bringing drinks to life

I was looking back through some drink recipes the other day and I noticed a pattern. It seems like over the years I have tended to use the same ingredients repeatedly. I noticed that I went through a phase of using Jager in cocktails, after that I was using noilly amber a lot, then I moved on to Lillet Blanc and recently it has been merlet’s crème de poire. I seem to get caught up on what a certain ingredient bring to a drink and find myself adding it to all sorts of creations almost without realising it.

 

I guess it makes sense really. I wander into a bar and the bartender says ‘have you tried the new such-and-such from so-and-so?’ I have a taste and think ‘wow that would really work in a ….’. Next thing you know I have bought a bottle and it is worked into my drinks repertoire until the next new thing comes along.

 

When I thought about it a bit more I realised that I even associate certain ingredients with certain bartenders. Some are obvious connections. Jager will always make me think of Gregor and I can’t see Galliano in a drink without thinking of Ago from The Connaught bar. Some are less obvious though, Noilly Ambre for example makes me think of Pete Jeary who first introduced me to it and still swears by it as his secret weapon when making cocktails.

 

A quick phone around to a few bartender friends confirmed my suspicions; we all have our secret go to ingredients. It confirmed another thing too… some bartenders will put the damnedest things together in the name of using their secret ingredients, but somehow they usually pull it off!

 

This phenomenon certainly deserved further investigation (any excuse for a night out!) so I called in on Victor from LAB and he listed a few things that he is using a lot at the moment including Wray and Nephew and pimento dram. When he told me that he had a great drink up his sleeves using yellow chartreuse and cardamom bitters I decided to dodge the overproof rum bullet and try that instead.

 

50 ml Glenfiddich 18yo

12.5 ml Yellow Chartreuse

12.5 ml lillet blanc

1 - 2 dashes cardamom bitters

1 barspoon Appleton 12yo

 

Stir with cracked or cubed ice and strain into an absinthe rinsed cocktail glass and finish of with a lemon twist

 

 

For Victor it is less about having a secret ingredient that he stays faithful to, and more about taking an unusual ingredient and finding a way of getting people to drink it without them realising it!

 

 

There are some ‘secret ingredients’ that are actually pretty commonplace. They sit there on the shelf of every back bar waiting for the one drink they are associated with. Take Campari for example, it is much loved by bartenders, but other than in a Negroni it is seldom used in cocktails. Lucinda McCaffrey from The Groucho Club advocates it as one of her favourite ingredients, especially for customers who think they don’t like it.

40 ml Campari

20 ml crème de cacao

10 ml passion fruit purée

½ a passion fruit

 

Shake all ingredients with cubed or cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, top with a splash of prosecco and garnish with half a passion fruit.

 

 

She also tried to talk me into the following bizarre concoction… we’ll save this for another time and take her word for it that it really is good!

25 ml Campari

25 ml Lemoncello

20 ml lime juice

10 ml gomme

 

shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a highball, top with Hoegaarden!

 

 

As I was on a roll I thought it might be worth talking to Sean at Callooh Callay. He reminded me of an old favourite of mine that I haven’t played with for ages; Clayton’s Kola Tonic. Sean made us a drink that as he put it ‘is like rum and coke for grown ups’.

40 ml Appleton’s 12yo

20 ml Clayton’s Kola Tonic

15 ml Stone’s ginger wine

5 ml Averna

 

Shake with plenty of cubed ice and strain into a rocks glass filled with cubed ice, twist an orange peel over the top and discard, and finish it off with a slice of lemon.

 

 

Sean likes to take an ingredient that isn’t commonplace and sneak it onto the drinks list, as he said it gives customers something to talk about and his bartenders a chance to give them a new drinking experience. Isn’t that what it’s all really about in the end, trying to present people with something new and unusual? Or maybe it is just about geeky bartenders playing with obscure and unusual flavours…

 

 

I guess in the end there aren’t really many secret ingredients, just the flavours that a bartender happens to latch on to and play with. Bottles pulled from their shelves and used in new and imaginative ways. For the time being I’m sticking with Merlet’s crème de poire as my secret ingredient, but if history repeats itself I’m sure I’ll have a new one soon enough…

50 ml Chase gin

20 ml Merlet crème de poire

20 ml cloudy apple juice

15 ml lemon juice

15 ml egg while

3 dashes Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas decanter bitters

 

Shake all ingredients with cubed ice and strain into a rocks glass that has been rinsed with Green Chartreuse. Finish off with a large piece of cracked ice, a lemon twist and a slice of apple.

 

 

With so many obscure ingredients out there we have barely scratched the surface, so why not drop us a line at dan@bittersandtwisted.com and let us know what your secret ingredient is along with a recipe? If we like it, we’ll add it to our database and make sure you get credit for it when our full site goes live.