Friday Night Cocktail: TBC

We're busy enjoying our cocktails tonight, this post will be updated tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Love Myrtle xxx

Friday Night Cocktail: Oliveto

A cocktail with olive oil? And why not! This recipe is from the Marvel Bar in Minneapolis, and apparently it's become rather popular there. It's a great recipe - the olive oil adds to the unctuous silky texture of the drink and provides a lovely background grassy taste, which is balanced by the vanilla and citrus flavours of the Licor 43 and lemon juice.

YOU WILL NEED

(enough for Merv too)

• 4 shots Bombay Sapphire Gin
• 1/2 shot Licor 43
• 2 shots freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 shot good quality extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 shot sugar syrup
• 1 egg white

AND TO MAKE

Add all of your ingredients to a cocktail shaker and shake hard until all the ingredients emulsify and your mix has a thick foamy head. Add plenty of ice and shake vigorously again for about 30 seconds.

TO SERVE

Pour into two chilled coupe glasses, and serve. Would be lovely with a side of fat green cerignola olives.

Love Myrtle xxx

Cheese Straws

Cheese straws go really well with a cocktail, and they are so moreish, it's a good job they are really easy to make. Use all-butter puff pastry if you can find it, as it's, well, more buttery.

YOU WILL NEED

(enough for Merv too)

• 1 Pack Ready-rolled All Butter Puff Pastry
• 1/2 cup Freshly Grated Gruyere Cheese
• 1/4 Cup Freshly Grated Parmesan
• 1 Tablespoon Fresh Thyme Leaves
• 1 Lightly Beaten Egg
• Salt and Freshly Ground Pepper

AND TO MAKE

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius / 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix your two grated cheeses together with the thyme. Open your pack of pastry and place it on your worktop. Brush the pastry surface generously with the beaten egg, and then sprinkle the egg-washed surface with your cheese and thyme mix. Season well with salt and pepper.

Using a rolling pin, roll over the cheese-topped pastry lightly and evenly a couple of times. This will press the cheese and seasoning into the pastry so that it doesn't all fall off. Then divide into twelve even strips with a sharp knife, using a palette knife if necessary to loosen them from the worktop ready to twist.

Twist each strip and place on a non-stick baking tray, lined with a silicon sheet or baking parchment, and bake in your preheated oven for 10-15 minutes , until the cheese is golden brown.

TO SERVE

Allow to cool, then serve either piled up on a rectangular serving tray, or in a jug. They're perfect with my Sapphire And Steel gin and thyme cocktail, or try them with a dirty martini or fizzy bubbly cocktail.

Best eaten on the day that they're made, and although they will keep for a day or two in an airtight container, they won't last that long!

Love Myrtle xxx

Friday Night Cocktail: Sapphire And Steel

Sapphire and Steel was originally a late 1970s British Sci-Fi TV series that had a very confusing storyline based on Joanna Lumley (Sapphire) and David McCallum (Steel) mending irregularities in time. Imagine a lower budget seventies version of the spookier episodes of Doctor Who with Patsy from Ab Fab and you're pretty much there.

Thankfully the cocktail version of Sapphire and Steel is far less complicated, and contains just four ingredients - Bombay Sapphire (obviously), St. Germain, lemon juice and thyme sugar. To continue the thyme theme, I'm serving mine with cheese and thyme straws.

YOU WILL NEED

(enough for Merv too)

• 4 shots Bombay Sapphire gin
• 2 shots St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
• 1 shot lemon juice
• 2 sugar cubes
• 4 springs thyme

AND TO MAKE

Reserve two of the thyme sprigs for garnish. Remove the leaves from the remaining two sprigs of thyme and discard the stalks, add the thyme leaves and the two sugar cubes to a pestle and mortar and grind until the leaves combine with the sugar leaving a very fine, pale green thyme sugar.

Add the thyme sugar to your cocktail shaker along with the remaining ingredients and plenty of ice and shake for 20 seconds.

TO SERVE

Strain your cocktail into two chilled coupe glasses and garnish each with the reserved thyme sprigs. Serve with a home-made cheese and thyme straw on the side, if you're feeling fancy.

Love Myrtle xxx

Bay Leaf

Herb sugars are a relatively simple way to add complex fresh flavours to your home cocktails, just by bashing up your favourite herb with some sugar in a pestle and mortar. The Bay Leaf uses fresh bay leaves, readily available at most supermarkets now, and if you happen to have your own bay tree, even better! The resulting cocktail has a very delicate herbal flavour, a spicy cross between eucalyptus, citrus and lavender, and looks fantastic.

YOU WILL NEED

(enough for Merv too)

• 4 shots Vodka
• 2 shots freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1 egg white
• 6 bay leaves
• 4 heaped teaspoons caster sugar

AND TO MAKE

Reserve two bay leaves for garnish, then add the remaining bay leaves and the sugar to your pestle and mortar. Grind the bay into the sugar until no leaf pieces are visible, and the sugar has turned a vibrant light green. At this point you may be left with the central spine of the bay leaves, fish these out and discard.

Add the bay sugar and the remaining ingredients to your cocktail shaker and dry shake to emusify the egg white. Add ice and shake again until foamy.

TO SERVE

Pour into two coupe glasses and garnish each with a bay leaf.

This cocktail has a lovely herbal flavour, it's one you'll keep going back to for another sip to taste it again! My glass is empty, how did that happen?

Love Myrtle xxx

Friday Night Cocktail: Minty

Jamie Oliver has a very simple recipe that involves making a mint sugar by pounding mint and sugar together in a pestle and mortar, which captures the lovely vibrancy of the mint both in colour and flavour. Jamie uses his on something called Pukka Pineapple, I'm using it to create a super minty variation of a mojito eliminating the need for the usual mint shrubbery in your glass.

YOU WILL NEED

(enough for Merv too)

• 4 shots Angostura 1919 Rum
• 2 shots freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1 egg white
• 4 sprigs mint, stems removed and discarded
• 4 heaped teaspoons golden caster sugar

AND TO MAKE

Reserve two mint tips for garnish, then add the remaining mint leaves and sugar to your pestle and mortar. Bash-up your mint Jamie-style, until the leaves are ground up and you're left with a vibrant green fragrant sugar.

Add the mint sugar and the remaining ingredients to your cocktail shaker and dry shake to emulsify the egg white. Add plenty of ice and shake again until foamy,

TO SERVE

Pour into two coupe glasses and garnish each with a mint tip.

Merv says it tastes like minty sherbet. Jamie would say it tastes pukka, I'm sure...

Love Myrtle xxx

Pickle Back

While staying in New York at the Ace Hotel, I asked the mustachioed hipster bartender to recommend a savory cocktail to compliment the shucked oysters and littleneck clams. 

He recommended the Breslin Bar's house cocktail, the Pickle Back. While he was forthcoming with the basic recipe, he was as secretive as Colonel Sanders about the secret spices.

After much research, trial and error, the recipe below is my take on the Breslin's version, although you may wish to play with some of the spices to suit your own palette.

YOU WILL NEED

(enough for a good party)

• 2 x 568 ml bottles of spirit vinegar
• 568 ml cold water
• 250g granulated sugar
• 5 tablespoons fine salt
• 1 tablespoon mustard seed
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 3 Indonesian long peppercorns
• Large bunch of dill
• 2 large cucumbers

TO MAKE THE PICKLE JUICE

Empty the 2 bottles of spirit vinegar into a saucepan, fill one empty vinegar bottle with cold water and add that as well. Add the salt, sugar, mustard seed, black pepper and long pepper and slowly bring up to a gentle boil.

While the ingredients are still warm, slice the cucumber into thin strips and layer with the dill in a sterilised Kilner jar (I just put mine through the dishwasher on a high temperature).

Once the pickling vinegar has reached a boil allow to cool a little and pour over the layered cucumber and dill until just shy of the rim. Seal the jar and allow to cool to room temperature before refrigerating.

The pickled cucumbers can be kept for up to 2 weeks, and either eaten or discarded before re-bottling the pickle juice. Add some fresh dill to enhance the flavor and store until needed.


TO SERVE

Serve each shot in separate glasses

• 1 shot of Bulleit Bourbon
• 1 shot Pickle juice

The original recipe was with Jameson's Irish Whiskey, but the barman suggested Bulleit Bourbon as a smoother alternative.


Without teaching you how to drink, take a sip of the bourbon followed by a sip of the pickle juice.

Chin chin! Merv