Natalie Bovis, known as the Liquid Muse, brings us a cocktail book brimming with goodness from gardens and fruit trees in Edible Cocktails. In her tome on drinking your fruits and veggies, Ms. Bovis explores the use of wine, syrups, jams, purees and vinegar as ingredients in the ever burgeoning repertoire of cocktails recipes. If that weren’t enough, Ms. Bovis teaches you how to use meat, dairy and eggs in your drinks too! And don’t forget to throw in the herbs!
Edible Cocktails explores the world of using all the goods from the garden in your cocktails. Some of these goods offer unexpected ingredients, like jams, jellies and vinegar. While these ingredients are unusual in modern times, they were used quite often in earlier days. In fact, if you see a drink called a shrub, it means that the drink is made with vinegar. In olden times, it was hard to get fresh citrus and fruits in certain months of the year. It was also often hard to come by sugar. Given that a good drink consists of the correct balance of sweet and acidity, the vinegar was a replacement for the citrus to provide acidity and jams and jellies provided the sweetness. Edible Cocktails is helping bring back this olden time trend.
Edible Cocktails also dedicates a fair number of recipes to the god of the fruits, the mighty grape. Wine based cocktails offer a lighter alternative to super boozy ones. You get a nice kick, but not too nice, from wine. Plus, wines come in all flavors and styles that add unique and intriguing flavor profiles to your cocktail. Think of the difference between champagne, a syrah and a sherry. Now imagine how different cocktails would be when using those ingredients. And, imagine the fun with tweaking and changing the wines in the recipe to see what you like best.
Edible Cocktails provides the reader with depth in using goods from gardens and trees. If you are interested in exploring how to better put these ingredients to use, then give Edible Cocktails a try.
