boozy concoctions part I: meyer lemon limoncello

Cooking + alcohol is a match made in heaven. A glass of wine or a bubbly cocktail is always welcome in my kitchen, both in the hands of the chef and the happy people waiting to eat the food. But I don't stop there. What about cooking with alcohol? Not just for deglazing and simmering, but making your own fancy, flavoured infusions?

The recipe for fruit-infused liquor is simple: put fruit in a clean jar, cover with sugar and booze, leave for a month or two. Sugar isn't necessary, but since I'm usually using these infusions in mixed drinks, it saves you from having to add simple syrup at a later point.

Last year, I made plain old rhubarb gin - it turned the gin a purple-pink colour, and gave it this amazing rhubarb flavour. This year I'm branching out. 

There's a scene in Under the Tuscan Sun where Diane Lane is given a glass of homemade limoncello by her dreamy Italian love interest. Sitting on a beach. Under the Tuscan sun. All I want is to taste that limoncello. (Boyfriend, if you're reading this, take me to Tuscany some day.) 

Here's the closest I'm gonna get to that. If you don't have meyers, definitely make this with plain old lemons - more tart, just as good! I would encourage you to use organic lemons, because you don't want all those pesticides mixing in with your hard earned homemade booze. Adapted from this recipe.

meyer lemon limoncello

16 organic meyer lemons

1 750ml bottle vodka

4 cups water

2 cups sugar

1 cup honey

Quarter meyer lemons, and stuff them into two very clean quart jars. Pour over the vodka, seal tightly and set aside for a month or two. 

After that looooong wait, strain out the gorgeous, lemon coloured vodka and set aside. Put the lemons, water, sugar and honey in a large pot, and bring to a gentle simmer. Don't boil - you'll cook off all that leftover alcohol in the lemons! Stir often, mashing the lemons with the back of your spoon, or a potato masher.

After about 10 minutes, the sugar will have disolved, and you'll have this awesome lemon mash. Strain with a fine-mesh strainer, discarding the solids. Stir together the vodka and the sugar/lemon/honey liquid, and pour into clean jars. Store in the fridge, not in the liquor cabinet, because of the high quantities of lemon juice. It'll keep for a couple of months, but good luck with that. 

How will I be drinking this? I might use an ounce or two to fortify some lemonade. Or I might drink it mixed with club soda and garnished with a lemon twist. Best of all, I might shake it over ice with some strawberry-rhubarb gin and strain into a chilled martini glass for the perfect late-spring martini. Strawberry-rhubarb gin, you ask? That's in tomorrow's post. 

pomegranate margaritas

Sour, salty, sweet:  everything you want in a margarita. When you shake this drink in a martini shaker, the pomegranate seeds bruise and release their juice, turning the whole thing a lovely shade of pink!

pomegranate margaritas
makes 2

juice from 4 limes
3 oz simple syrup
4 tbsp pomegranate seeds
3 oz tequila
salt for salt rim

Combine all ingredients in a martini shaker (or a jar with a tight fitting lid) with a few handfuls of ice. Shake vigorously, and taste. Add more simple syrup or lime juice to taste. Prepare two glasses with a salt rim (I had some pink salt lying around that looked real pretty). Strain into glasses and serve! You can gently float a few pomegranate seeds on the surface for garnish.

chai time

Chai (or cha) means tea in a whole bunch of different asian languages. Indian-style tea, which most people mean when they say 'chai tea,' is also called Masala Chai, literally 'mixed-spice tea' (according to wikipedia). You probably already knew, but every time people say chai tea, they're saying tea-tea. Kinda funny. 

Don't get me started on Starbucks or Second Cup's 'chai tea lattes.' That sickly-sweet syrupy flavour? It comes from a carton, and it ain't got nothing on this chai. Make a big batch, and store it in the fridge. To serve, you just heat it up with your choice of milk - cow, soy, almond, rice - whatever! If you have a milk frother, you can go crazy and make your own latte at home. Also, adapt the spices to your own liking - don't like liquorice flavour? Leave out the star anise. Love ginger? Add more. 

This is perfect for curling up with a wool blanket and a novel. A cup of chai, some music by Ravi Shankar and a novel set in India are the closest I'm getting to the Taj Mahal (until my next travel adventure, hopefully). May I suggest an epic novel by Vikram Seth or Rohinton Mistry? My two favourites are A Suitable Boy and A Fine Balance. (I think I've wanted to go to India for a long time - here's a drawing from one of my high school sketch books.)

Masala Chai Concentrate

Adapted from these three recipes. Makes 4 cups of concentrate, which equals 8 cups chai. 

4 cups water

6 whole cardamom pods, crushed

6 cloves

6 black peppercorns

1 piece star anise

1 cinnamon stick

1 3-inch piece of ginger, sliced

zest of 1 orange

1 vanilla bean, split in half

6 black tea bags

1/4 to 1/2 cup of honey (depending on your taste)

Bring water and spices (everything except the tea and honey) to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and add the tea and honey. Simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and let steep 5-10 minutes. Strain, and store in the fridge. To make, combine 1 part chai concentrate with one part milk and heat.

the caesar: redux

At the camp I work at every summer, myself and my fellow counsellors have a mascot. He's a stuffed lobster, and he sings 'Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot' when you squeeze his claw. Many inside jokes aside, we decided to create a cocktail that might reflect Pinchy's tastes (yes, the lobster's name is Pinchy). Then we went a little nuts and created not one, but two deluxe cocktails. Here's the first one.

A note: I'm not a big caesar person. Did you know the second ingredient in Clamato is glucose/fructose? And there's that clam juice issue, not to mention the MSG. I also hate vodka. So caesars aren't looking so great for me. However, I love the idea of a vegetable-based cocktail, something with a fancy salt rim and endless possibilities for garnishes!

Here it is: a truffle salt rim, pickle juice, sriracha, gin, a tomato juice base, and enough garnishes to keep you snacking throughout the whole drink. It's not a casear anymore - which means it's my kind of caesar.

The Garden Pinchy
Makes four delicious cocktails.

1 lime
1/4 cup truffle salt
juice from pickle jar
sriracha sauce
8 oz. gin
4 cups tomato juice
8 olives
4 dill pickle spears
toothpicks and tiny umbrellas for garnish
4 tall rocks glasses
Ice

Cut the lime into 8 wedges - the bartender way. Cut it in half, lengthwise, then make a 1/2 inch cut into each side, crosswise. Then, slice each half into 4 wedges. You should have a handful of wedges with a small cut in them, so you can easily slide them on the edge of a glass. Set four aside for garnish.

On each glass, take a lime wedge and run it around the rim. Pour the truffle salt in a saucer, and twist each glass in the salt, creating a salt rim. Toss a handful of ice in each glass. Pour a splash of pickle juice in each glass. Next, add a tiny bit of sriracha to each glass. Add 2 oz of gin to each, and top up with 1 cup of tomato juice. Stir each glass to combine. Stick a pickle spear in each glass, add a few olives on a toothpick, an umbrella, and a lime wedge.

Too much garnish? You can tone it down if you like, but I like snacks built into my beverages. It's like a salad in a glass.

hot chocolate

It seems like just yesterday I was wearing shorts. Now, they're being packed away, along with all my other summer clothes. I'm going through my boxes of tea at an alarming rate. And it's harder and harder to leave the warmth of my duvet in the morning.

The perfect cure for the chills: hot chocolate. I love it with whole milk, but you can use low-fat, soy or almond. Also in the picture? Almond cake my friend made, from the cookbook Canning for a New Generation. A most satisfying combination. I couldn't find the exact recipe online, but here's a similar one from Jamie Oliver. I just can't get enough of him lately, which is why I'm seeing him in person (!) next week at Massey Hall.

hot chocolate
makes 2 large mugs

60 g dark chocolate (about 1/2 bar)
3 cups milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp sugar (or other sweetener - honey, maple syrup)
pinch of salt

Melt chocolate in a heavy bottomed pot on very low heat. Add milk, cocoa, sugar and salt, and bring to a simmer, whisking to combine ingredients. Enjoy with delicious baked goods, or throw it in a thermos for consumption after fall hikes or winter sports.

the gimlet and some limey limes.

Homemade Lime Cordial versus Rose's Lime Cordial. It's like the difference between the orange juice my grandfather used to make in Phoenix, Arizona - oranges picked off the bush in the backyard, juiced in his kitchen - and Minute Maid that comes concentrated in a frozen can.

Imagine a whisky sour made with that neon green bar mix (from a powder that probably doesn't actually contain limes in the ingredient list). Now think of how much better it could be if you replaced that whisky with a good quality dry gin, and made a lime cordial from scratch, with lime zest, lime juice and sugar. Voila, the Gimlet, a classic cocktail.

For those of us without a martini shaker, you have one hiding in your pantry that you didn't even know about - a mason jar with a lid! Just fill to the brim with ice, add the ingredients, screw on the lid tightly and shake! Your shaker is also a beautiful, kitschy serving glass. While you drink it, imagine British Soldiers in the 1800's, standing on the deck of a ship, knocking back their daily dose of scurvy protection.

This recipe comes from an excellent New York Times article on deconstructing the gimlet. I have to admit, I couldn't leave my lime cordial overnight to 'steep,' as the article instructs. I used it right away, and it was delicious. I'll be sure to try it again tomorrow, and see how the lime flavour has changed. (What a chore. Drinking more gimlets! I'm sure I'll need them after teaching 5 year olds how to make ice cream.)

Now, just imagine the next time I make this cordial, when I dump in a pound of grated ginger - perfection!

homemade lime cordial
This makes a small amount - about a cup of cordial. It will keep for a week or two in your fridge. Double the recipe if you're having a party (and you're going to want more - try drinking just one gimlet. I'm having a second one right now as I write this post.)

5 limes, juice and zest
about 1 cup of sugar

Scrub your limes clean. Slice off either end, and use a vegetable peeler to take off most of the zest - no bitter white pith, only green zest allowed! It doesn't have to be beautiful. Now, slice the limes in half and juice them into a bowl. Measure how much juice you have (somewhere around a cup), and dump the juice into a jar with a lid.

Now, measure out an equal amount of sugar, and add to the juice. Then add the zest, giving it a squeeze as you add it, to help release the essential oils. Shake everything until the sugar is dissolved, and try to leave it overnight in the fridge. The next day, strain out the zest, and keep covered in the fridge for a week or two.


the gimlet
Makes one drink.


2 oz dry gin
2 oz lime cordial
2 or 3 lime wedges
ice

Fill a martini shaker or jar with ice. Pour over gin, cordial, and squeeze in a few lime wedges. Shake, and serve! If you have a martini shaker, you can strain this and serve it in a chilled martini glass, or serve it over ice in a rocks glass. My favourite? Serve it in that mason jar that you used as a shaker, with a lime twist as garnish.

cocktail time!

Here you go: some not very seasonal drinks to get you through the end of the winter/spring/not-summer-yet blues. I made these two for my birthday- and they would look great with a paper umbrella, or some of those retro paper straws. If you have either mango or watermelon in your freezer, go ahead and use these for the recipes, making them into a frozen-slush kind of drink. Perfect for the freak warm weather from last week!

watermelon gin fizz
to make watermelon juice, puree chunks of ripe watermelon in a blender or food processor. Makes one large cocktail, or two small.

1 cup watermelon juice
handful of ice
1 oz. simple syrup
2 oz. dry gin
splash of club soda
3 or 4 mint leaves
2 or 3 lime wedges

In a martini shaker, muddle lime wedges and mint leaves. Add ice, watermelon juice, gin and simple syrup. Shake, and strain over ice in a tall glass. Top with club soda and garnish with a lime wedge and mint sprig.

mango mimosa
makes 4 cocktails.

1 ripe atulfo mango, peeled and cut in chunks
1 lime
1 bottle of sweet champagne or muscato

Puree mango chunks and juice of lime in a food processor, adding a few tablespoons of water to thin. Divide the mango puree in four champagne glasses, then top with champagne or muscato.

(The real reason for all these fruity drinks? Besides the occasion of my 25th birthday? I made these fruit plates for an event, and there were a lot of mangled chunks of fruit that didn't make the cut. Ever cut up 70 dollars worth of fruit? This is what it looks like.)

spiced apple gin fizz

I invented this for my christmas party, only because I had a bunch of simple syrup leftover from making candied orange slices. However, simple syrup is great to have around for creating all sorts of cocktails and non-boozy drinks. Just combine equal parts of sugar and water in a pot, and simmer until the sugar dissolves. You can flavour it with whatever you like: mint, tea bags, citrus zest or ginger. For this recipe, I steeped star anise, cinnamon sticks, cloves and orange zest in the simple syrup. It will keep for months in the fridge.

spiced apple gin fizz
1 oz gin
1/2 oz spiced simple syrup
2 oz apple cider
2 oz club soda

Combine all ingredients over ice and stir.

(if you want to be real fancy, try freezing cranberries in ice cubes - it turns plain old ice cubes into gorgeous, festive drink coolers!)

homemade orange liquor

In Europe, there's a common aperitif called '44.' It contains one orange, 44 coffee beans, 44 sugar cubes, and enough vodka to cover the whole thing for 44 days, while it infuses.

I reduced the sugar, and used clementines, purely because I didn't have a sealed container that an orange would fit in. The hardest part? Waiting over a month!

There's something delightful about stabbing an orange and tucking little coffee beans in the pockets, as well as the delicious smell of coffee and oranges while you're preparing it.

44 (orange coffee liquor)

1 orange, or 3 clementines 

(I suggest using unwaxed, organic ones - you don't want waxes and pesticides seeping into your liquor)

44 coffee beans

1/2 cup sugar

enough vodka to cover everything (about a mickey)

Scrub orange or clementines. Stab all over with a knife. Push coffee beans into the holes. Put orange, sugar and vodka in a sealed jar. Shake every day, for 44 days. Enjoy by itself, over ice, or invent some delicious cocktails - anything where an orange/coffee flavour would be tasty.

Summer fun!

Here's a delicious drink I had a few weeks ago at my friend's lovely farm ... to quote a her, "it's like a girl party in my mouth!" Sangria is really only as good as the ingredients you put in it. Any combination of delicious juice, something sparkling, and some sort of wine will be excellent, and you can always throw in some extra hard liquor for a kick - may I suggest brandy for a red wine sangria or peach schnapps for a white wine sangria? Best of all, drink it on a lazy summer's day with some tasty summer food.

Summer Sangria

1 bottle of Moscato (or another sparkling white)

3 or 4 cups of tropical juice (we went for Ceres 'Medley of Fruits')

1 can of club soda

Seeds from one pomegranate

Combine and serve over ice! (With a crazy fruit garnish and umbrella, just because it's sangria.)