I don’t have much patience for garnishes that just look good. I demand more from them than mere beauty; they should also add flavor or texture to a drink. That doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally succumb to the allure of a vivid green slice of lime (especially against the background of a brightly hued cocktail like the pink Prickly Caipirinha), but I don’t use it for looks alone. That would be shallow.
Garnishes can be sour, sweet, or savory, and they come in many different forms. You can, for example, replace the pickled onion or olive in a traditional martini with a pickled daylily bud or float a pickled crab apple in a glass of bourbon. Muddle a few black raspberries in the bottom of your gin glass for deep purple color (see Happy Birthday, Leda), or make some foraged fruit leather and use it as a slowly dissolving edible swizzle stick.
Using pickles is an easy way to add wild flavor to your favorite adult beverage. Refrigerator pickles (sometimes called quick pickles) will keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks. If you’re interested in longer-term storage, you’ll need to process your pickles in a boiling water bath. The extra heat of the boiling water bath may soften your pickles, so choose something sturdy that can stand up to the processing. Fiddlehead ferns, field garlic bulbs, and crab apples are good candidates for canned pickles, while daylily buds and knotweed shoots are better used in quick pickles.
Various canning recipes call for different amounts of headspace to allow for the expansion of the food while it is heating and for the formation of a solid vacuum seal as the jars cool. Jams and jellies usually specify 1⁄4 inch, pickles require 1⁄2 inch, and low-acid, pressure-canned foods usually need 1 inch. Refrigerator pickles don’t require headspace since they aren’t being canned, but be sure you have enough brine to fully cover your pickles, so they won’t become discolored from exposure to the air.
Regular table salt usually contains anticaking agents and iodine, which can turn pickle brines cloudy or dark. Kosher salt is usually pure (check the label to be sure) and delivers a better brine.
Makes 3 half-pint jars
Before I make a pickle brine, I try to imagine what the finished product will taste like. You’ve heard the expression “the mind’s eye”? When I’m inventing recipes, I use my “mind’s palate.” All brines have certain things in common (like water and vinegar), but your spices will change depending on what it is you’re pickling. The brine for these daylily buds is one of my favorites. It’s a little spicy, a little sweet, and a lot delicious.
Combine all the brine ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let the brine simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, whisking to dissolve the sugar and salt. Pour the hot brine over the daylily buds and let steep for several hours. You can eat your quick pickles right away, but the flavor will develop with time, and they’ll be even tastier after sitting in the brine for a few days.
Store, covered, in the refrigerator, where they’ll keep for several weeks.
It’s not unusual to find great expanses of daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) in fields near abandoned homesteads or along country roads. Daylilies produce lots of flowers and they also tend to grow in large clumps. You should be able to harvest several cups of buds and still leave plenty behind to look beautiful in bloom. For pickling, choose buds that are about 2 inches long and fully green, or with just a flush of orange.
Franklin Roosevelt is associated with the creation of the dirty martini, in two equally unsubstantiated stories. The first has Joseph Stalin suggesting vodka and pickle juice as a hangover cure at Yalta. (Apparently that’s a classic Russian morning-after cure.) There being no vodka on the breakfast table (what?!), Winston Churchill volunteered a bottle of gin and a jar of olives and voilà: the birth of the dirty martini. The second account is less dramatic and merely mentions that FDR, an avid home mixologist, liked to add both olives and a bit of their brine to his gin martinis.
Whether these stories are true or not, we certainly have FDR to thank for the repeal of Prohibition, so he’s aces in my book, even though I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a forager. Still, I’ll toast to FDR and the repeal of Prohibition with a Dirty Lily Bud, which is what you get when you replace the dirty martini’s classic olive garnish and juice with a pickled daylily bud and a bit of its brine.
The addition of pickle brine adds extra flavor and spice to this classic cocktail, and it also lets you take the alcohol content down a notch. Without the brine the liquid ingredients in a martini are entirely alcoholic.
In a mixing glass or shaker full of ice, combine the gin, vermouth, and brine and stir (don’t shake, despite what James Bond says) for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with as many pickled daylily buds as you see fit.
Feel free to adjust the amount of brine according to your personal taste. Likewise, if you have a different foraged pickle you prefer (pickled field garlic, pickled milkweed flowers, pickled purslane), feel free to substitute. But you’ll have to come up with your own name for any variations on this delicious foraged drink.
Makes 3 (4-ounce) jars
Japanese knotweed is generally despised by gardeners and environmentalists. It’s an aggressive plant, spreading rapidly by both seed and underground runners, and it’s very difficult to get rid of. Foragers, on the other hand, celebrate the appearance of Japanese knotweed shoots in spring. The young shoots make a crunchy, tart pickle with a strong lemony taste. Knotweed loses its pretty green and red colors once it’s pickled, but it retains its crunch and the tart flavor is exceptional.
Combine all the brine ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let the brine simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, whisking to dissolve the sugar and salt. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. (Japanese knotweed turns mushy when heated, so this pickle is best made with a cooled brine.)
Set out three sterilized 4-ounce jars. Into each one put 1⁄2 cup sliced Japanese knotweed, one garlic clove, three chiles, and two pieces of dried wild ginger rhizome. Pour in enough brine to cover each jar’s contents, seal the jars, and refrigerate.
You may eat your knotweed pickles after a few hours, but the flavor will be better after 24 to 48 hours. These pickles will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.
Harvest Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) when the stalks are tender and easy to snap by hand. You may have read that only the very short, young stalks of knotweed are suitable for eating, but this isn’t true. As long as you can easily snap off the top of the stem (the last 12 inches or so), you’re good to go. The stem should make a satisfying pop as it breaks off. If it’s too tough to snap by hand, move up the stem until you find a spot tender enough to break.
When you can use weeds in your cocktails, it’s a win-win. You eradicate a few pesky plants and you get a delicious adult beverage. Most people don’t realize that the purslane they pull out of their garden beds is the same purslane you’ll see at the grocery store or farmers’ market for $6.95 a pound.
Purslane is chock-full of omega-3 essential fatty acids, making it a very healthy weed indeed. But who’s kidding whom? That’s not why you’re making this drink. Purslane has a lemony, peppery flavor and gives this drink a gorgeous green color. In its prime it’s a succulent plant; that’s when you want to harvest it for this cocktail. Once the plant has flowered and set seed, it’s usually not juicy enough to flavor the drink. Don’t give in to the temptation to pick purslane from city sidewalks, where dogs and pollution may sully your harvest. The last six to eight inches of stem are most succulent and work best in this cocktail.
And because I can’t resist playing with plants, I’ve added two more wild edibles to this recipe. A Japanese knotweed pickle takes the lemony flavor up a notch and adds a little heat. A salt rim made with pink peppercorns adds complexity and spiciness.
I prefer my margaritas straight up, but you may serve yours on the rocks if you prefer. And before you say anything, yes, it’s a generous drink. You got a problem with that?
Rim a margarita glass first in lemon juice and then in the salt and pink peppercorn blend and set aside. Combine the tequila and purslane in a blender and pulverize until the purslane is thoroughly liquefied. Strain the green liquid through a jelly bag. Transfer the strained liquid to a shaker filled with ice and add the Cointreau and verjuice. Shake for 30 seconds, then strain into the rimmed margarita glass and garnish with a Japanese knotweed pickle or two.
Note: The color of the purslane tequila fades with time, so use it quickly.
Makes 2 (4-ounce) jars
Remember when I said a garnish had to do more than just look good? Of all the foraged pickles you might use in a cocktail, a pickled fiddlehead fern is probably the most beautiful. Plus, it has a nice crunch and fresh flavor. Use it to garnish a Gunwale Jumper. The brine is extremely simple so as not to obscure the delicate flavor of the fiddlehead.
Wash your fiddleheads to remove any remnants of their brown, papery sheaths and trim the ends. Bring a pot of water to a boil. If you’re planning to make this recipe as a quick refrigerator pickle, add the fiddleheads to the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes. If you’re planning to can your pickles, blanch the fiddleheads in the boiling water for 60 seconds and then plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking. When the fiddleheads have cooled, strain them and divide them between two sterilized 4-ounce canning jars.
Combine all the brine ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, whisking to dissolve the sugar and salt. Pour the brine over the fiddleheads.
If you’re making quick refrigerator pickles, let the jars cool, then cover and store in the refrigerator, where the pickles will keep for 2 to 4 weeks. If you’re canning the pickles, add just enough brine to leave 1⁄2 inch of headspace, and process the jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
While all fern fronds start out as fiddleheads, not all ferns are delicious, and there’s debate over the toxicity of some species. Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris, M. pennsylvanica) in the east and lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina) in the west are the tastiest. Most people have no problem eating raw fiddleheads, but they may cause gastrointestinal problems for some. Cooking fiddleheads for 10 minutes eliminates the possibility of gastrointestinal upset.
Because fiddleheads are not weeds or aggressive growers, please harvest with restraint. Pick them when they are still tightly furled and harvest only two or three fronds from each plant, leaving plenty behind to unfurl and photosynthesize.
If you grew up going to a summer camp with a lake, chances are you spent some time in a canoe. You may have learned to paddle, you may have learned how to right a swamped canoe, and if you were very, very lucky, you may have learned how to gunwale jump. It’s only a little easier than it looks.
Gunwale jumping involves standing with one foot on each gunwale, in the back quarter of the canoe. Keeping your feet on the gunwales (you don’t really jump), you repeatedly and forcefully pump your legs up and down to propel the canoe forward. It’s what you do when you’re up a creek without a paddle. And it’s really fun.
The ingredients in this drink are all things you might find in the bottom of your canoe after a paddle, except for the whisky. Unless you went to a very different kind of summer camp.
Wild blueberries are flavorful but tart; the sweetness of the acorn orgeat balances the sour fruit. Maple syrup would also be a nice sweetener here and fully in keeping with the theme of the cocktail.
Combine the whisky and blueberries in a shaker and muddle the blueberries. Add the orgeat and vodka and fill the shaker with ice. Shake for 30 seconds, then strain into a glass. Garnish with a pickled fiddlehead.
Makes 4 (4-ounce) jars
A Gibson is traditionally garnished with a pickled onion, but pickled field garlic substitutes a pop of robust foraged flavor. The flavor of field garlic is halfway between that of onion and garlic, and the small, sturdy bulb stands up well to the heat of a boiling water bath. This means you can make a big batch of pickled field garlic in spring and snack on it all year long.
Because the flavor of the bulbs themselves is so strong, I keep the brine simple. The pickles not only are great in Gibsons but make an excellent accompaniment to cheese or caviar.
Combine all the brine ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let the brine simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, whisking to dissolve the sugar and salt.
Divide the garlic bulbs evenly among four sterilized 4-ounce canning jars. To each jar add four juniper berries and 1⁄8 teaspoon wild ginger rhizomes. Pour the brine into the jars, leaving 1⁄2 inch of headspace, and screw the canning lids in place. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
Wait 2 weeks before tasting these pickles to let the flavors develop fully.
Canned field garlic pickles will last for a year on the shelf.
Field garlic (Allium vineale) is a spring crop; harvest the bulbs when the first green, grasslike leaves begin to show. Hold the leaves just where they emerge from the soil and pull straight up. Bulbs range in size from c to b inch in diameter, and they bring a lot of dirt up with them. Wash the bulbs, then trim off the roots and stems, leaving about an inch of neck at the top of the bulb.
Makes 2 pints
Most people don’t think of fruit as pickles, but crab apples work beautifully with a spicy brine. Larger fruits (more than 1 inch in diameter) make better pickles, because their texture is usually crisper than that of smaller crab apples, which tend to be mealy. Use them as a garnish for a Kentucky Belle.
Wash the crab apples, leaving the individual stems in place. Prick each crab apple with a toothpick or skewer in two or three places, to prevent the skins from cracking when the fruit is heated.
Place the spicebush berries and ginger rhizomes in a tea ball. Combine the vinegar, water, and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, whisking to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat to a simmer, add the tea ball with the spices, and let the brine simmer for 5 minutes. Remove the brine from the heat.
When the brine is cool, add the crab apples and gradually heat the mixture to just below a boil. Keep here, just below a boil, for 5 minutes; if you notice the skins cracking, reduce the heat. Then remove the pan from the heat and transfer the contents (including the tea ball) to a bowl. Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature overnight.
Remove the tea ball. Divide the crab apples between two sterilized pint jars. Top with the brine, leaving 1⁄2 inch of headspace. Process the jars in a boiling water bath for 25 minutes. These pickles will keep for up to a year.
Crab apples (Malus spp.) generally have a diameter of less than 2 inches. They are abundant in many parts of the country in late summer and fall, and their tart taste combines wonderfully with the warm, sweet flavor of bourbon. Crab apples may be red, yellow, or orange. They’re ripe and fully flavored when no longer green. You can use any crab apples you like for pickling — just make sure they haven’t been sprayed with pesticides.
You can make this cocktail with wild ginger syrup and seltzer or with double-strength ginger ale. To make double-strength ginger ale, use twice as much syrup as recommended in a home carbonation system like SodaStream.
Combine the bourbon and ginger syrup in a shaker full of ice and shake for 30 seconds. Strain into a champagne coupe and top with the seltzer. Garnish with a pickled crab apple if desired.
If you’re using double-strength ginger ale, don’t shake this cocktail! Stir the bourbon with ice, then strain into a coupe and top with 2 ounces of double-strength ginger ale.
Wild fruits are delicious in many different forms. In cocktails I use them pickled, as juices, muddled, and also as purées, syrups, and jellies/jams. In each case, the foraged fruit adds both beauty and flavor to the drink.
Both soft and hard fruits can be juiced to create strongly flavored wild cocktail ingredients. The process for both types of fruit is the same. Place your fruit in a skillet and barely cover with water. Bring the fruit and water to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the fruit is soft enough to mash with a potato masher.
Pour the mashed fruit into a jelly bag and let the juice drip through. Resist the temptation to squeeze the jelly bag; let gravity do the work. Squeezing may create a cloudy juice and make your cocktail less beautiful and jewel-like.
I’m especially fond of how fresh, wild juices combine with pisco, a grape-based brandy native to Peru and Chile. Both countries have strong wine-making traditions, and both claim pisco as their national drink. I’m not going to get involved in international debate, but I do recommend this brandy as a versatile base spirit for cocktail creation. The more I use it, the more I like it.
Pisco is a clear, clean grape brandy made in both Peru and Chile. Peruvian pisco must be aged for at least 3 months in containers that don’t alter the brandy’s physical or chemical properties. This means no cask aging, since wood imparts so much flavor. Chilean pisco is aged in wood, which not only adds flavor but also often produces a darker pisco.
The pisco sour is probably the best known pisco cocktail. Traditionally it contains pisco, citrus, syrup, and, depending on where you drink it, maybe egg whites and bitters or maybe not.
The fruit of pineapple guava is often ignored. It falls to the ground when ripe and most people let it lie there, never realizing how tasty it is. Why is all this fruit wasted? Because it’s green? Because it’s not pretty? Whatever the reason, it’s a crying shame. The flavor of pineapple guava is lightly sweet and almost herbal. It tastes nothing like pineapple and nothing like guava.
It wasn’t just the alliteration that made me think pineapple guava would go well with pisco. The original pisco punch was created in San Francisco and I first foraged for pineapple guava in the Bay Area. Traditional pisco punch is made with pineapple gum syrup, whose thickness gives the cocktail a thick, silky mouthfeel. Pineapple guava juice is naturally thick and silky. See where I’m going with this?
Once I had the two base flavors (the spirit and the fruit), I added quince liqueur for more sweetness and floral depth, fino sherry for a hint of acidity, and spruce tip vodka for a touch of freshness that lifts and ties together the heavier flavors without taking center stage. You may substitute Clear Creek Distillery’s Douglas Fir Eau de Vie for the homemade spruce tip vodka. It’s a lovely spirit, albeit not inexpensive.
Combine the pisco, pineapple guava juice, quince liqueur, sherry, and vodka in a shaker full of ice and shake for 30 seconds. Strain the cocktail into a highball glass and top with seltzer. Alternatively, you can transfer the contents to a plastic container, stir in the seltzer, and move it to the freezer. The alcohol will keep the mixture from freezing solid, but within about an hour it will solidify enough to make a terrific slushy.
Pineapple guavas (Acca sellowiana) are a popular landscape plant in zones 8 and warmer, but the fruit is often ignored. It ripens in fall and should only be harvested after it has fallen to the ground; fruit still attached to the shrub isn’t quite ripe. Cut the fruit in half and scoop out the flesh. If you’re going to use the pulp, run it through a food mill to remove the seeds. If you’re going to use the juice, follow the instructions for juicing fruits.
While there are some truly wild grapes, most grapes you’ll forage for are actually feral. That means they have escaped cultivation. This is a technicality, and one that makes very little difference to me. But I wanted you to know.
For this recipe you want a strong grape flavor, like that of Concord grapes. The cocktail is also more attractive when made with purple grapes. In fact, it’s downright gorgeous. Follow the directions for juicing fruits, but don’t use your juice right away. There’s an extra step for making grape juice.
I named this cocktail Ode to the Grape because it contains three forms of grape: grape brandy, grape juice, and sugared grapes. It’s a tribute, dammit.
Collect a bit of egg white in a small bowl. Dip each grape in the egg white, roll in sugar, and set aside to let the sugar coating dry.
Combine the pisco, grape juice, and 1 tablespoon egg whites in a shaker and dry-shake for 30 seconds. Add ice and shake again for 30 seconds to thoroughly chill the cocktail. Strain into a glass and garnish with the sugared grapes.
Grapes are high in tartaric acid, from which cream of tartar is made. Crystals of tartaric acid can settle out of homemade grape juice. The crystals aren’t harmful, but it’s a little disconcerting to take a sip of grape juice and crunch down on a mouthful of small crystals.
Fortunately, the crystals precipitate out of solution if you refrigerate the grape juice for 48 hours. You’ll notice a visible layer of sludge in the bottom of the grape juice jar. Strain the juice through a coffee filter or two layers of cheesecloth to remove the crystals.
The best fruits for muddling are small, soft fruits like wineberries, Juneberries, and grapes. A gentle muddling lets you extract the juices while leaving bits and pieces of the fruit intact. This is usually the first step in assembling a cocktail and is done in the bottom of the cocktail glass itself. If you’ve ever used a mortar and pestle, the technique for using a muddler will seem familiar. Place the fruit in the glass and give a few gentle turns of the muddler. Muddled fruit usually sits at the bottom of a cocktail, infusing the liquid and looking beautiful. At the end, you swallow it down in one boozy, fruity gulp.
If you were to take muddling one step further, you’d end up with a purée. Fruit purées add color, flavor, and texture to a cocktail, and depending on the consistency of the fruit, there are several ways to make them. Most juicy fruits can be puréed without the addition of liquid, while others may need a little extra water or juice to create the right consistency. You’ll need a food mill or a wire mesh strainer.
If you have a food mill, choose the plate with holes just big enough to catch the seeds, then run the fruit through the mill. If you’re using a strainer, push the fruit through the wire mesh to separate the seeds from the fruit.
Why use a purée instead of juice? Juice gives you a clear cocktail, with color and flavor. A purée delivers a completely different mouthfeel; it has texture, opacity, and heft. Both are useful in different situations, and both should be used in shaken cocktails or blended drinks, where athletic arm action fully integrates the fruit and the alcohol.
You could leave the skins of American persimmons, pineapple guavas, and pawpaws on the fruit, but I don’t recommend it. They’re soft enough to run through a food mill raw, but the skins are generally not considered tasty and should be removed before you mill the pulp. If the milled fruit looks and feels lumpy, transfer it to a blender and process until it’s a smooth and appetizing purée.
If a person had a still way down yonder in the pawpaw patch, this is what they might be making. Anyone who has tasted the elusive pawpaw knows that the fruit tastes like crème brûlée right off the tree. It’s sweet and custardy and no one would judge you if you stood in the middle of the pawpaw patch and ate the fruit by the bucketful.
The flavor of pawpaw fruit is quite delicate, and alcohol can easily overwhelm it. Since I use bourbon in my pawpaw crème brûlée recipe, I thought it would be a good base spirit for a pawpaw cocktail. I began testing with equal parts bourbon and pawpaw, but the flavor of the fruit was almost entirely lost. To preserve the pawpaw integrity of the cocktail, I backed off the bourbon, keeping the volume of alcohol low.
Combine the bourbon, pawpaw purée, acorn orgeat, and verjuice in a shaker with ice and shake for 30 seconds. Pause, then shake again for 30 seconds. Pawpaw purée is thick and extra shaking is required to mix it up. Even so, this will be a thick drink. A sprinkling of ground spicebush berries is a tasty and attractive garnish.
The pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is the largest edible fruit native to the United States. It’s found in large parts of the central and eastern United States, but the fruit isn’t easy to come by.
First of all, pawpaws need to be dead ripe to be delicious. That means soft, squishy, and not well suited to shipping long distances. You may find them at local farmers’ markets or pawpaw festivals (yes, there are pawpaw festivals), but don’t count on it. People don’t like to part with their hard-earned pawpaws.
In the wild you’ll often find pawpaw trees but no fruit. That’s because pawpaw flowers can’t self-pollinate and must have other trees nearby for insect pollination. Commercial growers hand-pollinate their trees.
Makes 20–30 strips of fruit leather
Fruit leather has long been a treat for school lunches and afternoon snacks, but I’m here to tell you it’s not just for kids anymore. Fruit leather is a great way to preserve the flavor of fruit, and it’s a cocktail multitasker. Use it as a swizzle stick, and then, as the fruit leather softens, let it dissolve in your drink or just go ahead and eat it.
You can use this technique to make fruit leather from any foraged fruit. I like a combination of Juneberries and mulberries, which conveniently (and tastily) both ripen in late spring/early summer. Fruits with larger seeds, like silverberries, elderberries, and prickly pear, should be run through a food mill to remove the seeds before being turned into fruit leather.
Put the fruit in a blender and blend on high speed until liquefied. The consistency should be thick but pourable, similar to that of smooth applesauce. If your fruit purée is too thick, add a little water or fruit juice. Apple and white grape have the most neutral flavors.
Taste your purée and add sugar if needed, but remember, this is a cocktail garnish, not a dessert. Perhaps, rather than adding sweetness, you might add a foraged spice or a splash of verjuice for extra tartness.
If you have a dehydrator, spread the purée evenly on the special fruit leather sheets that came with it, making a layer approximately 1⁄8 inch thick. Dry it at 135°F (55°C). Depending on your climate, the leather may take 6 to 10 hours to dry. It’s done when pressure from your finger will not make an indentation.
If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can make fruit leather in the oven. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Set the oven to bake at its lowest setting (probably about 170°F/75°C) and continue as above. The drying process should be quicker at this slightly higher temperature. When the leather is done, peel it from the dehydrator sheets or parchment paper. Let it cool, then cut it into strips.
Wrap the individual pieces in plastic wrap or parchment paper to store. They’ll keep for a month at room temperature and up to a year in the freezer.
Kyle Ford worked in finance for four years after college, but finding that he needed an outlet for his considerable creative energy, he quit his job and dove into the craft cocktail scene. In addition to being recognized by the United States Bartenders’ Guild as a spirits professional, Kyle is certified as a level 1 sommelier by the Court of Master Sommeliers. He has worked at well-known cocktail bars from San Francisco to New York City and founded the Ford Marketing Lab, a social media and brand consultancy, with his wife, Rachel Ford.
Kyle says, “A cocktail is so much more than its ingredients. It’s an experience; there’s that social element. We need to pay attention to what brings a person back to a place. I would rather put a smile on a face than make them the perfect drink.” That being said, his drinks are pretty damn good.
There is some debate over what makes a fix cocktail a fix cocktail. The fix is a little-known cocktail category that started out in the late 1900s as a mix of spirits, lemon juice, water, sugar, and ice. Later recipes often used raspberry or pineapple syrup instead of the sugar and water. A range of spirits can be used, including whiskey, rum, and gin, but the classic brandy fix is probably the most popular.
Kyle describes Metaxa as a funky Greek brandy blended with muscat wine and including botanicals like rose and orange blossom. Fruit is an essential ingredient in a fix cocktail, and while pineapple and raspberry are traditional, Kyle says you can use whatever foraged fruit is in season. Juneberries have a complex flavor with undertones of almond, which works nicely with the Metaxa. If Juneberries aren’t in season, you can try raspberries, blueberries, or any other berry that’s small, soft, and easy to purée without adding water.
While traditional fix recipes call for fruit syrup, Metaxa is sweet all on its own. To balance the sweetness, I’ve split the base spirit between Metaxa and vodka and used a fruit purée instead of a sweeter fruit syrup.
Combine the vodka, Metaxa, verjuice, simple syrup, and puréed Juneberries with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with a strip of Juneberry fruit leather.
The most common cocktail rim is the classic salt rim of a margarita, but you can add flavorful rims to lots of different drinks. While most people simply dip the rim of the glass into a liquid and then into the salt (or sugar, or whatever), I’d like to suggest a different method. The simple dip just described puts half of the salt (or sugar, or whatever) inside the glass, and that’s not good. With every sip, the drink gets a little more salty or sweet, and the balance of the cocktail goes to hell in a handbasket, as my mother used to say. Instead, swirl just the outside rim of the glass in the liquid and then in the rimming salt. And only rim half the glass. That way drinkers can regulate how much extra flavor they take in with each sip, and the drink itself remains balanced and pure. Let the glass dry a little before pouring your cocktail.
When choosing the liquid for your rim, use a flavor that echoes the flavors of your cocktail. For example, I use lime juice for the Frozen Persimmon Margarita because I use lime juice in the cocktail. Water is a perfectly acceptable choice.
This rim is the perfect garnish for a Frozen Persimmon Margarita. Do not grind the ingredients together in the spice grinder. You want the texture to be granular, not super fine. Grind the spicebush berries in advance, then combine with the sugar and salt. I suggest kosher salt here because it has a larger grain than regular table salt. (See Picking Spicebush Berries.)
Combine the sugar, salt, and ground spicebush berries in a small bowl and mix well. Transfer to a saucer for rimming a glass.
This spicy rim is so much prettier than just plain salt. But because we care about more than just good looks, you can rest assured that the flavor of the pink peppercorns is also exceptional. Use this as the finishing touch for a Get Off My Lawn.
Pink peppercorns are small, very hard, dry fruits, so grind them up in your spice grinder first. You’ll need to pulse them several times to break them up.
Combine the ground pink peppercorns with the salt and mix well. Transfer to a saucer for rimming a glass.
Pink peppercorns aren’t true peppercorns; they’re the fruit of two trees in the Schinus genus: S. terebinthifolius (Brazilian pepper) and S. molle (Peruvian pepper). Brazilian peppercorn is classified as invasive in several states, where sales of it are banned. Peruvian peppercorn is a graceful and attractive tree and not considered invasive. It grows in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.
In addition to being a better behaved landscape plant, Peruvian peppercorns are safer to eat. Some people report allergic reactions to Brazilian peppercorns. Fortunately, the foliage of these two trees look very different and it’s easy to tell them apart.
You may recognize the persimmon as the bright orange fruit that graces high-end grocery stores in autumn. These are Asian persimmons and there’s nothing wrong with them, but the American persimmon is a rarer and more desirable fruit. It’s rare because it isn’t often raised as a commercial crop, although some growers sell the frozen pulp. The very nature of the ripe fruit — soft and mushy — makes picking and shipping American persimmons almost impossible, but the rich sweet flavor, with its caramel overtones, is worth hunting for.
Rim half of a chilled glass first in lime juice and then the sugar and spicebush blend.
Combine the persimmon purée, tequila, Cointreau, lime juice, simple syrup, and ice cubes in a blender. Blend until the texture is thick and smooth. Pour into the rimmed glass and garnish with a wedge of lime.
Persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) grow primarily from the East Coast to the Mississippi, and from North Carolina to New Hampshire. They are most abundant in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and Kentucky. You may hear that persimmons require a frost to ripen, but this isn’t true. They have a long growing season and often aren’t ripe until after the first frost. Start looking for them in September.
If you have to pick a persimmon from the tree, it isn’t ready; the fruit will fall off the tree when it’s ripe. An unripe persimmon may be pretty and bright orange, but the flavor is an astringent shock you will not soon forget. The fruit is only delicious when it looks awful and is mushy enough to almost fall apart in your hand.
Persimmons don’t ripen all at once, so you may want to revisit your trees every few days to gather the fruit.
