Recipe: Earl Grey Gin Sours

I love gin and I love a good cocktail. When I was a student, I worked in a number of pubs and bars, but it wasn't until I started working for a boutique hotel with an award winning cocktail bar that I really began to understand what a "good" drink was.

The best bit about that job was the beautiful food and good drinks, all at a discount. We were actively encouraged to go to training and tasting sessions (even those of us not behind the bar) so that we knew what we were selling - and that's when my love of gin began.

Having never really been a fan of sugary drinks (well done mum and dad), it's not a surprise that I'm a fan of a gin cocktail. I love a good 'classic' - a Prohibition era cocktail where good quality spirits are the star, rather than fruity flavour combinations.

I don't know why, but until I made a batch of Earl Grey Gin, I'd never had a gin sour. Sours don't tend to be on menus (other than the occasional Whiskey sour) but I was a big fan for a while - and still am - of an Amaretto sour. I am now hooked.

Earl Grey Gin Sours

50ml Earl Grey Gin

25ml sugar syrup
25ml lemon juice

Lemon or orange peel twists to serve

Half fill a cocktail shaker (or jam jar, or coffee flask) with ice cubes, add in the ingredients.

Fill a small tumbler with ice.

Shake your shaker for 20 seconds. The key to shaking cocktails is to get the ingredients to hit each end of your shaker, traveling through the ice on the way there to chill them quickly, so you're aiming for an up and down, or forwards and backwards motion. 

Strain the liquid (ie, pour out the cocktail, leaving the ice cubes behind) into your serving glass.

Enjoy, with a twist of orange or lemon to garnish.

Flamingo glass optional...

Recipe: Earl Grey Gin

I drink a lot of tea. It's good for you - rehydrating, relaxing and comforting. I also drink a lot of gin. That's good for you too - especially if you drink it with tonic to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

My love for Earl Grey Tea continues, and seeing as I have been particularly embracing the gin this year, I thought I'd finally get round to trying an Earl Grey gin infusion. This is inspired by a cocktail class I went to a few years ago at Eteaket.

Earl Grey Gin.

250ml Gin
10g Earl Grey Tea leaves

Place the gin and the tea leaves in a jam jar or similar airtight container, and leave to infuse for about ten hours (or overnight). Upend the jar occasionally, to mix the flavours around.
Strain to remove the leaves, and pour into a clean presentation bottle for storage.

You can use tea bags, but loose tea tends to be a slightly higher quality. Don't worry about using your fancy stuff for this - common garden gin will do the trick.

Booze not your bag? What about an Earl Grey Tea loaf cake instead...

Recipe: Sugar Syrup

I've started experimenting with making cocktails at home, after a fair few years hiatus from making them behind a bar. Generally I like a simple classic cocktail, which makes recreating them easy - as long as you can get the ingredients.

One of the ingredients a lot of cocktails use is a sugar syrup. You can buy it - it's usually called Gomme - but to be honest, making it at home is a lot easier when you're having an impromptu play around, and it's so much cheaper.

100ml water
200ml caster sugar

Place the sugar and water into a large saucepan, and warm on a medium heat. Stir gently until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid begins to simmer.
Remove from the heat, and pour into a sterilised jam jar or glass bottle.
Allow to cool before use.

You can experiment with the sugars - dark sugar works really well with a rum cocktail for example, but will change the colour of your cocktail if it's a paler liquid.

Event: CreateEatWhisky

Whisky is one of the many things that I know very little about. Gin - a bit. Wine - the basics. Tea - I can wax lyrical. But for some reason, whisky has passed me by. I was very excited when I found out that Jelly and Gin were hosting CreateEatWhisky in collaboration with Jura Whisky as part of this year's World Whisky Day celebrations. 

The Nestle Milk Factory on Leith Links - our venue for the evening.

Ghost sign - the only hint of the building's former purpose.

Beautiful lighting, subway tiles.

Custom built candleholders.

Origami lighting.

Rows of tables, copper piping, paper lights.

The tasting begins - whisky number one - Jura Elixir. Our place mats summarised each for us.

Music plays in the background - recorded onsite at the distillery - with instructions on how to taste

Our tasting glasses were not your typical whisky tumbler shape.

How dark is the colour? Rich, golden, pale?

As instructed, we all held up the glass to inspect further.

I've never been sure how much water to add. Enough to create a "marble" effect as the liquids mix, said the chap next to me. 

Breathe it in deeply, edge of the glass to the bottom of the nose. 

What does it smell like?

And now onto the taste.

Take a sip.

Move it around your mouth.

Enjoy.

Tasting notes followed the instruction video, giving us hints. 

Beautiful wooden tiffin boxes, containing the first food pairing.

Oatcakes, Ayrshire bonnet cheese, pineapple & ginger chutney, venison salami.

Whisky number two - Prophecy. The music changes, the lighting changes.

A smoke filled cloche arrives.

Loch Duart hot smoked salmon pate, pickled cucumber, squid ink breadsticks.

Whisky number three - Origin. 

Tasting notes: honey.

Pear compote, honey cream, pecan brittle. Coffee and liquorice scent vials.

Whisky number four - Diurachs' Own.

Steaming copper cauldrons, seaweed mist.

Chocolates: lavender, matcha tea, salted caramel.

To finish: scenes and sounds from the distillery.

Jura.

With thanks.

Collaborators.

More collaborators.

CreateEatWhisky.

Our hosts: Jelly & Gin.

Four drams later, four delicious tasters, and I feel a little more confident with whisky. Turns out I like a dash of water in my malt to tone down the harshness of the alcohol. I was also surprised by the whisky I liked best - number two - Prophecy. My previous experiences of whisky had put me off strong smoke and peat flavours, but with the salmon and cucumber pickles, it really, really worked. I've already made a mental note to do something similar for a dinner party starter soon. A rather marvellous multi-sensory evening, and a great way to learn about something new.

Recipe: Earl Grey Tea Loaf

Just before Christmas I did my usual trick of buying lots of random ingredients to make something specific with (in this case, mixed peel) and then promptly running out of time to make said recipe (in this case, homemade mince for pies).
I had a vague idea of wanting to make a cake with it - but trawling through my books and googling didn't really throw up anything that inspired me, so I decided to adapt a standard tea loaf recipe instead. I'll be honest, usually this doesn't work and I end up swearing and threatening never to bake again, but I'm feeling so smug that this time it has, I'm feeling the need to share.

A note on tea loafs: apparently (at least, according to Wikipedia) tea loafs are unfashionable. This baffles me somewhat, although as a Yorkshire lass, tea runs through my veins. I think, though, that they might have gone out of fashion because they're simple and reminiscent of postwar austerity. The lack of butter, which would have made them easier to make in rationing times than your average cake, means that they're virtually fat free - so you can freely slather the butter on top instead.

Earl Grey Tea Loaf.

100g mixed peel
180g raisins and sultanas (I used a mixed bag which contained both, as well as cranberries)
1 tbsp lemon juice
250ml hot, very very strong, Earl Grey Tea
340g self raising flour
110g light brown sugar
2tsp mixed spice
1 egg

Soak the raisins and sultanas in the hot tea until the tea is cool, or for around about an hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C fan (or 160 non fan) and line a large loaf tin (it might stick to the greaseproof paper a bit, so line carefully!).

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and egg, add in the flour and mixed spice. Add in the tea slowly, beating well, but leaving the fruit behind for the moment so it doesn't get mashed up. Use electric whisks if you have them, it saves a lot of time and arm ache. It will be much more like a bread dough in texture than a cake batter once the liquid is all mixed in.

Add in the fruit and peel, and lemon juice, with a spoon rather than a whisk, to keep them whole.

Bake for about 45 minutes, until golden on top and a knitting needle comes out hot and clean. Take out of the tin to cool on a wire rack or breadboard. It keeps for several days in an airtight tin.

Recipe: Hot Buttered Rum (or Whisky...)

I have had one of those low level colds for a couple of weeks, and it is refusing to budge. You know the type - you don't feel 'well' but you're not poorly enough to be off work, so you spend most of your time wandering around the office feeling tired and being a little bit cranky. Anyway - as someone who doesn't get ill very often, I am rubbish at knowing what to do to make it go away faster. I have been downing hot Ribena during the day (my boss swears it had magical properties) but frankly on an evening I want something more substantial.

I have been a firm believer in a hot toddy in the past. Maybe it's the booze that sends me to sleep. Maybe it's the honey and lemon which have antibacterial properties. I don't know. But - in the last couple of weeks I just havn't managed to make them "right". And so, I turned to an alternative.  

I've called this Hot Buttered Rum, but I made it with Irish whiskey, because there wasn't any rum in the house and obtaining some would have meant going outside. It was delicious. It's also a bit of a cheat's version of the American recipes I found online, in that it has fewer ingredients. After all, if you're poorly, you want something quick and comforting without a load of random ingredients that you have to go outside for.

Hot Butter Spice Mix
Makes about 30 portions

100g unsalted butter
200g dark brown (muscovado) sugar
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoon cardamom seeds, ground or bashed up
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric whisk or wooden spoon, then beat in the other ingredients. It's easiest if you use room temperature butter cut into cubes.
Spread the mix out into a rough line in greaseproof paper, leaving a couple of inches at either end of the paper.
Roll the mix into a sausage, twist the two ends in opposite directions so that it looks like a cracker, and roll again.

To Serve

10g of butter mix
25g rum, whisky or Irish whiskey
75ml boiled water
lemon to taste

Layer up your ingredients in a cup or heatproof glass. Sip while hot.

The mix will keep in the freezer in a tupperware, still in the greaseproof paper, for around six months - just slice off a cm or so (about 10g) with a sharp knife whenever you're in need of comfort. Don't bother using posh booze, and feel free to experiment by using hot apple juice or a dash of lemon to taste.

Event: Tea Cocktails at Eteaket

There are two drinks which I am not sure that I could do without. I love tea. I love gin. The thought of combining the two set me off into a spiral of excitement and glee, and that's pretty much why I ended up in the front row at Eteaket's inaugral Tea Cocktails masterclass.

We arrived, and headed round to the back of the shop, where teacups and instruction sheets were laid out for us...

The sheets were really useful - they outlined the cocktails we'd sample, how to recreate them at home, and three ways of getting the taste of tea into a drink (infusing in alcohol, making a flavoured syrup, and using an 'iced' tea). It was a small touch, but a good idea - no need to scribble down notes - the emphasis was on enjoying ourselves.

Our tutor, the lovely Scott* introduced himself and told us a bit about how he got interested in cocktails. He explained how the list works - starting with the 'easiest' to drink, and working back through time to explore a couple of other classic cocktails. One of the lovely ladies from Eteaket was also on hand to tell us more about the teas - together they made a great team.

We started with a tiki-style Rum Punch - a classic 1970s cocktail combining Rum and fruit juices with a chilled Oolong. It was delicious.

Next up came an Earl Grey Aviation. Scott explained that this classic cocktail uses lemon juice to match with gin - as Earl Grey is a citrussy tea, the bergamot and citrus flavours are a natural combination. He also told us how to infuse our own gin (basically empty it into a jug, pop in a couple of teaspoons of leaves, and strain into the bottle after 10-20 minutes/according to taste) and suggested that people might like to try other infusions too. His suggestions of how to infuse Vanilla (split and de-seed a couple of vanilla pods, and leave overnight before straining) went down particularly well.

And finally we sampled a Lapsang Souchong Manhattan. I'm not normally a fan of Lapsang, it's too smoky and overpowering for my taste (i.e. it overpowers the cake), but matching it with a Bourbon whiskey is perfect - it recreates the smoky taste of a particularly fine smoky single malt. The Manhattan was the strongest of the cocktails we tasted, with the Bourbon mixed with sweet vermouth and bitters. It was a good finish to the evening.

If you're a fan of cocktails, tea or both - I'd highly recommend heading along to a masterclass next time they're on. It was great fun, we sampled more than we should have on an empty stomach, and I learnt a lot. I'm looking forward to having a crack at my own Earl Grey infusion, and experimenting with fresh lemonade.

Tea Cocktails tickets were £5 pp, for a 90 minute masterclass.

Eteaket
41 Frederick Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1EP
www.eteaket.co.uk

Scott is a bartender at The Queens Arms
49 Frederick Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1EP
s_mitchell@me.com

*I should probably declare that I know Scott, and can testify that he makes one of the best gin Martini's in Edinburgh - but that I didn't know he'd be running the Eteaket course!