Lockdown recipe diary #13: Million Dollar Paloma

We’ve all been there, you’ve been working on a thing that requires champagne so you opened a bottle and used a little but now it’s like a week later and your fizz isn’t in great shape. Flat champagne is one of the least exciting things ever, and the only thing to do is make a coconut flavoured champagne syrup.

Obviously.

(Being honest, my first thought was to make a straight ahead champagne syrup but I’d been working on a coconut syrup for a different thing and it seemed like a dumb enough idea that it just might work.)

Coconut champagne syrup

600 grams granulated cane sugar
400 grams champagne
100 grams desiccated coconut

Add the sugar to a pan (that holds at least 2 litres) and slowly add the champagne.
Add the desiccated coconut and bring to the boil on the lowest heat you can manage, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
Simmer for two minutes, then remove from heat and leave to cool.
Strain into a mixing jug (or another container with a wide neck), cover with cling film and put it in the fridge for at least four hours.
Remove from the fridge - a thin layer of solidified coconut oil should have formed on top.
Use a knife to break up the solidified oil layer, and strain out any solids.
Transfer to a cool, clean bottle, and label.

Yields ~500 ml.

Million Dollar Paloma

50 ml mezcal
15 ml coconut champagne syrup
15 ml lime juice
Top with grapefruit soda

Pour the mezcal, syrup and lime juice into a highball glass, and fill with cubed ice.
Top up with grapefruit soda, and garnish with a lime wheel.

It’s nice to find a use for something that seemed like it had passed its best, and as the Lucky Liquor Co. has reopened for takeaways on weekends, it’s really great that we can actually get some tasty drinks back into people’s hands.

Lockdown recipe diary #12: Bramble Italiano

Messing with classic recipes can be fraught. I tend to think that one of the reasons why some drinks stick in people’s mind is the simplicity of their recipes - not only are they easy to remember, they provide a good basis for experimentation.

A couple of years back, I wanted to add a long gin cocktail to the menu at the Last Word Saloon and I thought that the Bramble would be a good starting point. Putting a straight-ahead classic recipe version on the menu wasn’t an option as we were doing that at the Last Word’s sister which is even named after the drink, so I spent a bit of time thinking about how I wanted to keep a similar vibe while making this new recipe distinct enough to be considered its own thing.

Bramble Italiano

45 ml / 1.5oz gin
20 ml / 0.66 oz Cocchi Aperitivo Americano
10 ml / 0.33 oz orgeat
20 ml / 0.66 oz lemon juice

2 bar spoons creme de mure
1 bar spoon Campari

Pour the first four ingredients into a highball glass, and fill with crushed ice.
Garnish with a lemon wheel and a blackberry.
Mix the creme de mure and Campari in a small jug (a milk jug is perfect) and float on the top of the drink immediately before serving.

I decided that I wanted to bring a bit of an Italian aperitif feel, so I added a bit of Cocchi Americano rather than just having gin as the base spirit. I swapped in some orgeat instead of a basic sugar syrup to add a bit of texture and a bit of shading to the sweet element of the drink. Finally, the one base taste that’s not really present in a classic Bramble recipe is bitterness, and I wanted to bring some of that so rather than crowning the drink traditionally with creme de mure, I mixed that with some Campari.

The point of this drink isn’t to be “better” than a Bramble. It’s definitely an homage but the overall idea is to use the template of a drink that’s popular and known to draw people in trying things they’re less familiar with.

Lockdown recipe diary #11: Coco Fresca

The cocktail tradition is largely founded on alcoholic mixed drinks but more people are looking for great drinks that don’t contain alcohol.

Not drinking alcohol is a perfectly valid choice for any number of reasons but I know that as a bartender I haven’t always been respected that choice when presented with an order for a non-alcoholic cocktail. It’s easy enough to make something that tastes passable without too much effort and then you can get back to obsessing over Manhattans or whatever you’d rather be doing.

But, if someone who isn’t drinking alcohol has taken the time to come into my bar where the majority of people are drinking alcohol, shouldn’t I give them as much effort and attention as someone who’s ordering the painstakingly crafted cocktail with the homemade syrup and carefully infused spirit? Why would they be owed any less for their money?

So rather than just throw top up some fruit juice with soda water and garnish the hell out of it, I started trying to build up some solid, tested recipes for nonalcoholic cocktails, and the Coco Fresca was one of the first.

Coco Fresca

40 ml / 1 ⅓ oz coconut water
15 ml / ½ oz elderflower cordial
20 ml / ⅔ oz lime juice
Top with grapefruit soda

Pour all the ingredients into a highball glass over cubed ice, and garnish with a wedge of lime.

The basic template here is a Collins and I wanted this serve to be quite light and elegant. The coconut water serves almost as a substitute for a gin or a vodka but I found this is one of the rare occasions where the subtlety of its flavour when combined with other ingredients actually worked in its favour. For the grapefruit soda, something like Ting or Jarritos works fine but I’m lucky enough that company I work for collaborated on a salted pink grapefruit soda with Bon Accord that’s perfect for this.

Lockdown recipe diary #10

There’s no recipe this week.

As someone who is socialised as white - my mother was from Malaysia but I was raised as white, among whites - there are things I know about race. I know that to be a racist is wrong. I know that to commit racist acts is wrong. I know some of the names of the black Americans and Brits killed by an unfair society, and I know that I am to be outraged by their deaths. I am outraged by their deaths.

I am outraged by their deaths.

Education, the quote goes, is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know, and as a white person, what I do not know about racism is endless. My ignorance is no excuse. It is a product of white supremacy that helps reinforce white supremacy.

Black lives matter. 

We, as white people, say we agree. We believe it to be a self-evident truth and take comfort from our belief and our agreement and yet, again and again, black people need to remind us.

Black lives matter.

We white people cannot simply agree that racism is bad, that it is wrong, and leave it at that. We cannot simply hope things will change merely through good intentions, because unless white people actively pursue justice for black people and other minorities, things cannot change.

Black lives matter.

Lockdown recipe diary #9: Scofflaw

One of the unwritten rules of bartending is that it’s generally considered good practice not to discuss particularly divisive topics with your guests, like religion or politics. I think it’s a convention that’s intended to reduce the potential for disagreement in a place where alcohol can affect how people react to being disagreed with, and there’s a sense that the barkeep’s role within society isn’t to judge their guests even if they disagree with them.

But we’re all in lockdown, so I don’t feel any reason not to tell the Prime Minister of Great Britain and his chief adviser to fuck off.

Scofflaw

30 ml / 1 oz straight rye
30 ml / 1 oz dry vermouth
15 ml / 0.5 oz lemon juice
15 ml / 0.5 oz grenadine
1 dash orange bitters

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker and fill it with cubed ice.
Shake it for 10-15 seconds and fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with a twist of lemon zest if you want.