drink recipe Archives - Food, Booze, & Baggage

Strawberry Green Tea Ginjito

July 2, 2015 by Mariah 12 Comments

Yes a ginjito, never heard of it? Well, it’s because I just made it up. It’s a mojito type cocktail made with gin instead of rum. This was inspired by Infuse: Oil, Spirit, Water and a Costco gin purchase. I have a huge bottle I got from Costco, but it’s not my favorite. It’s a good brand and all, but not my go-to for gin and tonics. I was overcome by the novelty of buying alcohol at Costco and the cost savings, plus I tend to make snap judgements to just get out of there. So long story, expect lots of infused gin around these parts 🙂 Now back to the cocktail at hand. I like tea, I like gin, why not try them together. I feel like strawberry and mint are great additions to green tea and thus was born the ginjito. It was an experiment of flavors, that was a success!! This is the perfect summer cocktail, very light and refreshing.

Green Tea Gin (yield 1 cup)

1 Tbsp. loose green tea*
1 cup gin

*Go for a milder green tea, don’t use matcha or sencha. If you don’t have loose tea or you don’t want to strain it, you can use bags about 3 bags. I used the pour-over cone and a coffee filter to strain and didn’t lose a drop.

Place tea and gin into a Pint Mason Jar, give it a good shake, and leave at room temperature for 24 hours. Strain tea leaves or remove bags, and place in refrigerator until ready to use.

Strawberry Syrup (yield ½ cup)

2 cups chopped strawberries (about ¾ of a pint)
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup water

Place all ingredients into small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Let boil 2 minutes and then reduce heat to simmer. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, you want the strawberries to be very soft. Allow to cool and strain into bottle or jar, refrigerate until ready to use. If it thickens in the fridge you can add a little water and shake it up to thin back out.

The above will give you just enough for a few cocktails, so for a party you would want double or triple the gin and syrup recipes. For a full quart of strawberries do 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water. If you want several cups of syrup just increase using the full pint ratio.

Strawberry Green Tea Ginjito (yield 1 mason jar cocktail)

5-6 fresh mint leaves
2 ½ Tbsp. strawberry syrup (or to taste)
1 cup ice
1 ½ ounce green tea gin
½ cup club soda

Place mint leaves and strawberry syrup into a pint mason jar (or shaker), muddle mint leaves, add in ice, add in green tea gin. Cover and shake well. Add in club soda, stir, and top off with additional ice.

Have you tired infusing your own liquor?

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Roasted Tomato Gimlet: Inspiration from Infuse

May 21, 2015 by Mariah 11 Comments

Eric Prum & Josh Williams authors of Shake, just released their newest book this week, Infuse. I was lucky enough to receive a copy from Blogging for Books and got to try a few recipes first-hand! The book as it’s aptly named, shares over 50 different infusion recipes utilizing oils, spirits, and water.

Not all infusions take weeks, Infuse includes recipes for infusions that can be enjoyed immediately, short (up to 24 hours), and long (one day to a few weeks). Infuse is the perfect book for those who like to “play” around in the kitchen and get creative. So many of their recipes can be tweaked and it’s a great book to keep you inspired. Just from my initial flip through, I was already coming up with variations and fun ideas using their base recipes.

I was particularly excited over the Oils section. P and I have not bought store-bought salad dressing in close to two-years now, and I’m excited to add some new flavors to our salad rotation. Prum & Williams share three of their favorite variations on the classic vinaigrette, I’m looking forward to trying the Spaniard soon as it contains anchovies (and I love anchovies). This section also contains how to flash-infuse oils, which opens up even more dressing variations. The oil section does contain recipes beyond salad dressings. P made the mistake of testing out the honey-sriracha popcorn recipe, and I’m not going to be satisfied any longer with a splash of salt on my movie night snack.

The next two sections Spirits and Water are just as inspirational as the Oil section. Is it bad sign that I’m considering making cocktails out of some of the water infusions? P was literally flipping through the spirits section saying, “can we make this, can we make this”. We have lots of experimenting ahead of us. And I’m sharing my first experimentation with you, today…

The Roasted Tomato Gimlet is inspired by Prum & Williams’ Spicy Cucumber Gin. I decided to go with the vegetable theme and produced a roasted tomato & basil puree to pair with their infused gin. A twist on the flavors of a bloody mary.

Spicy Cucumber Gin (From Infuse)

12 oz of gin
10 sliced rounds of cucumber
½ jalapeno, halved lengthwise and seeds removed

Combine all ingredients in a 16oz Mason jar. Seal and shake for three seconds.
Infuse at room temperature for 12 hours
Strain through cheesecloth. Store in the refrigerator.

My gin turned out great, a hint of spice, but not mouth-burning.

Roasted Tomato & Basil Puree

3 roma tomatoes
1 teaspoon kosher salt
5 basil leaves
½ cup + 2 tablespoons water
⅛ teaspoon celery salt (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 F

Slice the tomatoes and place on rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Roast for 20 to 30 minutes until soft. Stir once mid-way through baking.
LET COOL!
In a blender add in roasted tomatoes, 5 whole basil leaves, ½ cup + 2 tablespoons water, and ⅛ teaspoon celery salt. Puree until very smooth. You can taste it and decide if you want to bump up the salt, especially if you didn’t add the celery salt. I like a little saltiness to my cocktails. I did not strain my purée, and it didn’t have any large chunks. If you want zero pulp then strain through a cheesecloth or fine mesh strainer. I have a regular blender and was able to get minimal seeds remaining, just a small amount of tomato skin. This makes about 1 cup. You can make this a day or two ahead of time and keep in the refrigerator.

The Roasted Tomato & Basil Gimlet

2oz Spicy Cucumber Gin
1 oz tomato & basil purée

Place in cocktail shaker, fill remaining space to ¾ full with cubed ice. Shake, shake, shake. Strain into martini or coupé glass. Garnish with cucumber or basil leaf. Enjoy, it’s practically health food 🙂

If you are looking for some great cocktails, summer refreshments, and dressings/marinades Infuses is the book for you. The recipes are so easy, anyone from beginner to pro can make use of Infuse. This is the perfect book to kick-start your creative juices, and right in time for summer parties!

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

3 Cranberry Holiday Drinks

December 11, 2014 by Mariah 11 Comments

I’m getting into the holiday spirit with a few drinks for your next holiday get together. These three drinks were inspired by a drink I tried at Great Maple, a cranberry mimosa but it was not what was expected and was too sweet and too spicy. I wanted something that captured that fresh cranberry flavor, enter cranberry puree. To make the most of the puree, I decided to turn it into 3 drinks. What’s better than one drink…of course three!! The puree and the syrups can be made a few days ahead of time, and refrigerated. Both should be made in enough time for them to cool before using.

Cranberry Puree

1 bag fresh cranberries
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup apple cider or orange juice or water

Throw all the above into a medium sized pot. I used apple cider because we had that around, but orange juice (or water if you are in a pinch) will work just as well. Cook over medium heat until the cranberries start to break down and soften. Once they are broken down (you don’t want to go too far you don’t want jelly), take off heat, and allow to cool. Place into blender or food processor to puree. You want to process this well, depending on how well you get it processed, you may want to strain it. This will not be syrup consistency but more like cranberry sauce, so you need a sieve.

Simple Syrup

Simple syrup is made in a 1:1 ratio. To fill the 8.5 oz bottles pictured I used:

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
For the Rosemary Syrup-add in 2 (whole) sprigs rosemary
For the Orange Syrup-add in rind from one whole organic orange. I use a vegetable peeler instead of a zester to make it easy to pick out the pieces.

Bring to a boil, simmer for a few minute for the regular and about 10 minutes for the infused syrups. Leave the infused syrups with the additions in the pan for an extra 10 minutes after turning off heat. My syrup is not clear because I use organic sugar, but if you use plain white sugar than it will be clear. Simple syrup will keep up to a week so you can do one per night prior to your party if you want to cut down on the work.

Cranberry Mimosa

2 tablespoons cranberry puree
1 1/2 teaspoon simple syrup (or to taste)
Cava (or dry champagne, you want it to be dry not sweet)

DO NOT fill the glass all the way just add in less than half of the cava and stir the mixture, than top off the glass.

Cranberry Rosemary Gin Sparkler

2 tablespoons cranberry puree
1 ½ teaspoon rosemary simple syrup (or to taste)
1 to 1 ½ shot gin
soda water

Mix the syrup, gin and puree together. Add a little of the soda water, and stir. Top off with remaining soda water. Garnish with super cute rosemary and cranberry stirrer. Just snip off end of rosemary sprig at an angle so you can get the cranberries on there.

Cranberry Orange Bourbon Fizz

1 tablespoon cranberry puree
1 teaspoon orange syrup (or to taste)
1 shot bourbon
soda water

Mix puree, syrup and bourbon together. Add in soda water (if you are using a large glass you may want to only do half). Garnish with orange wedge or zest. For the bourbon I used Willet because that is what we had open. I recommend a bourbon that is not too smokey. My normal go-to bourbon is Four Roses, it would work really well in this.

I don’t like my drinks too sweet. If you want yours sweeter, add in more simple syrup. The puree is made to be tart so that each drink can be made to taste using the syrups. I love things that are multitaskers 🙂 The syrups and puree can also be mixed with the soda water for a fun non-alcoholic drink option too.

BTW I took the title picture using manual mode on the camera 😉