Growing Your Own Cocktails, Mocktails, Teas & Infusions E-Book

Jodi Helmer

• Herausgeber: CompanionHouse Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 162

Beschreibung

There's nothing quite like a thirst-quenching beverage, especially when it's made with fresh ingredients you picked from your very own garden! This book will show you what leaves, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and roots to grow in your garden so you can enjoy them from your glass. Filled with beautiful photography and helpful information how to plant, maintain, and harvest each home-grown ingredient, this gardening guide also includes delicious recipes for both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks to enjoy any time of the year! Also included is advice for making your own syrups, tinctures, and purees. Written by Jodi Hemler, author of Grow Your Own Tea Garden, this book will inspire both small and large space gardeners to enjoy their bounty in a refreshing new way! • An inspirational and instructional guide to growing your own cocktail or mocktail ingredients in your garden • Discover what leaves, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and roots to grow for garden-to-glass cocktails • Learn how to plant, maintain, and harvest each fresh, home-grown ingredient • Includes cocktail recipes for a variety of drinks and mocktails, as well as helpful tips and a guide to making your own infusions, syrups, tinctures, and purees • An ideal resource for a small garden set-up

Leseprobe

Growing Your Own

COCKTAILS, MOCKTAILS, TEAS & INFUSIONS

Growing Your Own

COCKTAILS, MOCKTAILS, TEAS & INFUSIONS

GARDENING TIPSAND HOW-TO TECHNIQUESFOR MAKING ARTISANALBEVERAGES AT HOME

JODI HELMER

WITH RECIPES BY JEANETTE HURT, AUTHOR OF DRINK LIKE A WOMAN

Growing Your Own Cocktails, Mocktails, Teas & Infusions

CompanionHouse Books™ is an imprint of Fox Chapel Publishing.

Project Team

Editor: Colleen Dorsey

Copy Editor: Amy Deputato

Design: Mary Ann Kahn

Index: Jay Kreider

Copyright © 2020 by Jodi Helmer and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Fox Chapel Publishing, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

ISBN 978-1-62008-383-3eISBN: 978-1-62008-384-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019955843

This book has been published with the intent to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter within. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the author and publisher expressly disclaim any responsibility for any errors, omissions, or adverse effects arising from the use or application of the information contained herein.

Fox Chapel Publishing 903 Square Street Mount Joy, PA 17552

www.facebook.com/companionhousebooks

We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected].

DEDICATION

For Dad. From my first Shirley Temple to your last double-double, our best conversations were always over a drink.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Bud Sperry at Fox Chapel Publishing for giving me another chance to turn an idea into a book and Colleen Dorsey for editing out nonsensical sentences, triple-checking for accuracy, and keeping the pages turning on time. Superstar cocktail writer and recipe developer Jeanette Hurt turned a list of plants into a lineup of must-drink cocktails; Kyle Edwards shared some great photos; and talented designer Beth Kaiser took basic garden design sketches and created stunning visuals to bring them to life.

To each person who shared a (real or virtual) drink with me during this journey— Megan Bame, Heather Rice Books, Polly Campbell, Jenny Fink, Kate Hanley, Wendy Helfenbaum, Beth Howard, Kelly James, Judi Ketteler, and Rosie Molinary—thank you for always offering support and a sip of whatever you’re drinking. I also want to raise a glass to my family, Hank and Dianne Helmer, Shannon Helmer, Charlotte McKinnon, and Jerry Porter, who give me countless reasons to celebrate.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1:BRIEF HISTORIES OF YOUR FAVORITE DRINKS

Shaking Up Cocktail Culture

A Local Tea Movement Is Brewing

CHAPTER 2:CHOOSING PLANTS FOR YOUR BEVERAGE GARDEN

Leaves

Flowers

Fruits and Vegetables

Roots

CHAPTER 3:MIXING UP THE BEST BEVERAGE GARDEN

Best Practices

Garden Designs

CHAPTER 4:FROM CULTIVATION TO CUP: MAKING PERFECT DRINKS

Preparation

Preserving the Harvest

CHAPTER 5:SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED: RECIPES FOR THE PERFECT GARDEN-TO-GLASS BEVERAGES

Simple Syrups

Shrubs

Cocktails

Alcohol-Free Drinks

Plant Hardiness Zone Maps

Resources

About the Author

Photo Credits

PLANT INDEX

LEAVES

Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)

Apple mint (Mentha suaveolens)

Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)

Bee balm (Monarda fistulosa)

Cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum)

Catnip (Nepeta cataria)

Chickweed (Cerastium arvense)

Chocolate mint (Mentha × piperita ‘Chocolate’)

Cilantro/Coriander (Coriandrum sativum)

Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus perriniana)

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

Holy basil (Ocimum sanctum)

Lavender mint (Mentha × piperita ‘Lavender’)

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)

Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus)

Lemon verbena (Aloysia citriodora)

Marjoram (Origanum majorana)

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum)

Peppermint (Mentha × piperita)

Pineapple sage (Salvia elegans)

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Sage (Salvia officinalis)

Spearmint (Mentha spicata)

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica)

St. John’s wort (Hypericum calycinum)

Tea plant (Camellia sinensis)

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria)

FLOWERS

Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

Chamomile (Matricaria recutita)

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea)

Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis)

Jasmine (Jasminum officinale)

Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)

Purple passionflower (Passiflora incarnata)

Red clover (Trifolium pratense)

Trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)

Tufted violet ( Viola cornuta)

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Beet (Beta vulgaris)

Blackberry (Rubus sp.)

Black currant (Ribes nigrum)

Blood orange (Citrus × sinensis)

Carrot (Daucus carota var. sativus)

Celery (Apium graveolens)

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus)

Kale (Brassica oleracea)

Meyer lemon (Citrus × meyeri)

Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana)

Raspberry (Rubus idaeus)

Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum)

Rugosa rose (Rosa rugosa)

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea)

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina)

Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa)

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)

ROOTS

Burdock (Arctium lappa)

Chicory (Cichorium intybus)

Ginger (Zingiber officinale)

Ginseng (Panax quinquefolius)

Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra)

Valerian (Valeriana officinalis)

INTRODUCTION

Exploring a garden center will give you many ideas for adding to your garden—some standard, some surprising.

Each season, I vow to go to the garden center with a plan: a list, some idea of what I want to grow, a realistic notion of how much space we have, how much we can eat in a season, and how we might use the ingredients in our kitchen. And, each season, the same thing happens: I abandon all logic the moment I see colorful seed packets and seedlings poking through the soil in small plastic pots. Who cares that I have never tried a cucamelon or grown lemongrass? The unusual finds end up in the cart alongside tried-and-true favorites, and it all ends up in the garden. When the plants mature, I scramble to find creative ways to use the bounty. For me, the most successful reimagining has been taking those ingredients from garden to glass.

Sitting in your garden, surrounded by fresh ingredients you grew, is the best way to enjoy a garden-to-glass beverage.

As my garden grew beyond my original plans, the fruits, vegetables, and herbs growing outside my back door started finding their way not just onto our plates but also into our favorite—and most memorable—drinks. As it turns out, this wasn’t just happening at our house. Garden to glass is a trend that is quickly catching on as gardeners (and mixologists) have looked beyond their plates and started incorporating their harvests into cocktails, mocktails, teas, infused waters, lemonades, juices, and other fresh, flavorful drinks. A beverage garden combines two of the things I love most: great drinks and a garden filled with the ingredients to make them.

A mushroom cocktail is just one example of the flavor innovation that has been occurring in recent years.

The garden-to-glass trend started with cocktails. The National Restaurant Association has featured artisan spirits, including culinary cocktails made from fresh savory- or herb-infused ingredients, on its annual list of the hottest culinary trends for an entire decade. In 2019, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants released its Culinary + Cocktail Trends Forecast, and in it bartenders listed “vegetable cocktails” as a strong (and growing) trend, citing plans to go beyond conventional cocktail ingredients like celery, cilantro, mint, and cucumber and incorporate more surprising vegetables such as endives, fiddleheads, tomatillos, mushrooms, and sunchokes into their drink menus. Mike Ryan, director of bars at Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, explained, “A lot of these influences come directly from the kitchen. There might be a flavor profile a bartender loves in a particular dish, and he or she figures out how to bring that to life in a cocktail.”

Pairing the flavor profiles of a cocktail with a dish is a great challenge for modern chefs— and amateurs!

Even with limited space, you can use just your windowsill to start your own beverage garden.

The trend quickly expanded beyond cocktails. Mocktails, cocktail-like drinks made without alcohol, are an ever-expanding menu category, and more mixologists and home bartenders are skipping supermarket fruit juices and syrups for homemade versions, making ingredients with fresh harvests from their gardens. Even soda is being reformulated. A USA Today article on the trend notes that sales of carbonated soft drinks are flat, but craft sodas are capturing a “share by hyping premium and natural ingredients, creative flavors, limited runs, unusual packaging, or their local roots.” Craft sodas, like other small-batch beverages, tend to use healthier ingredients and natural sweeteners such as agave nectar, stevia, and honey, which all start in the garden.

And, while it might seem daunting or fancy, growing the ingredients to make tea, infused water, cocktails, mocktails, lemonades, and other culinary beverages is actually a great project for both beginning and experienced gardeners. Fruits, vegetables, and herbs are often easy to grow (most will thrive in pots on a sun-drenched windowsill), and making a garden-to-glass drink can be super simple.

Your own beverage garden can be as basic as a raised bed with a handful of herbs or as elaborate as an entire landscape filled with fruits, vines, trees, and flowers that can be mixed, muddled, blended, shaken, and stirred into fabulous craft beverages.

When the time comes to harvest your bounty, you can stick with the basics—a few handfuls of vegetables in the blender for fresh vegetable juice; muddled strawberries and sugar for lemonade; or mint leaves steeped in boiling water for tea that tastes better than anything you can buy in a store. Or you can take your mixology skills to the next level, turning up the flavor on basic cocktails like mojitos and sangria by using just-picked ingredients from your custom beverage garden. You can even make your own simple syrups and shrubs—the building blocks of popular craft beverages— with your garden bounty. (Never heard of shrub? See here)

Go as deep into mixology as you wish—even the advanced stuff only requires a small set of tools.

Whether you’ve never tended to a plant or already have a large garden and want a new hobby, starting a beverage garden and sipping refreshing and delicious concoctions is a great way to add a punch of flavor to your favorite drinks or experiment with new favorites. You’ll soon find yourself planning an entire garden around ingredients you can eat and drink.

Read the plant descriptions and see what appeals to you (and your growing conditions); check out the sample garden designs for inspiration; and experiment with the recipes to discover new favorite drinks. Whether you grow a handful of plants for one go-to beverage or decide to fill your garden with edibles to make all of your drinks from scratch, the goal is to have fun sampling the bounty of cocktails, mocktails, teas, and infusions that you can make from plants growing in your garden.

Disclaimer: This book is not a field guide; it’s not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease. I am a gardener, not a doctor or nutritionist. Although I did extensive research to ensure accuracy, you must make sure to positively identify all plants before eating leaves, flowers, fruits, and roots. Some wild plants are poisonous or can have adverse effects. Avoid consuming any unfamiliar plants. Consult with qualified health professionals to verify the health benefits and safety of consuming plants.

Chapter 1

BRIEF HISTORIES OF YOUR FAVORITE DRINKS

Every drink has a story. Whether you prefer herbal teas, craft sodas, flavored waters, or classic cocktails, the beverages you drink today have evolved since they were first brewed, sipped, shaken, or stirred. In this chapter, we’ll focus on two general categories of drinks: cocktails and tea.

Shaking Up Cocktail Culture

Traditional cocktails were simple: mix spirits, sugar, water, and bitters—known as a bitter sling—and sip. A 1798 article in the British newspaper The Morning Post and Gazetteer was believed to be the first to mention the word “cocktail” but the practice of drinking spirits mixed with medicinal botanicals was common long before. Doctors often prescribed bitters made from herbs, fruits, flowers, bark, and roots believed to have medicinal properties to cure a range of ailments, infused in spirits such as gin. Although the earliest definition of cocktails (used in the 1862 book How to Mix Drinks) was limited to alcoholic drinks containing bitters (and not punches, sours, and toddies), it didn’t take long before cocktails were defined as all mixed drinks made with a combination of alcohol and mixers like soda and fruit juices.

A Manhattan is an example of a cocktail that was developed during the golden age of cocktails, before Prohibition (which was from 1920-1933).

During Prohibition, the seizure and disposal of alcohol by federal agents was common.

Most of the drinks we see on bar menus today, including the daiquiri, martini, old fashioned, and Manhattan, were introduced between the 1860s and 1920, when Prohibition began, mixologist and cocktail historian Derek Brown said on a 2019 episode of All Things Considered on NPR. This so-called golden age of cocktails saw bartenders experimenting with different recipes, creating some of the drinks we now consider classics.

Adding mixers to cocktails became more important during Prohibition because the quality of illicit spirits was poor. Adding honey, fruit juice, and soda helped mask the flavor and made cocktails more palatable.

In recent years, social media has driven bartenders and restaurants to increasingly compete not only for great-tasting but also great-looking cocktails.

Cocktails have come a long way since the days of bathtub gin, however. Although the craft cocktail movement has been going strong for two decades, the local food movement has intensified the demand for small-batch spirits, increased the growth of farm distilleries, and upped the competition to create cocktails worthy of Instagram.

The US distillery scene has grown by leaps and bounds in just the last two decades.

The United States now has more than 1,500 craft distilleries, up from just 68 in 2004, and a growing number are farm distilleries that grow their own fruits and grains or source them from local farms to produce artisanal spirits, according to the American Distilling Institute. Fans of the so-called grain-to-glass movement believe that using local, seasonal ingredients has a positive effect on the taste of distilled spirits and that using crops grown onsite allows distillers to create rum, gin, vodka, and whiskey that reflect the unique flavors of the region.

Restaurants with kitchen gardens can market their garden-to-glass drinks.

Rather than mixing craft spirits with mass-produced mixers, bartenders have embraced local ingredients. Restaurants in cities ranging from New York and San Francisco to Indianapolis and Las Vegas have even planted onsite gardens to harvest fresh fruits and herbs such as mint, basil, lavender, rosemary, and strawberries to use in their craft cocktails.

Mixing Craft Cocktails at Home

If fancy mixed drinks are your tipple of choice, there’s no need to leave the house to imbibe. Craft cocktails are now coming to your mailbox.

As meal kits have gained market share, cocktail subscription boxes have followed. The concept is similar: just as companies like Blue Apron curate all of the ingredients for make-at-home meals, companies offering cocktail subscription kits assemble and ship kits containing all of the ingredients for craft cocktails straight to your door.

Each subscription service has a different take on the model. Some deliver mini bottles of alcohol—just enough to make the featured recipe—while others ship craft cocktail ingredients with full-sized bottles of spirits to help you build your home bar. For subscribers, the kits are about more than the fixings for creative cocktails; they are educational, helping tipplers master the art of bartending.

Cocktail enthusiasts are also looking to build their bartending skills. Paul Clarke, editor of Imbibe magazine, told attendees at the 2016 Chicago Cocktail Summit that we are living in the golden age of at-home mixology.

Mocktail culture has come a long way since the days of simple Shirley Temples.

The craft cocktail revolution has also led to the rise of the mocktail movement. A portmanteau of “mock” and “cocktail” mocktails have all of the sophistication and flavor of craft cocktails with none of the alcohol. In May 2019, Distill Ventures released a study that found 61 percent of drinkers in the United Kingdom wanted better choices in nonalcoholic drinks. The study also noted that 83 percent of bar managers in Los Angeles called no-proof drinks a growing trend.

The Evolution of Mixers

Mixed drinks made with spirits and soda or a splash of water will always be popular. Craft sodas and flavored water have replaced big brands and bottled water as popular mixers for cocktails and mocktails. The global flavored water market reached $10.3 billion in 2018, with sales in the United States alone almost doubling between 2013 and 2018, according to Euromonitor International, and the market for craft sodas is expected to top $840 million by 2024. Flavors such as orange mango, blackberry cucumber, and strawberry watermelon—which can all be made with fruits and vegetables growing in your garden—were the top flavor combinations.

Online food magazine Eater declared, “Virgin drinks are growing up” noting that the mocktail revolution has made the Shirley Temple and virgin piña coladas obsolete and created demand for garden-to-glass ingredients used in shrubs and bitters. Sylvie Gabriele, owner of Love & Salt restaurant in Manhattan, told the magazine, “In some ways, [mocktails] take more development than an alcoholic drink. Alcohol by nature has a body and a kick, and we had to really develop these flavor profiles to produce a full experience [in our mocktails]”

Whether you order a craft mocktail from the bar or mix up a pitcher of mojitos to sip outside on a summer night, using freshly harvested ingredients adds an extra punch of flavor that turns a drink into an experience.

A Local Tea Movement Is Brewing

Tea has been cultivated for centuries, with the earliest records dating back to 2732 BC, when, according to legend, Emperor Shen Nung first drank tea after leaves from a Camellia sinensis bush—that is, the tea plant—drifted into his pot of boiling water. More reliable records show that tea was included in the medical text De Materia Medica, which was first published around 200 BC.

De Materia Medica has been published in many languages throughout the centuries, but it always contained useful information about helpful plants—including tea.

As tea started becoming more popular as a drink, not just a medicine, the cultivation, harvesting, and processing of Camellia sinensis started. During the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD), often referred to as the classic age of tea, the botanical beverage became known as the national drink of China; tea was sipped and savored from the Imperial Palace to rural villages. Tea also became the centerpiece of spiritual rituals. During the Tang Dynasty, Buddhist monk Lu Yu wrote Ch’a Ching, a tea treatise that centered Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian teachings around traditional tea ceremonies.