Not as useless as you might think

There seem to be an insane number of articles on the net telling me to use my old corks to make a noticeboard, a trivet, to cover my walls, or make a cork wreath. Why on earth would I want a cork wreath?

I don’t want to do any of that because I have a sense of aesthetics, but I also don’t want to throw them all into the bin, so I’ve had a think/research, and come up with the following things that they are actually useful for, and that don’t offend my eyes.

1. Cook an octopus – Controversial this one, a lot of people, including a number of proffessional chefs will tell you that it works, and a lot of others will tell you it’s complete bollocks.

   The theory is that if you throw a cork into the pot when you are boiling squid or octopus, it helps to tenderise them and helps prevent them from going rubbery.

2. Make a stew – In exactly the same way as above, some people claim that if you throw a wine cork or two into a stew when you are cooking it with cheap cuts of meat, and it will help the meat to tenderise.

3. Give them to your cat – It’s hardly a great way of recycling as ultimately you still have the same cork later, but I have never met a cat who didn’t love playing with wine corks.

4. Use them as drainage – Chop each cork into a couple of pieces and put them in the bottom of plant pots to act as drainage.

5. Compost them – Whole corks will break down incredibly slowly, but if you chop them up into small pieces then you can throw them into your compost bin with no problem.

6. Clean a knife – If you have high carbon kitchen knives then it is easy to scratch them by using an abrasive cleaning pad. You can avoid it by putting some washing up liquid on a cork and scrubbing them with that instead. I know it sounds weird, but it works!

7. Start a fire – Keep old corks soaking in a jar of rubbing alcohol, or other highly flammable liquid, and then you can use them as firelighters to get nice and toasty in the winter, or get a summer barbecue going nicely.

8. Stop oil burning – I have no idea of the science behind this, and I haven’t actually tried it yet, but I have read the same thing in a few different places. Aparently, putting a cork into a frying pan will raise the burning point of the oil. Anyone tried it?

9. Make a fishing float – Pretty self explanatory really, isn’t it.

"I'll never drink again"

Good morning after, and welcome to your…

Hangover |ˈhæŋˌoʊvər|
noun
1 a severe headache or other after effects caused by drinking an excess of alcohol.

But just what is wrong with you?

Very brief science

The biggest problem that you are facing is one of dehydration. Alcohol is a strong duretic, for every 250ml of a normal strength drink you swallow, you will expel about 800ml of liquid through urination.

This means that in order to have kept your hydration level the same you would need to have drunk 3.5 times as much non alcoholic fluid as you did alcoholic. I reckon it’s a fairly safe bet that this is not the case.

There are also, to name a few, congeners, acetaldehyde (the reason that women get worse hangovers than men), and glutamine rebound to factor in.

If you are suffering enough to have just googled ‘how to lose a hangover’ you probably don’t care at all about biology right now and just want to know how to fight it.

The scientific answers – What works and what doesn’t

Don’t dismiss science just yet though, because it is going to help you out now. There are some things that will not help you, no matter how much you think they are going to and then there are a few very simple things that really can help lift you up out of your current self inflicted misery.

Let’s start with the five things you might think are a good idea, but that you really DO NOT want to take:

1. Don’t take Aspirin – Alcohol thins your blood, and aspirin does exactly the same thing. Thinning your blood even more than it already is seems pretty unlikely to help you in any way. It’s also a gastric irritant.

2. Don’t take Ibuprofen – At least not if your hangover includes any kind of nausea. It might help your headache, but Ibuprofen is a gastric irritant and is going to make your urge to vomit even worse.

3. Paracetamol – Also a bad idea, they just make your liver work even harder than it is already having to.

4. Don’t drink coffee – It’s a very temporary pick up, but ultimately your biggest problem is that you are dehydrated, and caffeine is a duretic – this can only make things worse.

5. Hair of the dog. A drink will very likely make you feel temporarily better, but ultimately you are just prolonging your suffering.

And now for the five things that really will help you:

1. Eat burnt toast – It’s all about carbon, which acts as a natural filter. If you end up in an hospital emergency unit with alcohol poisoning they will pump your stomach full of a carbon mixture to filter the toxins. Burnt toast does this on a smaller and more comfortable scale.

2. Eat eggs. Eggs contain cysteine, and this breaks down the acetaldehyde which is contributing to making you feel like hell.

3. Get some vitamins – Especially B and C, but none of them are going to do you any harm. You can either take a couple of multivitamin pills, or drink fresh fruit juices.

4. Hydrate yourself – Drink water, or anything else you like as long as it does not contain caffeine, alcohol, or taurine (Red Bull) because these are all diuretics and will do the opposite of what you need them to do.

5. Replenish your levels of sodium and glycogen – You could do this with an isotonic sports drink if it is non-caffeinated, or you could just put a spoon each of salt and sugar in a glass of water.

and what works for me

What’s above is the conventional wisdom, these things should help everyone to get through a hangover as quickly and painlessly as possible, but…

… as we all know, everyone is different and what works for one person might not work for anyone else. So here are the things that always seem to work for me (in no particular order and without scientific explanations).

1. Bacon sandwich – A big sandwich filled with crispy fried bacon, with lashings of tomato ketchup and/or HP sauce.

2. Orgasm – I don’t know why it works, but nothing seems to help me lose a hangover like a good hard orgasm, this one is tricky if the person you share a bed with also has a hangover and doesn’t believe in the same cure.

3. Bloody Mary – It’s pretty much a generic cure for everything bad in the world, so why wouldn’t it work for a hangover.

Aren't they just yummilly beautiful?

Summertime, and the living is easy.

The moment to enjoy refreshing fruity cocktails, and also the moment when wonderful sour cherries are ripe and juicy.

I am sure that there are lots of different ways to combine these two things, and I am equally sure that many of them are fantastic. What I am not so sure of is that many of them could possibly be better than this one.

Sour cherry caipirinha is definitely one thing that I am going to be drinking plenty of over the next few weeks.

Take a caipirinha

For anyone who doesn’t know, the caipirinha is THE Brazilian cocktail. It’s super simple, lime and sugar muddled together, some cachaça added, and served over lots of ice.

Outside of Brazil, caipirinhas, along with mojitos, are by far the most popular cocktails in Barcelona, you can get them at every little bar, and so I do far too often.

Cocktail purists will of course maintain that anything that varies from the above is not a caipirinha, but hey, this version just adds one little ingredient.

Sour (or tart) cherries…

… are without doubt one of the best fruits anywhere. I defy anyone not to love them!

I’m not talking about bitter unripe cherries, but the varieties that are naturally tart. Some people might know them by the alternative names of ‘tart cherries’, or ‘pie cherries’. Whatever you want to call them, they taste amazing.

The only problem is that they have a really short season, so during the little bit of the year when I can get my hands on them, I throw them in everything I can think of. So far this week there have been caipirinhas and ice cream, and a lemon and cherry posset is coming soon.

Recipe

Apart from the fact that it contains the cherries, the big difference between this and a ‘proper’ caipirinha is the way it is served. Not over ice in a big glass, but shaken and then strained.

The ingredients listed are for one drink, but if you have a shaker of any sensible size then you can easily make two or three at once.

1. Take the pits out of the cherries, cut the lime into a few chunks, and put them together into a shaker.

2. Give them a good old muddle until everything is well mushed up.

3. Add a decent amount of ice and the Cachaça, and shake well.

4. Fine strain into a cocktail glass.

Extra note

This drink tastes especially good if you have a production line of attractive women in your kitchen making them in large numbers.

Spicey warming wintry wine

Mulled whine – A moan that you have been thinking about for some time.

Mulled wine – A delicious sweetened and spiced warm wine drink.

Obviously, we are far more interested in a tasty wintry alcoholic beverage than a little rant, so here we go:

Pan-European winter warmer

Mulled wine is a traditional winter drink, especially around Christmas, across huge parts of Europe. Most people would think of English mulled wine, of Scandinavian gløgg, or German glühwein, but close variations are also traditional in Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Italy, and Latvia.

So many millions of people can’t be wrong, can they?

No, and there are reasons why this particular drink has now been popular for thousands of years. Namely that it makes you all warm and cozy on the inside, is wonderfully easy to make, and tastes like liquid Christmas.

Notes on ingredients

One of the great things about mulled wine is that there is no set in stone recipe. What follows is the way that I like to make it after a bit of experimentation, but if you don’t have one of the ingredients then you can either leave it out or substitute something else in.

You can mull either red or white wine, although red is much more common. Whatever you use it should be reasonably dry and nice and fruity. I virtually always use red wine, but if you are trying white then a nice riesling would be a good place to start.

Don’t try and use a very cheap wine, if it tastes bad straight from the bottle, it will taste even worse when it is heated.

One final note, is that you don’t want to use an aluminium pan because the acid in the wine and citrus juice reacts with the aluminium and everything comes out tasting metallic.

So, let us mull

1. Peel the clementine, together with half of the lemon and lime. The peel should be in large pieces, and you should make sure that there is not too much pith attached to it, or it will turn bitter.

   Throw the peel together with the juice of the clementine into a large pan.

2. Add the rest of the dry ingredients to the pan, and pour in just enough wine to cover them.

3. Bring the mixture to the boil and simmer for about five minutes, stirring occasionally.

   The idea of this is to let all of the spices infuse into the wine. If we did it with the whole bottle of wine, then all of the alcohol would evaporate off, and we don’t want that!

4. Add the rest of the bottle of wine and a splash of brandy, and give it a good stir. Heat it until the wine reaches about 60-70°C, but don’t let it boil.

Done! You can reheat it as many times as you like if it starts to get cold, as long as you are careful not to let it boil.

Gin and champagne - can't be wrong!

Obviously I’ve been revisiting some of my favourites, and have invented a few drinks of my own, but mostly I’ve been working my way through a big list of classic (and less classic) cocktails that I’ve never tried before.

Some I like, some I don’t, but there are a few that are absolutely fantastic. The French 75 is one of these.

75?

mm. 75mm. The diameter of the shells of the French artillery gun that some people will tell you this drink is named after. Assuming that it was created in Harry’s bar, Paris, during the 1920′s

Others will tell you that it was invented in the US during prohibition, and yet others will have you believe that it is actually an English creation, again created shortly after the first world war.

I have absolutely no clue which one of these is the true origin of the drink, but I quite like the idea of it being named after the artillery shell, because it packs quite a punch, even though it is deceptively refreshing and easy to drink.

Notes on ingredients

It’s the FRENCH 75, so of course it should be made with champagne, but I live in Catalunya, so of course I make it with cava. Any decent méthode traditionnelle sparkling wine will do just fine.

The gin should be something with a decent taste of juniper to it. My personal favourite for a good everyday gin that won’t cost a fortune is Tanqueray, and it works really well in this drink.

Let’s do it

1. If you don’t have pre-chilled flutes then stick a lump of ice in one to chill it while you make the drink.

2. Put the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup together with plenty of ice into a shaker and give it all a good fling about.

3. Remove the ice from your flute, and strain the drink into it.

4. Top up with the sparkling wine and garnish with a lemon twist.

The Negroni - A classic cocktail

Apart from the fact that everyone (except me) seems to love it, there is another good thing about this drink. The Negroni is surely one of the simplest cocktail recipes to remember ever. There is only one rule to remember – it’s equal parts. Equal parts of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth.

Questionable history

There are two popular stories about the origins of the Negroni. The first is that it was invented by General Pascal Olivier Count de Negroni, a Corsican living in France to aid digestion.

The second and more popular story is that the drink was invented at Caffè Casoni, Florence in 1919, when Count Camillo Negroni asked the bartender to make his favourite drink, the Americano with gin in place of the traditional soda.

Wherever it was born, the Negroni has grown up to be a classic cocktail. You can find it just about anywhere, and anyone should be able to make it. Somehow it doesn’t always taste right though, the problem is that if the proportions of the ingredients are even slightly out then it throws the whole drink out of kilter.

Dangerous

Although you are only ending up with what seems like a small drink, don’t be tempted to make it bigger. Bear in mind that this drink contains nothing but high strength alcohol ingredients, and it can be a bit dangerous. It’s not one of those things that make you instantly feel pissed, but it’s a creeper, you’ll think you are fine until you decide to stand up.

The garnish question

The traditional garnish for a Negroni is a lemon twist, which is unusual, because the traditional garnish for just about every other drink that contains Campari is some kind of orange.

I like to use an orange twist, but lemon also works, it’s really up to you.

What to do

I’ve included a dash of orange bitters in this recipe. It’s not part of the classic recipe, but I think that it enhances the flavours of the other ingredients.

1. Prechill a glass.

2. To a mixing glass add plenty of big ice.

3. Add the ingredients to the mixing glass.

4. Stir well and strain into the prechilled glass.

5. Garnish with an orange twist.

Clementiney goodness!

Taking a tip from the Italians, I reckon that you can’t go too far wrong if you start off with an aperitivo, a drink designed to sharpen the appetite for the meal ahead.

There are a few classic aperitivos, with the best known probably being the Negroni. The problem is that I don’t really like Negronis, so I had a bit of a search and play and found something that I really do like.

Created by Paul Mant at Quo Vadis in London this drink has it all. The bitterness of the Campari is balanced out with the sweetness of the simple syrup and the citrusy taste of the orange juice.

Like the Negroni, this drink contains Campari, but that is where the similarity ends. It’s lighter, sweeter, and has effervescence from the sparkling wine.

Notes on ingredients

I like to make this drink with cava, but you could also use champagne or prosecco. Whichever sparkling wine you choose, the most important thing is that it should be as dry as possible. If you are using something a bit sweeter, then you will need to reduce the amount of simple syrup in the recipe.

Mant’s original recipe calls for clementine juice, but if you don’t have any then you can just use the juice from regular oranges. For the sake of presentation, the drink should really be finely strained from the shaker into the glass, but at home I prefer to drink it with the bits of orange still floating around it in.

The recipe

1. Pre chill a rocks glass or champagne flute, and put some big ice into your cocktail shaker.

2. Add everything except for the cava to the shaker and give it a good shake.

3. Finely strain the drink into the chilled glass.

4. Top up the glass with cava, and garnish with a twist of orange zest.

5. Sit back and watch the lovely colour for a few seconds before enjoying the perfect start to your meal.

Welcome to Chartreusey goodness.

I’m naming this drink geographically. County Limerick borders County Tipperary, and this recipe could be said to border The Tipperary cocktail that I posted recently.

The big difference between The Limerick and The Tipeperary is that this is a long drink, topped up with tonic water and served over ice. Apart from that The Limerick is more tart due to the addition of a decent amount of lime juice, and the omission of Maraschino liqueur.

It’s a really refreshing drink to enjoy on a long hot summer afternoon/evening.

Notes on Ingredients

Yellow Chartreuse is slightly sweeter and much lighter and milder than the green variety. For these reasons, it sits well in this drink, which is designed to be a refreshing summery tipple. If you only have green Chartreuse, then use it but be aware that it will make the whole thing taste heavier.

Use any Irish whiskey that you fancy. I normally buy Tullamore Dew, because I think that it has a taste that works well either drunk alone or mixed into a cocktail, and it’s reasonably priced.

If you can find a tonic water that doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup then use it, it not only tastes better, but also has a hugely reduced amount of calories. Less calories in the tonic means you can spend more of them on the alcohol in a second drink.

Compose a Limerick

1. Half fill a shaker with large chunks of ice.

2. Pour the whiskey, Chartreuse and lime juice into the shaker.

3. Add a couple of dashes of orange bitters, and shake it until frost forms on the outside of the shaker.

4. Put a couple of chunks of medium sized ice into a tall glass and strain the contents of the shaker into it.

5. Fill the glass to the top with tonic water, and garnish by floating a twist of lime peel.

Easier to buy than pronounce.

It’s a drink inspired by multiple sources, by two separate people and the desperation that comes with a lack of ingredients. None of that really matters though, neither does the fact that it doesn’t look overly attractive. What does matter is the taste, which is both complex and beautiful.

It’s a cocktail of few ingredients, the only problem is that one of them might be a bit tricky to find (and pronounce).

Żołądkowa what?

There aren’t many ingredients, but one of them is a bit unusual. Wódka Żołądkowa Gorzka, is a Polish vodka infused with a mix of bitter herbs and honey.

The name literally means ‘a bitter vodka for the stomach’, so called because it was traditionally used as a digestive after meals of heavy Polish cuisine.

You can buy it in the UK and most of Europe, but I don’t know how easy it is to get hold of further afield.

Just a couple of notes

If you don’t have citrus vodka handy, then just omit it. It does add something to the drink, but it will still be lovely without it.

Be careful with the volumes, this is very tasty and very easy to drink, but it’s also pretty strong. Every ingredient in the glass is strong alcohol, and it creeps up on you.

Let’s shake

1. Put a few big chunks of ice into a cocktail glass, and leave them there to chill the glass while you make the drink.

2. Throw a handful of frozen pineapple chunks into a cocktail shaker, as you would normally use ice.

3. Pour equal parts of Żołądkowa Gorzka and Martini Rosso into the shaker, and add a splash of citrus vodka.

4. Shake well, until frost starts to form on the outside of the shaker.

5. Empty the ice out of the cocktail glass, and put a chunk of frozen pineapple into the bottom.

6. Strain the drink into the glass and serve.

I'm a little bit in love with Chartreuse.

What’s not to like about Chartreuse, the taste is unique (and lovely), the colour is beautiful (and natural), the packaging is nice, and the history is amazing.

This green loveliness is great just served neat over ice, but there are also a lot of other things that you can do with it. The official chartreuse website gives some cocktail suggestions, but very strangely it doesn’t list one of the most classic, and one of my favourites.

It’s called the Tipperary and, if you follow the traditional recipe, then it is a simple mixture of Irish whiskey and Chartreuse, with a splash of maraschino liqueur. We are just going to add one additional ingredient and a garnish to the traditional recipe, just because I think they improve on the traditional recipe.

Notes on ingredients

Chartreuse comes in two varieties, green and yellow. The yellow is lighter and milder in taste with a lower alcohol content. This recipe calls for green Chartreuse. I expect that if you use yellow then you will also get something very tasty, but it won’t be a Tipperary, and you would probably want to reduce the amount of whisky in relation to Chartreuse so that you don’t completely overpower the taste.

Despite the fact that Scottish whiskies get a lot more exposure, there are a wide range of really good Irish whiskies out there as well. You could use whatever takes your fancy really, but I like Tullamore Dew in this drink.

Just like in an old fashioned, dilution is quite important in this drink. For that reason, you should make sure that your ice is as clean and pure as possible. If you are using tap water then filter it, if you are using bottled mineral water then pick one with the lowest levels of mineralisation that you can find.

It’s not a long way to Tipperary

1. Stick a big chunk of ice in a cocktail glass to chill it while you are mixing the drink.

2. Pour the whiskey and chartreuse into a mixing glass.

3. Add a splash of maraschino liqueur and a dash of orange bitters.

4. Add some big chunks of ice, and stir for a minute.

5. Add more ice and stir well again, so that the drink gets well chilled and some dilution takes place.

6. Remove the ice from the cocktail glass and strain the drink through a fine strainer into the glass.

7. Garnish by floating a twist of lemon peel.

All that is left all too quickly.

The recipe is simple, the decision to consume far too much of it is simple too. In fact the trickiest thing about this article was deciding where to put it. Is a granissat (liquid granita), food or drink?

However you want to classify it, they are fantastic things on hot summers days. Cold, refreshing, childish (memories of slush puppies), quick and easy to make, and just generally summery.

This granissat de cava has all of the above, plus the added advantage of being nice and alcoholic. I’m currently in Spain, so the recipe calls for cava, but it could just as easily be prosecco, champagne, or any other semi-decent dry sparkling wine.

It’s this simple…

1. Pour the bottle of wine into a shallow metal pan, that will fit into your freezer. The wider and shallower the pan, the faster it will freeze, and metal helps to keep the effervescence of the wine. Freeze it until it is solid, which is probably about 3 hours.

2. While the wine is freezing, finely grate the zest of the lemon and then squeeze the juice out.

3. Take the pan out of the freezer and break up the frozen wine with a fork, it will break up quite easily, but make sure that you scrape the big chunks from around the sides as well.

4. Add the lemon zest and juice, together with the sugar, and give it all a good stir. You can add more sugar if you have a sweet tooth, but now would be the best time to do it.

5. Put it back into the freezer for about another hour, or until it is fairly solid again.

6. That’s it, one granissat de cava. At this point you can either serve it just as it is, or add optional ingredients before serving. A lot of people like to add finely torn mint leaves, but I prefer finely chopped pieces of strawberry.
   However you like it, take it out of the freezer, and break it up with a fork again to form small crystals, add anything you want to and put it into serving glasses.

7. Leave it to stand for a few minutes, so that it melts slightly and consume through a straw!

]]> http://johnonfood.com/drink/granissat-de-cava/feed/ 0 http://johnonfood.com/drink/dry-wet-5050-martinis/ http://johnonfood.com/drink/dry-wet-5050-martinis/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 11:21:48 +0000 John http://johnonfood.com/?p=628


Olive r twist - the big garnish question.


There are two types of people in the world (or at least the cocktail drinking world).

The first type are martini purists (or do I mean puritans). They believe that the name Martini should never be applied to anything that doesn’t contain a clear grain spirit and dry vermouth, and probably shouldn’t be applied to anything that contains any additional ingredients.

Depending on the level of their purism, they may allow vodka with vermouth to be called a martini, or they may insist on the original gin.

The second type of people are far less precious. They will happily tack the suffix -tini onto just about anything that comes in a cocktail glass. They believe in the appletini, the flirtini and a huge raft of other concoctions.

Then there is me, who finds himself lost adrift somewhere in the middle of these two camps.

I believe that both food dishes and drinks should be named appropriately, and once they have been named then the moniker should let you know pretty much what you are getting. If the term martini (or just -tini) gets applied to anything and everything then how will we ever know what we are really ordering.

On the other hand, one of my favourite drinks in the world is a Breakfast martini, which does contain gin but is totally devoid of vermouth. Like a rose, by any other name this would taste as sweet, but breakfast martini just seems to fit.

Right now though, we are going to stick to the purists way of thinking, so there will be no funkytinis, or additional ingredients here, just the basic and classic dry martini, wet martini, and 50:50 martini.

Notes on ingredients

When you only have two ingredients to worry about, you want to make them as good a quality as you can afford.

Without going stupid, my favourite gin for a martini is Tanqueray, and Noilly Pratt make a great dry vermouth, and for the price Martini (the vermouth brand, rather than the cocktail) is really pretty good as well.

If you don’t feel like being a purist, and if you have some around, then you can add a dash of orange bitters to your martini. I think it adds a lot.

Garnish for all martinis is traditionally either an olive or a twist of lemon. I prefer the lemon, but it’s a personal thing I guess.

Dry Martini

Ingredients

• 6 parts gin of choice
• 1 part dry martini

To garnish

• Lemon twist or a cocktail olive

There is no correct ratio of gin to vermouth in a dry martini. 6 parts of gin to 1 of vermouth is normal, but some people would tell you that it should be made 7:1, or with just a few drops of vermouth shaken or stirred with the ice before the gin is added and then discarded.

1. Prechill a cocktail glass, either by having kept it in the freezer beforehand, or by filling it with ice and letting it stand there while you make the drink.

2. Put some big pieces of ice into a mixing glass, and pour in the gin and vermouth.

3. Stir it well for about a minute.

4. Empty the ice out of your chilled glass, and strain the drink into the glass.

5. Garnish with an olive or a twist, and serve.

Wet Martini

We don’t need to go through all of the above again, because the only thing that changes here is the ratio of the ingredients.

Everyone knows about a dry martini, but personally I don’t like them. I love gin, but I prefer my taste the vermouth in my martini as well, so I prefer a wetter version.

Basically the more vermouth you add, the ‘wetter’ your martini is. A classic wet martini comes in at about 3 parts gin to 1 part vermouth.

50:50 martini

Apparently a favourite drink of Prince Charles, and I like it a lot as well.

Again, the only difference is in the ratio of gin to vermouth, and the name of the drink should pretty much give it away. Use equal amounts of gin and vermouth.

]]> http://johnonfood.com/drink/dry-wet-5050-martinis/feed/ 3 http://johnonfood.com/drink/screwdriver/ http://johnonfood.com/drink/screwdriver/#comments Fri, 15 May 2009 13:24:37 +0000 John http://johnonfood.com/?p=338

Keep it in your toolbox or drinks cabinet.

The Screwdriver…

… or, for anyone not into fancily named drinks, it’s just a regular old vodka and orange. The name comes from the fact that it was (allegedly) invented by American engineers working in the middle east in the 50′s, who slyly added vodka to cans of orange juice, and stirred it with a hand tool rather than a spoon.

Whatever you want to call it, you can’t really consider it to be a cocktail, it’s just a simple mixed drink. Having said that though, it’s really a bloody good mixed drink, which makes it, like the G&T, one of those classics that is eternally popular.

Notes on ingredients

All vodka is not created equal, and in a drink where there is only one other ingredient, you can really taste it. I would recommend Wyborowa, Absolut or Danska as good reasonably priced vodkas for everyday use.

You can either make your own orange juice, or buy it. If you are buying the juice, then make sure that it is 100% juice and not some kind of ‘nectar’ with added sugar.

The choice of clear juice or natural with all of the pulpy bits in it is personal. I like it with bits, but some people don’t.

How to make a Screwdriver

Ingredients

• 1 part Vodka
• 2 parts Orange juice
• Squeeze of fresh lemon juice

To garnish

• Slice of orange

It’s so simple to make, it almost feels patronising to write any instructions.

You can mix the two ingredients in any proportion that you want really, but I personally like to drink it with a ratio of 2:1, two parts of orange juice for every one part of vodka.

I like to add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, although it’s not traditional.

With such a simple drink, there is really no need to shake, just give it a good stir.

Serve it in a tall glass, over big chunks of ice, and garnish it with a thin slice of orange floating on the top of the drink.

]]> http://johnonfood.com/drink/screwdriver/feed/ 0 http://johnonfood.com/drink/simple-syrup/ http://johnonfood.com/drink/simple-syrup/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 16:51:48 +0000 John http://johnonfood.com/?p=564

One half of a simple syrup

It’s exactly what the name implies that it is, a syrup that is very simple.

Simple syrup is just sugar and boiling water, stirred together until the sugar dissolves.

A really wide variety of different cocktail recipes call for simple syrup, and if you change the ratio of sugar to water then it can also be used for glazing candied fruit, or for glazing cakes and biscuits.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of sugar glazed anything, but I do like cocktails, so I’m going to stick to a basic ratio of equal amounts of water and sugar. Some people prefer to use either two parts water to one part sugar, or one part sugar to two parts water, you can experiment with these ratios and then stick with whichever you prefer.

When to use it

Simple syrup is most often used in drinks which also contain lemon, lime or grapefruit juice. The idea is that you use the sugary syrup to balance out the bitterness of the citrus fruit.

If you are making a cocktail from a recipe then stick to what the recipe calls for, or if you are making a new drink of your own then the general rule to follow is that you should use the same amount of simple syrup as you do of citrus juice.

Let’s get simple

Ingredients

• 1 part white sugar
• 1 part boiling water

1. Measure your water into a pan and bring it to the boil, then turn it down so that it is just simmering.

2. Measure an equal amount of white sugar.

3. Pour the sugar slowly into the simmering water, stirring as you pour.

4. Continue stirring until the sugar has dissolved completely and the liquid turns clear.

5. Once the syrup is clear, take it off of the heat, and leave it to cool before pouring it into a sealable bottle and put it in the fridge

I’ve been told that simple syrup will keep in the fridge for up to 3 months, but I wouldn’t keep it more than about 2 weeks. It is so quick and easy to make that there is really no reason to make it in vast amounts, so you shouldn’t need to keep it for that long anyway.

Let’s get complex

You don’t have to stick to simple syrup, you can use the same basic recipe for other types of syrup to liven up your drinks.

Replace the white sugar with brown sugar for a more mellow taste. This is great for drinks like the ‘old fashioned’.

Try adding ginger, cinammon, cardamom, or anything else you fancy to the syrup at the same time as you dissolve the sugar. You might want to keep it on the heat for a while longer to let the flavours infuse more.

]]> http://johnonfood.com/drink/simple-syrup/feed/ 5 http://johnonfood.com/drink/tonic-water/ http://johnonfood.com/drink/tonic-water/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 10:30:16 +0000 John http://johnonfood.com/?p=538

Where would gin be without it?

We’ve done an article on gin, so it seems only fitting to add one about it’s long time companion tonic.

What is it?

Let’s keep this simple, tonic water is a carbonated drink flavoured with quinine. It can contain other flavouring ingredients, but it doesn’t have to.

Quinine is extracted from the bark of the Cinchona tree, and has been traditionally used to treat malaria. The problem is that quinine on it’s own tastes absolutely vile.

Tonic water was created in 1825 when British army officers stationed in India mixed quinine with sugar and water, in an attempt to create a daily drink that would act as a malaria prophylaxis. This still didn’t make it overly palatable, so to counteract the taste they decided to try mixing it with gin. Thus not only was tonic water born, but so was one of the worlds classic mixed drinks, the G&T.

The tonic water available today tastes a world away from what they were drinking in India 190 years ago, for a couple of important reasons.

Firstly, the level of quinine used in modern tonic is much lower than it was back then. This is a good thing because in regular large doses quinine itself is quite toxic.

Tonic is also made with other botanical ingredients. These can be either natural or artificial, depending on the quality of the tonic.

It’s carbonated. I don’t know where the carbonation crept into the history, but in 1825 it wasn’t, and today it is.

Finally, the majority of tonic water you’ll find in the shops today has a large amount of high fructose corn syrup added to it. Those that don’t (the expensive ones) are often sweetened with agave syrup.

What to buy

Supermarket brands

Every supermarket has it’s own brand of tonic water, and at this level they all taste pretty much the same.

They (generally) have two big problems. The first is that they all seem to lose their carbonation very quickly once they are opened, and the second is that they are all hugely calorific due to corn syrup used to sweeten them.

The midrange

In the midrange (at least in Europe), the two big brands are Schwepps and Nordic Mist.

There really isn’t much to choose between them. They are virtually identical in price, Nordic Mist has a slightly stronger taste, but seems to have less carbonation.

Strangely there is one other thing that they seem to have in common, they both (in my experience) hold their carbonation much better when bought in bottles than in cans. I have no idea why that might be, but it is.

and from the sublime …

There are a couple of premium brands of tonic water out there, but you are going to pay more for them, either slightly or horrifically more depending on what country you live in.

It is a sad but very true fact that with tonic water, you really do get what you pay for.

Fever Tree is (according to them) served in six of the top ten restaurants in the world, including El Bulli and The Fat Duck. If it’s good enough for Ferran and Heston, then who are we to argue?

You really can taste the difference between Fever Tree and a cheaper tonic water. It has a much better balance between the sweet and bitter tastes, and has a more herbal flavour.

It is also much lower in calories than Schwepps or the supermarket brands due to the fact that it isn’t full of high fructose corn syrup.

… to the ridiculous

Then there is Q Tonic.

Now, Q Tonic is made from Peruvian quinine and natural agar syrup. I’m sure that it tastes wonderful, but I don’t know. The reason that I don’t know is that where I live, they want €18 for four small bottles of it. It seems to be a lot cheaper in the USA but I live in Europe.

Maybe it’s stupid that I am willing to pay for premium gin, but not for the tonic to go with it, but that just seems like too much money for tonic water. Especially when Fever Tree is so good, and is so much cheaper.

Or you could make it

Although it sounds exotic and tricky, you can pretty easily make your own tonic water.

Check back here for a recipe coming soon.

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