weekly_food_challenge | Entries tagged with drinks: alcoholic

Mood: hungry

So glad I've been able to join in with the challenge this week - I kept planning to every time a new challenge was posted, but things have been busy and I've not got round to it. But, yes, it's December, the theme is PIES, so obviously I made mince pies.

I've been making these every year for about 8 or 9 years. I make both the mince meat and the pastry myself and both recipes are pretty simple. Boozy mincemeat recipe is here, and unbelievably easy mince pies (pastry) recipe is here. I can recommend being liberal with the booze in the mincemeat recipe. For the pastry recipe, I pretty much make it as per the recipe - lots of people in the comments seem to add some water/an egg/some milk to the pastry so they can roll it out. Yes, it is a little bit faffy to press the pastry into the tins, but I would venture no more faffy than rolling out and cutting pastry, then lining each hole of the tin. Plus it is worth it for very buttery, short pastry. The thing that I do slightly differently is that I use a muffin tin and make 12 large deep-filled mince pies, rather than 18 smaller ones. I also don't weigh out the mincemeat, I just fill each pie up with as much filling as possible.

Icing sugar is also optional. I've found that friends and family actually like the 'rustic' look of these mince pies. They're not going to win any awards for presentation, but they taste damn good.

miss_s_b

You will need:

Some mathematical ability
A freezer and some ice lolly moulds
Some gin
Some tonic
Some caster sugar
A lime

Method:

Work out the total volume of your ice lolly moulds.
Cut your lime into fine wedges - I get 16 out of 1 lime - and put one wedge in each hole of the ice lolly mould.
Make a mixture in a jug that is 1/4 gin and 3/4 tonic to about 95% of the volume of your ice lolly moulds - for instance, if the moulds are a litre total, you want to make about 950ml G&T; this leaves room for the lime wedges and the sugar. Don't make it any ginnier than this or it won't set properly.
Add sugar to the tune of 10g per 100ml liquid, and stir till it's dissolved and the fizz has gone out of the tonic.
Put into the moulds and freeze overnight.

miss_s_b

Mood: cheerful

Yes, Dakry purposefully spelt the Nanny Ogg way, partly because this is a bit too far from the traditional daiquiri recipe for me to call it that in all good conscience. This serves one, but can be easily scaled up with a little modification.

You will need:

A cocktail shaker
A sieve
A wooden spoon
A citrus juicer
A glass to drink out of - I prefer a coupe, but you can use one of those stupid spilly cocktail glasses if you like. Or a wine glass. Or even a snifter. Something with a stem so you can hold it by the stem and not warm the drink with your hand is the important point.
A saucer wider in diameter than the diameter of the rim of your glass
Some ice
Some raspberries - 10 or 12, depending on size, use your judgement.
A lime
Some rum
Some Chambord (or other raspberry liqeueueueueuer)
Some sugar

Method:

Pour a thin layer of sugar onto the saucer.
Juice the lime and put the juice into the cocktail shaker, then rub the lime corpse around the rim of the glass, then dip the glass in the saucer of sugar. I refuse to call this "rimming".
Push the raspberries through the sieve with the wooden spoon into the cocktail shaker, then wash the sieve.
Add half a teaspoon of the sugar from the plate, 15ml of chambord, 60ml of rum, and a lot of ice to the shaker.
Shake till the shaker frosts over, then strain through your nice clean sieve into the drinking glass.
Enjoy!

The sugar can be upped or downed depending on the sweetness of the raspberries and the acidity of the lime - adjust to taste.

moetushie

Mood: cheerful

I have a confession. I love canned wine. It's true! My favorite wines are the kind that can easily be mistaken for a slightly more sophisticated Capri Sun. One of my favorite canned wines is Trader Joe's Simpler Wines brand, which, I know might seem out of place during a pound challenge, but! It's not too expensive, really. A four pack is $5.99 at my local TJ's, and they come in Rosé (I love it), Peach Frizzante (which I'll be using today) and a rather bland White that I mostly ignore. Each can is 250 ml, and I'll be using half a can today (so approximately $.78's worth of fizzy wine.)

Strawberries are also in season in this part of the world! I picked up a pound of them from Aldi for $1.99. I'll be using 5 strawberries here, for about $0.50.

Ingredients:
- 1/2 can peach fizzy wine ($.78)
- 4-5 medium strawberries, tops cut off and sliced roughly ($0.50)
- 1-1/2 cup ice from my fridge, free (for a certain definitions of 'free')
- a few tbsp water from my fridge, free (for a certain definitions of 'free')
- pinch sugar or sugar substitute (optional, if your strawberries aren't sweet enough on their own)

Equipment:
- Blender (I used one of those small personal blenders for easier cleanup)
- Spatula or long-handled spoon to scrap with

Method:

- Take out blender and set up. Crush ice slightly before adding strawberries and wine, pausing occasionally scrap off bits on the side of the blender. Continue until you get the consistency you're looking for. Stop and taste, make adjustments as needed. Pour out into a container of choice, grab a crazy straw and enjoy summer in a glass! :)

Total Cost:

$1.28 per serving

miss_s_b

Mood: cheerful

You will need:

- a lover, friend, colleague or acquaintance with which to share this
- a knife and chopping board
- a muddler*
- a largish cobbler cocktail shaker (or a British pint glass** and a Hawthorne strainer)
- something for stirring with***
- two hiball/collins glasses
- a lime
- a lump of fresh ginger approx 2 inches long
- large ice cubes
- spiced rum
- something with which to measure the rum
- a standard sized (330ml) can of Old Jamaica Fiery Ginger Beer****

Chop your lime into quarters and your ginger into 8 quarter inch thick slices.
Put two quarters of the lime and six slices of fresh ginger in the bottom of the cocktail shaker/pint glass and muddle vigorously, saving the two prettiest slices of ginger and quarters of lime for garnish.
Add 165ml of Spiced rum and the can of ginger beer to your shaker and stir gently.
Fill your two collins glasses with large ice cubes.
Strain the drink into the glasses.
Garnish with the remaining lime quarters and ginger slices, one of each per glass.

This is a sort of variant on a Moscow Mule or a Dark 'n' Stormy, but spiced rum works well better than vodka or bog standard dark rum, and also I am not going to get sued by overly litigious makers of bog standard dark rum for posting the recipe. Suggestions for names gratefully received; I tend to call it a Spiced Rum Mule because I am unimaginative ;)

* or a rolling pin, or whatever else you can grab for muddling
** please note that an American pint glass, at a mere 473ml, will not be big enough to hold the 495ml of liquid here, never mind that plus the lime and ginger and space for stirring. You need a proper 568ml British pint for this.
*** a cocktail spoon is nice but not obligatory: in a pinch you can use the knife you used to chop the lime and the ginger.
**** or other very gingery brand - Idris used to be good but I've not seen that for ages. It needs to be a properly fiery one.

miss_s_b

Mood: cheerful

One of the things about gluten-free that worries some people, IME, is that they don't realise how much of what they already make is gluten free. This is my excuse for posting a couple of cocktail recipes, anyway. It's not that cocktailing is where most of my culinary creativity has been going this last couple of months or anything AT ALL... ;)

( My variation on a Basil Smash )

( Summer Pudding )

( Kensington Gore )

See how easy gluten-free cookery can be? ;)

miss_s_b

You remember way back in the mists of time I posted mint for a challenge because I had a shedload of mint? Here are two of the things we actually did with it, both dead simple, but both requiring the use of a whipping siphon, and the infusion technique of using one.

Roughly chop your mint, stuff it into the whipping siphon, and then top it up to the 500ml mark with white rum.
Charge it, shake it, vent it, strain out the solids, et voila: instant mojito, just add a wedge of lime (and some soda if you're a wussy).

Roughly chop your mint, stuff it into the whipping siphon, and then top it up to the 500ml mark with low-flavour oil.
Charge it, shake it, vent it, strain out the solids, et voila, mint oil.

The mint oil is really useful for middle-eastern flavour profiles. I currently have some chicken marinating in sumac and mint oil and a bit of garlic and a few chili flakes, which will be the basis of tonight's evening meal...

miss_s_b

Mood: accomplished

OK, so, I had 800g of Rhubarb, a bottle of champagne we got free at Christmas, and a jar of Opies' stem ginger in syrup to kill. This is what I did:

Firstly, cut the rhubarb into 1cm chunks, and threw it in a big pan with 300g sugar, 600ml water, and all the syrup from the jar of stem ginger. Bring it to the boil and then let it simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the rhubarb lumps are tender and the liquid is pink and rhubarby. You now have some nice tender rhubarb chunks and a lot of pink, sweet, rhubarb-with-a-hint-of-gingery liquid, and can move on to the actual recipes:
( Rhubarb Fizz Jellies )
( Rhubarb and Ginger Muffins )
( Rhubarb Bucks' Fizz/Mimosas - with picture )
( Rhubarb Gin Cocktail )

So there we go, four nice easy recipes to use up some store cupboard staples. I think I might have to send some of the muffins to school with daughter, though...

gominokouhai

Adapted from a MxJackMonroe recipe, and twiddled with until it turned out right. I found the original recipe quite vague: for all her many qualities, Jack doesn't seem to grasp the distinction between baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.

This recipe is vegan and gluten-free if you use gluten-free flour; if you absolutely must use gluten-free flour (oh look at me, I'm so special, I'll die if I eat basic staples) then you'll probably want to add a little more liquid at the liquid-adding stage. What liquid-adding stage, you ask? Bear with me. I'm getting there.

(Yes, I know I'm several weeks late for Challenj #10. I've been busy and this recipe took four tries to get right. I'm catching up.)

( Recipe! )

Note the remains of Unsuccessful Attempt #3 in the background of these pics of Totally Successful Attempt #4.

It's great served in thick slices, still warm, with a generous helping of butter. Once it's cold it's brilliant for pork sausage sandwiches.

BONUS pajh TIP!

Got any of that pink appley-flavoured liquid left? Squeeze another lime or eight into it (remembering, as always, pajh's Rules For Life #2), and add a slosh to a shot of vodka (for a Moscow Mule) or bourbon (for a Kentucky Mule). Optional dash of bitters, fill the glass with cracked ice, and top up with ginger beer. This totally counts as one of your five-a-day.

miss_s_b

... the reason I posted bread for last week's challenge is because I knew if push came to shove and I was really busy I could just C&P this:

Extremely Boozy Bread and Butter Pudding

This serves 4 and is about 750kcals per portion

Equipment:

Deep lasagne dish or similar that holds at least 2 pints and has a flat bottom
Oven
Balloon whisk
Mixing bowl
Measuring jug because baileys doesn't come in pints

Ingredients:

6 thick or 8 medium slices of bread
Some butter
Some dried fruit - Suggestions: sultanas, chopped dried apricots, dried cherries. You need enough to have a reasonable amount distributed through the pudding; Christ alone knows what that is in grams, I always look and say "that's about enough".
Some booze to soak the dried fruit in - a whisky or a brandy is best, but if you're using cherries for the fruit, and you can get it, kirsch is amazing
Optional nuts, but not in our household with nut allergic people.
3 eggs
1 pint of Baileys or equivalent Irish Cream concoction - Tesco's own brand one is quite good.
Nutmeg/cinnamon/mace/vanilla extract to taste.
NB: you don't need any sugar because baileys is full of it

Method:

Soak the dried fruit in the booze for as long as you can stand it before you absolutely must have pudding. Overnight is best, but I can never last that long.
Drain the fruit and save the booze for future soaks. Or drink it. Whatever.
Pre heat the oven to 180 electric/160 fan/Gas 4.
Butter all the bread as if you were making sandwiches with it.
Cover the bottom of the lasagne dish with bread, butter side down. You may need to cut the bread up so it fits in the dish; that's fine.
Sprinkle soaked fruit over the layer of bread, then add another layer of bread, butter side up this time.
Keep layering fruit and bread til is level with the top of the dish, and make sure you sprinkle some fruit on top.
In your mixing bowl whisk together your baileys, eggs and whatever spices etc you are using.
Pour it over the bread & butter slowly so it soaks in.
Stick it in the oven for 40 minutes or so till it's golden brown and risen.
Eat immediately, it won't keep.

miss_s_b

Mood: cheerful
Location: sofa
Music: BBC news

Sorry if any of you are tee-total...

Rum was invented in the Caribbean, and thus a huge number of Caribbean cocktails are rum-based. I'm not going to rehash all those; we all know them. What I have discovered from actually knowing some people of Caribbean extraction is that most of them are inordinately fond of gin. Therefore here are two (count 'em) Caribbean drink recipes for your delectation:

1, Gully Wash

This is not a drink for the lactose intolerant, and I find it a bit sickly, but it IS very traditionally Caribbean

Take a tall glass

quarter fill the glass with gin, top it to half full with coconut juice, and stir

fill to the top with chilled condensed milk, stir again

sprinkle some fresh finely ground nutmeg on the top

You can kind of approximate the effect of this by drinking Malibu and milk mixed together - which is something that I really love, IF I am in the mood for it. But it's not quite the same as the slightly gloopy ginnyness of a proper Gully Wash.

2, Juice and Gin

Juice and Gin is a staple drink for Jamaicans in particular. This is how I make it; your actual Caribbean folks might differ. I like it VERY sharp; wussier people than me might want to add some sugar syrup to the juice mix

Obtain a litre carton of pink grapefruit juice, some limes, and a good gin

Juice and zest several (but not all) of the limes and mix the juice and zest with the pink grapefruit juice in a jug. For a 1 litre carton of juice you want at least 6 limes.

Add gin to the jug - you want about one third gin to two thirds juice

Get a tall glass and fill it with chunky ice cubes. Add a wedge of lime

pour your juice and gin cocktail into the glass and drink slowly, especially if you've used Blackwood's Special Reserve 60% gin as I tend to

I've kind of cheated a little bit because I haven't actually made either of these yet today; however, I promise I shall have some juice and gin tonight to make up for it.

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Weekly Food Challenge

A challenge for cooks every Wednesday

Entries tagged with drinks: alcoholic

Challenge 63: PIES! - Mince Pies

Hand held foods: Gin and tonic ice lollies

Challinj #49 - berries: Berry Dakry

CHALLENGE #47 - STRAWBERRY PEACH WINE SLUSHIE

Challenge #41: Ginger - another cocktail recipe #SorryNotSorry

Challenge #40: Gluten Free - have a couple of cocktail recipes

Revisiting old Challenges: Mint infusions using a whipping siphon (challenge #21: mint)

Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb - 4 recipes for challenge 17

Challenj #10: Applesauce Bread

BONUS pajh TIP!

OK, I admit it...

Challenge #6: Caribbean: Caribbean Drinks

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