Ten: Winter's End

11:44am on March 20 2009 marks the Vernal Equinox, one of the two points of the year at which the Sun is directly over the Earth's equator. Or the Earth's equator is directly over the Sun, if you want to be picky about it. See, astronomy lessons and everything. The Vernal Equinox marks the end of winter and the start of spring, unless you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case it's the end of summer and the start of winter. If you are south of the Equator, I'm so sorry. You've got...ooh, 186 days until this post becomes topical.

And so spring is coming like a badly-driven haulage truck on an icy road, which is cause for much celebration in Northern Europe. Perhaps this will be the year when spring is accompanied with temperatures north of 20°C and bikinis for everyone, but I think that's unlikely. It doesn't mean the occasion shouldn't be marked with some kind of mixed drink.

Winter's End

40ml Amsterdamsche Oude Genever
10ml St. Germain
15ml Noilly Prat Dry Stir all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a single mint leaf.

MxMo: the first time

For everything in life, there's an inside and an outside. This month, LUPEC Boston asks us how we'd welcome the unsure to the cocktail party. It's Mixology Monday, and we want to know one thing: do you remember the first time? Imagine a swamp. It's dark, misty and humid. There's a weird kind of steam coming from the marshes and you're pretty sure the twisted vegetation is home to any number of nasty beasties ready to devour the unwary. You've heard a rumour that there's a paradise on the other side of the swamp, and that's it's not that hard to cross anyway, but right now, up to your ankles in liquid you don't want to think too hard about, swatting away flies the size of staplers, you're not thinking about that. Right now, all you want is not to be in the damn swamp.

(swamp by Lawrence Whittemore, licensed under Creative Commons.)

Hold that feeling in your mind and the expression on your face is going to resemble that of someone picking up a cocktail list for the first time. It's something I see quite a lot at work, that mix of curiosity and utter, utter fear. Some of those exhibiting the look of rabbit soon to lose its third dimension ask for help, some don't.

True story: two girls come up to the bar and ask for two martinis. I get the sense that they're not big martini drinkers, so I try offering them something a little easier-going, a softer twist on the classic recipe and they're all, "no, we want martinis." Five minutes later, they come back: "can we get some lemonade in these?"

My usual gambit at work is to ask the would-be adventurer what spirits they like and suggest flavours that work well with their favourites. At this point, I tend towards a couple of different basic drinks that lend themselves well to customization - a Sour or a Collins can work really well without much effort.

There's a fine line to be walked in mixing drinks for cocktail newbies. You might want to express the breadth of flavour available through mixing different liquors, but it's usually better keeping things simple. For the most part, I'll tend to stay away from ingredients with more complicated flavours because, being honest, it's rare that someone instantly gains an appreciation for the herby intensity of absinthe or the smoky peat of an Islay malt. Berries, vanilla, fresh fruit, these are your friends. All things considered, the drinks I come up with in this kind of situation aren't among the most developed in my notebook. Sometimes you hit it out of the park, but more often than not you get a base hit. However, the key point is it's not about how I feel about the drink.

When it comes to that guy stood on the edge of the swamp, swallowing hard and wondering what it is he's doing there, it's worth remembering everyone stood there once. Get as much information from him as you can, make a good drink and hope. Show that person that the swamp's not a bad place to be, because, ultimately, you're not the one who decides whether or not to go deeper.

Gatekeeper

35ml Vanilla-flavoured vodka
15ml Creme de Fraise
25ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
10ml sugar syrup
3 raspberries

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Garnish with a lime wedge and a couple of raspberries. If you're feeling fancy, use a highball and top with ginger beer, soda or sparkling wine.

Thanks to Pink Lady and all at LUPEC Boston for hosting this month!

Nine: Flame's Edge

New drinks are weird, intangible things. Sometimes, they can be engineered. Sometimes, they come from little more than an instinct. And sometimes, they just happen. We've been hosting cocktail masterclasses at work for a while now. They've proven to be popular with birthday and hen parties, possibly because it provides a decent excuse for exposing the guest of honour to phenomenal amounts of alcohol. There's a standard format for the session - a champagne cocktail of some description on arrival, followed by a demo of the different ways of making cocktails before getting each member of the group to make their own drink. Depending on the size of the group and how much time we have, I sometimes try to mix up a couple of drinks based on suggestions from the group. Most of the time, it's pretty easy to come up with something that ticks all the boxes. Every once in a while, though, it's a bit tougher.

On Saturday night, they wanted fire.

The problem was that I had totally run out of overproof rum, removing the easy option for fuel. So, I decided to go for Jamie Boudreau's Rubicon - only to discover that the kitchen was out of rosemary.

It was starting to feel like one of those dreams where you turn up to your high school graduation naked, but the idea behind the Rubicon has intrigued me since Jamie posted the recipe. In his words:

The burning Chartreuse also has the benefit of cooking the rosemary, releasing a lot of aroma and allowing the flavors to better permeate the beverage as oils are released. As for the “wow” factor, when you extinguish the flame with the rest of the ingredients, a thick white smoke develops.

I'm pretty certain blue flames come under "wow", too. So, taking the Rubicon as a starting point (after all, there's no going back from this point), here's what we ended up with.

Flame's Edge

An orange
10ml Green Chartreuse
40ml Monkey Shoulder
15ml Lemon Juice
20ml White Creme De Cacao

Strip three long strips of peel from the orange with a channel knife. Place two of the strips in a rocks glass with the Chartreuse, keeping one aside for garnish.

Pour the whisky, lemon juice and Creme de Cacao into a shaker, add ice and prepare to shake. Before you do, light the Chartreuse in the glass with orange zests. Shake the remaining ingredients and strain into the glass, extinguishing the flame. Fill the glass with crushed ice and garnish with the remaining orange zest twist.

Eight: Santa Rosita

Yesterday was National Margarita Day in the US, which is as good a reason as any to play around with a bit of tequila. Edinburgh at the tail-end of February might be some way from ideal Margarita-drinking conditions, but we had a rummage around our pile o' stuff regardless.

Santa Rosita

30ml José Cuervo Tradicional
15ml Cointreau
15ml Rose syrup
60ml lime juice

Rim a martini glass with vanilla sugar. Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into the chilled, rimmed glass.

Seven: Abelinha

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a lot of the recipes I post use honey as a sweetening agent in cocktails. It has become something of a hallmark of my recipes, like the guy who always uses sherbet in his drinks, or the guy who can't not use a foam. One of the things I love about honey is its versatility. As with anything, different kinds of honey have different characteristics, from lighter varieties such as Acacia through to darker, more pungently flavoured ones like Manuka. Choosing the right one to complement the other flavours in a drink can be tougher than you think it's going to be.

Honey also has a great heritage - it is, after all, the original sweetener. In Europe, man was using honey to add flavour to food and drink long before sugar cane was discovered. Since then, sugar spread like wildfire, inspiring creativity, commerce - not to mention war, slavery and cruelty on an industrial scale. Honey, on the other hand, stayed sweet.

Abelinha

50ml Cachaca
1 barspoon honey (works better with a lighter variety)
25ml pink grapefruit juice
25ml cranberry juice
25ml pineapple juice

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled highball. Garnish with a long grapefruit zest.