We have come a long way since the old ‘ice and a slice’. No more flaccid lemon slice and a lonely ice cube rattling around in a highball glass. These days your G&T can look like a tropical fish bowl on a glass stem.
The modern garnish revolution started in Spain earlier this century. Swapping the highball for a Copa de Balon full of clear ice and garnished with modest flair is how you will most likely be served a G&T these days.
Garnishes are important. They are full of aroma and hence flavour and are there to enhance your drink, adding another layer of complexity. If you don’t believe me, try drinking a little of your G&T without then adding a garnish to the same drink.
Garnishes can include fruit, spices, herbs or flowers, and juniper berries of course. Always use fresh. If it looks manky and you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it in your G&T. Dried garnishes are popular at the moment but I have my reservations about them. What would you rather eat? A fresh juicy orange bursting with flavour or one that has been dried to within an inch of its life? I know which one I would pick. And I also know which one I would put in my drink.
Try experimenting with citrus. A slice of lime in your drink will give quite a different flavour to a twist of lime zest. Try rubbing the zest around the rim of your glass before popping it in your G&T. And for a real flavour bomb flame your lemon zest by holding it over a naked flame, either from a match, a kitchen blow torch or a gas flame. The slightly caramelised cooked lemon flavour is very different from the sherbetty ‘raw’ lemon taste you would normally get from your garnish. Think lemon meringue pie.
Tip: Remove the wax coating from your citrus fruits by popping them in a bowl of hot water for a few seconds. Or buy unwaxed organic lemons. The wax contains chemicals that preserve the fruit.
The simplest garnish in a G&T is a herb fresh from your garden or window box. Herbs are powerhouses of essential oils. But to get the maximum flavour from your herbs you have to release their essential oils by first spanking them. Calm your tittering, please. Spanking a herb means literally slapping it against the palm of your hand. In doing so you break the cell walls in the herb to let out all that aromatic herbiness.
In this chapter, practical step-by-step photos will show you how to create some easy but effective garnishes.
Lime and Raspberry Twist
One of the easiest and most colourful garnishes to make. All you need is a lime, fresh raspberries, a cocktail stick and a sharp knife to slice the lime with.
Strawberry Rose
This is a slightly more fiddly garnish to create than the previous one. You need a steady hand, a sharp paring knife, a little patience and a strawberry, of course.
Make four incisions in the strawberry down the four ‘sides’. It helps if you chill the strawberry in the fridge first. It will firm up and keep its shape more, making cutting easier.
Then, in between the first four cuts, make four more incisions downwards.
Finally, carve out a small hole in the centre and gently turn back the petals of the rose without breaking them.
Chilli Flower
Take one small red or green chilli, a bowl of iced water and a paring knife and in a few minutes you will have a pretty chilli flower to put in your G&T ~ if you dare.
Flamed Lemon Twist
This lemon twist can be achieved without flaming it. But flaming citrus zest brings out a whole other dimension of flavour. Using metal tongs gently hold the strip of zest over a naked flame for a few seconds only.
Lime Leaf
A cute easy to carve leaf shape out of a strip of lime zest. Just peg it to your cocktail glass.
Orange Zest and Rosemary Sprig
This lovely combination goes a treat in savoury gins.
Cucumber Dahlia
Ok, so you might not want to fiddle around making a cucumber dahlia to put in your G&T when a simple slice of cucumber is so much easier and tastes the same. But do it, just once, for fun.
Prohibition gave gin drinkers two things: bathtub gin and some great cocktails.
1920–1933 ~ The United States was under the constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of any alcoholic beverage whatsoever, enforced by the Volstead Act, formally the National Prohibition Act. Many years of campaigning by the Temperance Movement and social pressure groups spearheaded by the umbrella organisation the Anti-Saloon League culminated in a general ban on a substance believed to be corrupting the nation, both politically and personally.
1920 ~ The derogatory term ‘bathtub’ for homemade gin first appeared in 1920. Bathtub in the north of America and ‘moonshine’ in the south, both homemade alcohols, flourished during the Prohibition Era, which saw an increase in sales of small portable stills.
There is some confusion as to the exact origin of the term. It could have come about because the bottles used were too tall to be filled from a kitchen faucet and therefore had to be filled from a bathtub tap. It could also originate from the making of gin itself in the metal bathtubs of the day – ideal vessels for making and hiding the spirit in plain sight of the authorities. Who would suspect a bathtub of being part of a bootlegger’s alcohol production line?
Either way, as mentioned earlier, bathtub gin had a pretty poor reputation at the time. Made using poor quality, illegally distilled alcohol or worse, redistilled denatured alcohol, it was mixed with juniper oil and glycerine to sweeten. The result was often dire and frequently fatal: 50,000 deaths in the Prohibition Era are attributed to illegal alcohol.
Bathtub gin lives on today in some excellent examples of the craft and has shaken off its negative connotations. And thankfully its lethal properties.
Another side of Prohibition was the sudden loss of employment for bartenders. While illicit speakeasies were happy to serve up bathtub gin and moonshine liquor of dubious origin, many bartenders were used to serving more upper class and discerning clientele. A great number of bartenders therefore emigrated in droves to London, Paris and Havana, fostering a boom in cocktail culture in these cities. Such bartenders were the DJs of their time and had quasi-star status.
Harry Craddock, one such émigré, came to London to work as Head Bartender at the American Bar at The Savoy. His seminal work, The Savoy Cocktail Book, with its 750 cocktail recipes, is still highly regarded today. Quite the showman, rumour has it that he shook the last cocktail on the eve of the Prohibition Era.
1933 ~ The Eighteenth Amendment to the constitution in January 1920 described above was repealed on 5 December 1933. But not after America had experienced thirteen long ‘dry’ years. However, it was drier for some than others. While private consumption of alcohol continued with the wealthy simply stockpiling their supplies before Prohibition was put into force, public consumption was much more affected. Alcohol consumption went down, while the health of the nation improved.
Although Prohibition was never completely effective it did have an impact on American bars, with the speakeasy replacing the saloon. Bootlegging became an alternative source of income for some. Prohibition was big business, worth US$2,000 million to bootleggers and organised criminals like Bugs Moran and Al Capone.