The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (65 page)
Read The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks Online
Authors: Amy Stewart
Tags: #Non-Fiction
LIMONCELLO AND OTHER LIQUEURS
Consider this recipe to be a template for other sweet infusions. Coffee beans, cocoa nibs, or almost any kind of citrus could take the place of lemon to make another sweet, after-dinner liqueur.
12 fresh lemons (see note)
1 750 ml bottle vodka
3 cups sugar
3 cups water
Peel the lemons, being careful to get only the yellow rind. (If you don't have another use for the fruit, squeeze the juice and freeze in ice cube trays for use in cocktails.) Place the lemon rinds and vodka in a large glass pitcher or jar. Cover and let sit for 1 week.
After 1 week, heat the sugar and water, let it cool, and add it to the vodka and lemon mixture. Let it sit for 24 hours, and then strain. Refrigerate overnight before drinking.
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Note: Avoid chemicals and synthetic waxes by choosing organic or unsprayed, homegrown citrus.
-- and wrapping things up with --
fruits & vegetables
Any well-stocked kitchen garden could easily supply a bartender as well, but if you're focusing exclusively on drinks, you can forgo culinary necessities like salad greens and summer squash, and instead plant a fruit and vegetable garden made exclusively for cocktails. Look for varieties that produce over a long growing season, or find early-and late-season varieties of the same fruit or vegetable, to extend the harvest. Look for small-fruited varieties, too. After all, most drinks call for only small quantities of fruit, and cocktail glasses themselves can only accommodate a diminutive garnish before they get difficult to drink. Here are a few favorites.
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fruits & vegetables
Celery Apium graveolens | Believe it or not, celery is well worth growing if you have a long, cool growing season. Homegrown stalks may be thinner than beefy, store-bought varieties, which make them perfect as swizzle sticks. Look for the dramatic crimson Redventure. |
Cucumber Cucumis sativus | Spacemaster 80 and Iznik do well in containers, Corinto tolerates heat waves or unexpected cold spells; Sweet Success resists diseases and is a âburpless' variety, also called an English variety, which is said to be easier to digest. |
Melon Cucumis melo | The best way to select a variety to plant might be to buy a selection from the farmers' market and save the seeds of your favorite. Ambrosia resists powdery mildew; Charentais is a classic French variety. |
Miracle fruit Synsepalum dulcificum | A good container plant, available from tropical plant nurseries. This native West African shrub produces tiny dark red berries that contain a glycoprotein with a strange effect on the tongue: When eaten, the proteins bind to taste buds and change the way receptors perceive flavor. For about an hour, until digestive enzymes break down the proteins, sour foods taste sweet. The possibilities have not been lost on bartenders; a sour drink made with lemon or lime juice can be garnished with a miracle berry, the idea being that bar patrons will take a few sips, eat the berry, and enjoy a completely different cocktail afterward. Fresh berries are hard to find unless you grow them yourself. |
Pepper Capsicum annuum | Easy to grow in containers, requiring only heat and light. Try sweet varieties like Cherry Pick and Pimento-L and hot varieties like Cherry Bomb and the Peguis jalapeño. Great for garnishes and infused vodkas. (See |
Pineapple Ananus comosus | Pineapples grow out of the center of a small, bromeliad-like plant. Best grown in a container indoors, they take two years to produce fruit. Royale is a smaller variety better suited to home gardeners. |
Rhubarb Rheum rhabarbarum | Rhubarb simple syrup is a must-have cocktail ingredient. Give it a permanent spot with rich, loamy soil and it will produce for years. Eat the stalks only; the leaves are poisonous. |
Strawberry Fragaria à ananassa | Perfect container plants; strawberries thrive in hanging baskets or strawberry pots with regular water. Strawberries grown in the ground should be mulched with straw to protect the fruit from coming in contact with soil and rotting. Look for everbearing or day neutral varieties that produce over a long season. Tiny alpine strawberries ( |
Tomatillo Physalis philadelphica | These tart green fruits are essential to salsa verde but are fantastic muddled into tequila cocktails as well. Toma Verde is a classic green variety; Pineapple is bright yellow with a tropical, pineapple flavor. |
Tomato Solanum lycopersicum | Juicy, ripe tomatoes pair perfectly with vodka and tequila. Sungold is everyone's favorite cherry tomato, and Yellow Pear also makes a beautiful garnish. New grafted varieties are grown on vigorous, disease-resistant rootstock; although the plants cost more, they may be tougher and offer better yields. |
Watermelon Citrullus lanatus | Watermelon is divine in rum, tequila, or vodka drinks. Faerie is a yellow-skinned, red-fleshed variety that produces small fruit and resists disease. Little Baby Flower is another disease-resistant variety that produces lots of small fruit rather than a few enormous melons. |
With a garden full of fresh produce, you hardly need a recipe to mix an amazing cocktail. Just use a few basic proportions to combine ingredients and make a balanced drink. Here are a few examples to get you started:
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REFRIGERATOR PICKLES
Cucumbers, green beans, asparagus, carrots, Brussels sprouts, celery, green tomatoes, zucchini, pearl onions, yellow beets, and okra all make fine cocktail garnishes. This quick pickle recipe requires no special equipmentâjust remember that the pickles must be refrigerated and will only last 2 to 3 weeks.
2 cups sliced or cubed vegetables
2 teaspoons coarse, noniodized salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup cider or white vinegar
1 teaspoon each pickling spices (such as seeds of dill, celery, mustard, fennel)
Lemon rind, onion slices, garlic slices (optional)
Slice or cube the vegetables according to the kind of garnish you'd like to make. Toss with the salt and set aside for 30 to 45 minutes. Heat the sugar and vinegar in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves; let cool.
Fill clean jars with the vegetables, pickling spices, and optional ingredients, if desired. Top off the jars with the vinegar mixture, seal tightly, and refrigerate overnight.
STRAWBERRY
Fragaria
 x
ananassa
rosaceae (rose family)
T
hose large, juicy red strawberries in your summer cocktail owe their unlikely existence to a French spy, a global voyage, and a serious case of gender confusion.
In 1712, an engineer named Amédée François Frézier was sent to Peru and Chile to make a reliable map of the coast for the French government. The area was under Spanish control, so to get the information he needed, he posed as a traveling merchant. He made a number of useful maps, but he also did a little botanizing while he was there. Although tiny native wild strawberries (including
Fragaria vesca,
the alpine strawberry, and
F. moschata,
the highly flavorful musk strawberry) were already cultivated in Europe, no one had ever seen a strawberry as large as the Chilean species,
F. chiloensis.
