A Cocktail-a-Day #1: Sweet Basil

This is one of my perennial favourites. This is my fall back cocktail when I need to impress chicks but can’t think of anything better. The recipe is straight off the Food & Wine Cocktails ‘09 guide that I am going to be perusing liberally from over the next 365 days.

The recipe is by mixologist Todd Thrasher of the Restaurant Eve fame in Alexandria, Virginia. He has a penchant for experimenting with unlikely ingredients like pickled foams and peach “airs”…a result of working with molecular gastronomists like José Andrés. The latter trained directly under Ferran Adria of the El Bulli fame. 

Recipe

This simple recipe is brought alive by using fresh basil, preferably harvested just before making the drink:

10 basil leaves + 1 for garnish (optional)

3 oz. Little Blanc

1/2 oz. gin (Hendricks is my favourite, but any brand will do)

1 oz. Simple Syrup (1/2 oz. if you don’t like it too sweet)

In a cocktail shaker, gently muddle the basil leaves until the fragrance wafts up the cocktail shaker. Add the ice, Lillet Blanc, gin, and simple syrup. Shake well.

Double strain (optional, I prefer bits of basil leaves in mine) and pour the drink into a chilled coupe. Garnish with the remaining basil leaf. Viola!

Discussion

I love the fruity overtones in the cocktail. Lillet is basically a brand of French aperitif wine. It’s made from a shit ton of of different grape wines and 15% macerated orange liqueurs, including green oranges (!) from Haiti. It can be had on it’s own or as part of a cocktail. And of course, who doesn’t like getting punched in the face by the sweet yet minty aroma of basil?

Even though Lillet itself is an aperitif, I think you could have Sweet Basil as either a pre- or post-dinner drink as it is just sweet enough to satisfy my dessert cravings. The 1 oz. simple syrup is a bit excessive in my opinion, as the Lillet itself is pretty sweet, but feel free to try out your own combinations.

Enjoy!

 

[Cocktails] Feng Shui–A Perfect Harmony of Chinese, Japanese, Mediterranean, and Dutch Flavors

It feels good to be blogging again…I have been MIA for the last 3 months or so – winter is never slow in the oil patch.

I love mixing drinks…even though most uninformed and close-minded people think it’s gay, they don’t really understand the art and the joy in mixing different flavours to produce something that is beautiful.

One of my favourite books to try mixes from is the Food & Wine Cocktails ‘09 Guide. No one drink is the same as the other and almost each drink invariably requires some special ingredients that you will need to stock up on. But it’s always worth it afterwards, so even after 3 years of owning this book, I continue to try new drinks from this little handbook.

Feng Shui is an aperitif mixed up by Jamie Boudreau who got his chops making pre-dinner drinks at Vancouver’s legendary restaurant Lumiere. Boudreau apparently falls under the category of “molecular mixologist” and has experimented with some cool shit including bacon and bourbon (!).

I have wanted to try out Feng Shui for a long time, but didn’t do so out of shear laziness. I managed to finally gather all the necessary ingredients:

- 1 lychee fruit OR 1/4 oz. lychee liquor (like SOHO)

- 1 oz. sake

- 1 oz. gin

- 1/4 oz. lemon juice

- 1/4 oz. simple syrup

- 1 fresh thyme sprig

- 1 thyme sprig and skewered lychee for garnishing (optional)

In a cocktail shaker, muddle the lychee and thyme sprig.

Add ice and the rest of the ingredients (except the garnishes) and shake well for 20-30s until the shaker is all nicely frosted. Double-strain the drink into a chilled coupe and Viola!

I couldn’t find any lychees at the local Co-op and was too lazy to drive to T&T, so ended up using SOHO for the lychee flavour, which ended up working deliciously.

This is definitely a great way to start your pre-dinner drinking. The wonderful aroma of lychee harmonizes really well the gin and thyme. I couldn’t necessarily pick out the individual flavours and aromas of the thyme and juniper berries, but that could be because I was using SOHO and not lychee fruit.

Either way, a must try for all the budding mixologists and cocktail hackers out there!

-Kiran