skating” with little chips of ice floating on top. Pour over ice in a salt-rimmed glass.
Pastry Queen Parties by Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman. Copyright © 2009 Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman. Published by Ten Speed Press. All Rights Reserved.
A pastry chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, native Texan Rebecca Rather has been proprietor of the Rather Sweet Bakery and Café since 1999. Open for breakfast and lunch daily, Rather Sweet has a fiercely loyal cadre of regulars who populate the café’s sunlit tables each day. In 2007, Rebecca opened her eponymous restaurant, serving dinner nightly, just a few blocks from the café. Rebecca is the author of THE PASTRY QUEEN, and has been featured in Texas Monthly, Gourmet, Ladies Home Journal, Food & Wine, Southern Living, Chocolatier, Saveur, and O, The Oprah Magazine. When she isn’t in the bakery or on horseback, Rebecca enjoys the sweet life in Fredericksburg, where she tends to her beloved backyard garden and menagerie, and eagerly awaits visits from her college-age daughter, Frances.
Alison Oresman has worked as a journalist for more than twenty years. She has written and edited for newspapers in Wyoming, Florida, and Washington State. As an entertainment editor for the Miami Herald, she oversaw the paper’s restaurant coverage and wrote a weekly column as a restaurant critic. After settling in Washington State, she also covered restaurants in the greater Seattle area as a critic with a weekly column. A dedicated home baker, Alison is often in the kitchen when she isn't writing. Alison lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her husband, Warren, and their children, Danny and Callie.
