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Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
This World Tequila Day, sip your way through these irresistible cocktails!
Tequila is more than just a drink—it is the life of the party, the ultimate crowd-pleaser. Synonymous with celebration, this iconic spirit is liquid joy in a glass. This World Tequila Day (July 24), we've curated a list of the most indulgent tequila cocktails, each guaranteed to make you ride the high wave! A curated mix of tequila cocktails Celebrate the day with these hand-picked, irresistible recipes, and toast to the ultimate fiesta! Bathtub by Call Me Ten, Delhi Delhi's modern Japanese bar, Call Me Ten, is serving up some of the most delectable cocktails. At the heart of their tequila line-up is the Bathtub, a visually stunning concoction made with spiced reposado tequila, citrus, and coriander air. It's warm, zesty, and aromatic, designed to appease both the eyes and the palate. This refreshing yet layered cocktail is a stylish ode to the legendary Mexican spirit. Mexico x Punjab by Tepah by the Bagh, Amritsar Crafted by Head Mixologist Anshul Tiwari at The Bagh & Tepah, Mexico x Punjab is where Mexican agave meets Amritsari flair. This refreshing highball blends tequila with grapefruit cordial, lime juice, and fresh coriander, topped with soda for a bright, citrusy fizz. Served in a coriander salt-rimmed glass and garnished with grapefruit and herbs, it's a drink that feels both familiar and delightfully unexpected, just like the fusion it's named after. La Ruta Agave by KICO Bar, Mumbai At KICO Bar, mixologist Kaustubh V Sawardekar presents La Ruta Agave, a punchy, peppery twist on tequila. This bold cocktail blends tequila with Aperol, grapefruit juice, Amaro, and a kick of Sichuan pepper syrup, balanced by a foamy top. Served in a coupe glass with a dehydrated grapefruit wheel or a pepper-dusted rim, it is citrusy, spiced, and beautifully complex. El Diablo by Karma Lakelands, Gurugram The luxury eco-resort in Gurugram is blending craftsmanship and creativity to create some truly appetising drinks. El Diablo is a cocktail that lives up to its fiery name. This striking drink combines tequila reposado with the deep berry notes of crème de cassis, a splash of lime juice, and a hit of ginger ale. It is refreshingly layered with sweet, tart, and spicy notes, perfect for those who crave a little kick. Sour Cherry Margarita by Siren Cocktail Bar, Bengaluru Created by Akshay Singh, Bar Head Mixologist at Siren, this striking margarita takes the classic route and gives it a bold, fruity detour. The Sour Cherry Margarita mixes tequila with sour cherry compote, fresh lime juice, and a touch of agave syrup, perfect for those who love a juicy punch. Refreshing, tangy, and beautifully coloured, it is a layered sip that's equal parts smooth and zesty. (Written by Aarohi Lakhera)
Los Angeles Times
07-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
How ‘El Diablo,' a corrupt Mexican lawman, helped create a narco-state
MEXICO CITY — By his own admission, the Mexican lawman known as El Diablo — The Devil — supervised a scourge of torture, murder, kidnappings, land grabs and other abuses while amassing a fortune in cartel bribes that bankrolled purchases of homes, cattle and a fleet of buses. Edgar Veytia's transgressions came while he was the top cop in Nayarit, a small Pacific Coast state that evolved from a sleepy backwater to one of Mexico's most violent cartel battlegrounds. Veytia, who honed the public persona of a crusading, pistol-packing prosecutor, brazenly traveled between Mexico and the United States, confident that no one would see beyond his righteous, tough-on-crime facade. 'I didn't think I would be arrested,' Veytia testified later. His sense of invulnerability was shattered on March 27, 2017, when U.S. agents busted Veytia at a border crossing in San Diego. This was no low-level mule who ferried drugs on his person, but a state attorney general who had facilitated cartel smuggling for years. Veytia pleaded guilty in January 2019 to narcotics trafficking. El Diablo, however, knew where the bodies were buried — a knowledge he peddled tirelessly to his U.S. handlers. And when he testified against an even bigger Mexican narco-politician, he secured a get-out-of-jail card — before completing even half of his 20-year U.S. prison sentence. Veytia, 55, was released from prison in Februaryand is currently a free man, residing in the northeastern United States. But now he is facing some of his alleged victims in a singular legal action. Five Nayarit families — among them farmers, small business owners and a former police officer — are suing Veytia in federal court in Washington, D.C., under the Torture Victim Protection Act. The law, passed in 1992, allows civil claims against abusers who, while acting in official capacities for foreign governments, engaged in atrocities anywhere in the world. The Nayarit plaintiffs say they endured torture, death threats and extortion during El Diablo's reign of terror. While Veytia may have paid his dues under U.S. law, they say his mostly anonymous victims in Mexico, some long-ago slain or disappeared, merit a reckoning. 'When the very institutions meant to protect and deliver justice become perpetrators of torture and abuse, they leave citizens with no recourse,' the plaintiffs said in a statement. 'In the face of that abandonment, we came together—as civil society—to resist silence and impunity.' Representing the Nayarit residents — who are seeking unspecified damages — is San Francisco-based Guernica37, a nonprofit organization seeking accountability for global rights abuses. Assisting are pro-bono lawyers and UC Irvine's Civil Rights Litigation Clinic, founded by attorney Paul L. Hoffman, a co-counsel and pioneer in such international actions. Veytia denies the residents' charges. His New York-based lawyer, Alexei Schacht, labels the accusers 'shake-down artists' and 'fraudsters' seeking a big payday. 'Mr. Veytia committed some terrible crimes, but he paid for it in a maximum-security prison and he's trying to turn his life around,' said Schacht. 'It's unfortunate that these people are lying about him.' Whatever the truth, Veytia's history of heinous crimes dramatizes the intractable nexus between Mexican officialdom and the country's ruthless mafias. For decades, the lure of cartel cash has ensnared prosecutors, generals, mayors, governors — and even the country's onetime top law enforcement honcho, Genaro García Luna, against whom Veytia testified in federal court in Brooklyn. That so many corrupt functionaries and cartel capos ultimately face responsibility in the United States — and not in Mexico — underscores a fundamental weakness of the Mexican justice system, observers say. 'It's one more instance of official impunity in Mexico,' said Guillermo Garduño, a researcher at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City. 'Organized crime and many politicians in this country are one and the same. The Veytia case is a very clear example of that, though it's far from the only one.' The Massachusetts-sized state of Nayarit, population 1.2 million, boasts both a tourist-beckoning coast ('The Nayarit Riviera') and a mountainous interior where cultivation of opium poppies and marijuana has long provided a subsistence living for some peasants. Nayarit's location, sandwiched between the drug-trafficking hubs of Sinaloa and Jalisco states, made it prized turf as organized crime syndicates expanded their terrain and embraced new rackets. Violence escalated rapidly in Nayarit, and elsewhere in Mexico, after President Felipe Calderón, with U.S. backing, declared 'war' in 2006 on drug cartels. Gun battles and gang killings convulsed Tepic, Nayarit's volcano-ringed capital, where the homicide rate soon rivaled that of Mexico's hyper-violent border cities. 'There were people hung from bridges,' Veytia testified when asked to describe Tepic in those days. 'There were people who showed up skinned.' And, he added, there was an especially macabre practice, a warning that evoked pozole, the signature Mexican corn and meat stew. 'They were these big tins where they would put dismembered parts like legs, heads,' Veytia said. 'And they would add some corn grains to it, and call it pozole.' Veytia, who attended elementary school in San Diego — he is a joint U.S.-Mexican citizen — arrived in Tepic in the early 1990s, running a transport firm and a jewelry shop, according to his testimony. He says he later earned a law degree. Veytia hitched his fortune to the spurs of the charismatic Roberto Sandoval, a glad-handing pol in a cowboy hat who was elected mayor of Tepic and, in 2011, governor of Nayarit. Sandoval named Veytia to top law enforcement slots in both the capital and the state as the folksy politician amassed illicit riches, according to prosecutors. (Sandoval remains jailed in Mexico on corruption charges, which he denies.). Veytia, a portly figure with a bushy mustache, seemed an unlikely Eliot Ness, but he was credited with reducing violence and hailed as 'the terror of every criminal' in a laudatory corrido, or ballad. In fact, human rights activists say, Veytia crafted a kind of a paz narca, or narco-peace: His legions of corrupt cops didn't mess with Veyta's favored mobsters of the moment — the ones lining his pockets. That guaranteed one gang's dominance. Intra-cartel warfare plummeted, but drug trafficking boomed. From the moment of his arrest, Veytia tried to secure favor by informing on other narcos, and in 2019 he got his big break with the arrest in Texas of García Luna, Mexico's security chief under ex-President Calderón. García Luna was a big fish ready to be fried in Brooklyn. But during his testimony, Veytia recounted his own crimes. During his nine-year law enforcement career, Veytia said, he pocketed about $1 million in kickbacks, along with gifts, including Rolex watches, from traffickers — who dubbed him El Diablo — Veytia admitted being 'responsible' for the murders of 10 'or more' people and the torture of dozens of others utilizing various methods — sometimes electric shocks, sometimes waterboarding. While testifying against García Luna, Veytia dropped a bombshell: He said a former Nayarit governor (not Sandoval) had told him that orders came from then-President Calderón and García Luna to protect the legendary Sinaloa cartel boss, Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán. Calderón, who was never charged in the case, denounced Veytia's testimony as 'an absolute lie.' But a jury in 2023 convicted García Luna of pocketing millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. He was sentenced to 38 years in prison. A judge halved Veytia's sentence, from 20 to 10 years. When Veytia walked out of prison in February, he had served slightly less than eight years. According to his lawyer, Veytia lost most of his accumulated wealth on legal fees and seizures of properties in Mexico, where prosecutors are seeking his extradition on kidnapping, torture and other charges. The ghosts of crimes past have proved persistent. In the civil lawsuit, Nayarit residents say Veytia tortured them, threatened to kill them and engaged in systematic property theft as he inflamed a statewide 'culture of fear.' Among the plaintiffs are Gerardo Montoya and his wife, Yadira Yesenia Zavala. In June 2016, the couple allege in court papers, cops waylaid them on a road, handcuffed them and drove them to see 'boss Veytia' at a police headquarters in Tepic. According to Montoya, Veytia threatened to kill him unless he turned over a property the couple owned. Montoya said he was beaten so badly that a paramedic was called to check on him. His wife says she was sexually harassed and forced to go home and retrieve the deed. The couple says Veytia forced them to sign away the property. Before he was released, Montoya said, Veytia warned him: 'If you say anything, you're a dead man.' Yuri Disraili Camacho Vega, a former Nayarit state police officer, said he resigned from the force fearing for his life. Camacho said he received death threats after filing a criminal complaint with federal authorities denouncing Veytia's directive ordering police to protect members of an infamous crime family. Upon returning to Nayarit more than a year later to visit his ailing mother, Camacho said he was arrested, accused of driving a stolen vehicle, tortured and jailed. According to Camacho, Veytia demanded that Camacho withdraw his allegations against him — and fork over 1 million pesos, then the equivalent of about $77,000. Camacho said he was severely beaten and subjected to waterboarding, or simulated drowning. If he didn't agree to Veytia's terms, Camacho said he was told, he and his loved ones would be killed. Camacho said his family made the payment and he withdrew the complaint. In court papers, Veytia denies it all. He accused Montoya of being 'a longtime drug trafficker' and called Camacho a 'thoroughly corrupt officer' who worked for the Sinaloa cartel and tried to kill Veytia. Veytia's lawyer, Schacht, said the allegations defy credibility. Recalling how Veytia wielded power in his narco days, Schacht said, 'If my client wanted to torture you, you would be dead.' Special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal and Liliana Nieto del Río contributed to this report.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What Makes The Carl's Jr. El Diablo Burger So Spicy?
Fast food restaurants have been adding more spicy items to their menus, getting attention with often limited time offerings that up the heat ante, like the fiery ghost pepper chicken sandwich and fries Wendy's once had. Carl's Jr. entered the fray with its El Diablo burger — "The Devil" if you didn't pay attention in Spanish class. The burger packs heat in several ways, layering hot pepper flavor to create a mouth-tingling spiciness. The El Diablo is made with Carl's Jr.'s charbroiled all-beef burgers (it's one of the few fast food restaurants that actually cook their burgers on a grill), bacon, jalapeno poppers, pepperjack cheese, jalapeno coins, and habanero ranch sauce on a seeded bun. That's four forms of spicy peppers, three of them jalapenos. The poppers are fried cheddar cheese and jalapeno bites, which are one of the chain's more popular sides. Carl's Jr. doesn't post ingredients, but pepperjack cheese is usually studded with jalapenos, although other peppers can be used too. The jalapeno coins are slices which some reviewers have said are probably pickled. The three types of jalapeno on offer all heat up the El Diablo, but the habanero in the sauce is even hotter. Jalapenos typically range from 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville heat units (SHU), while Habaneros offer anywhere from 150,000 to 570,000 SHU. The sauce's ranch cools things down a bit, but that's still a lot of heat piled on. Read more: What Makes KFC's Coleslaw So Delicious The El Diablo first debuted in 2015 for a limited time. It occasionally reappeared over the following years until it became a permanent addition in April of 2024. When Carl's Jr. made it a regular item, it also introduced an El Diablo Chicken Tender Wrap and El Diablo Loaded Fries, but they're no longer on the menu. The spicy burger was actually dreamed up by Carl's Jr.'s advertising agency. It was asked by company owner CKE Restaurants to create a burger that would appeal to the large Hispanic market in the southwestern United States, an important area for the West Coast-based chain. Research shows 56% of American households have hot sauce in the refrigerator, so it's no real surprise the El Diablo did well in tasting, after which the brand decided to release it nationally. Carl's Jr. brought the heat with its El Diablo — which also comes as a double or triple — but it doesn't sell that many other spicy items. The Big Angus El Diablo is the same burger but with a ⅓-pound, 100% Angus Beef patty. There's also a Spicy Chicken Sandwich on the menu. The Hangover Helper breakfast burger meal which we put to the ultimate test has a spicy version. It adds pepperjack cheese and guacamole to a burger typically topped with egg, bacon, and Hash Rounds. It then swaps in jalapeno popper bites, Carl's Jr.'s only side with any heat, for the Hash Rounds. For more food and drink goodness, join The Takeout's newsletter. Get taste tests, food & drink news, deals from your favorite chains, recipes, cooking tips, and more! Read the original article on The Takeout.
