Tidbits: Farm Fresh Cocktails

If all the lovely veggies now showing up at local farmers’ markets don’t do it for you (??), here’s a Philadelphia Daily News article that highlights some delectable drinks you can make with local ingredients. That should motivate you to get out to the farmers’ market.

Here’s a couple of items that caught my eye on how to use the ingredients, particularly herbs. Recipes are included in the article.

Bistro St. Tropez chef/owner Patrice Rames is crazy about peaches right now … After blanching the fruit for two minutes to remove the skin, Rames dips it in ice water to stop the cooking process. Then he roasts the fruit, sprinkled with raw sugar, lemon thyme or mint and a little butter, in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes. “I use the peach for a dessert with caramel or vanilla ice cream, but I also puree it for cocktails,” he said.

At Noble, the new restaurant on Sansom Street from Todd Rodgers and Bruno Pouget, the focus is on seasonality … Rodgers … creates a long list of cocktails using fresh ingredients, house-brewed ginger beer and cider and even homemade tonic. His two best sellers are the French 75, a mix of gin, citrus and champagne, and the Ti Jean, made with ginger beer, rye, lemon juice and mint. “The secret to getting added oomph from your mint is to smack it in the palm of your hand before you put it in the drink. That releases its natural oils,” he said.

 Guess we’ve got some research to do this weekend.

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Tidbits: Summertime Drinks

Believe it or not, I really am supposed to surf the web for my job. And I came across two drink recipes that just tickled my fancy, so I thought I’d share them.

The first is for Smoked Lemonade from Slashfood on AOL Food. Blogger Kat Kinsman gives a recipe for smoking lemons (it’s not what you’re thinking) over a charcoal fire while you’re smoking other food. As she says,

If I’m going to go to all the trouble of stoking a hardwood lump charcoal fire, obsessively monitoring its low-’n-slow-ness for a goodly chunk of the day, feeding its greedy gut with beer-soaked mesquite and hickory chunks at half-hour intervals all for the sake of an albeit fabulous brisket or pork shoulder, I’m gonna want a bit more return on the investment.

All that is needed is a foil pan for the fruit, checking it a natural intervals when you would be checking on the meat. Place the lemons in foil pans, some cut-side-up and some down, away from the heat source in your smoker or kettle grill. Kat recommends hickory or mesquite chips. After adding a sugar syrup, and cooling, bourbon or rye makes a nice addition. Here’s the complete recipe.

Lemons, sure. But beets in a cocktail? Since beets are now in season, why not? This interesting drink recipe comes by way of Daniel Meyer writing on Mark Bittman’s NYTimes blog, Bitten. Here’s the simple recipe.

I split a couple of beets, threw them in a saucepan with half a cup of water, a quarter cup of sugar and some mint, brought it to a boil, strained it and cooled it (I froze the beet stems and used them as swizzle sticks).

Then I finely grated another beet and stirred it into some salt, my kitchen turning pinker by the second. I wet the rims of the glasses, dipped them in the beet salt, dropped in some ice, some gin, a few spoonfuls of the beet syrup, a splash of tonic (seltzer would have been much better), and a few tarragon leaves. The thing was very nice to look at, refreshing, and pretty tasty, too (most especially if you’re obsessed with beets).

We’re due to get beets at our CSA farm pick-up this week. I’ll let you know how it goes with vodka.

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