Keep it real

growing your own ingredients

Make ingredients, not war, say Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown in the first chapter of their practical seasonal guide to homegrown ingredients

Seasonal. Sustainable. Locally sourced. It’s a mantra that influences much of what we buy and what we eat. That’s why those of us who make liquid cuisine should be just as mindful of what we shake, stir, throw, or roll. Real Food. Slow Food. Brewers United for Real Potables (BURP). Now it’s time for Slow Drinks! Make drinks from seasonal produce that you’ve grown yourself or procured from a farmer’s market or an allotment owner.

WHAT WE'RE DOING NOW

We’re thumbing through our garden nursery catalogues, hot toddies in hand. This past summer we spent too much time on the road to grow and harvest our own ingredients. But that didn’t stop us from setting up a garden of potted herbs on the kitchen windowsill. And last summer, one of our lucky-stuff neighbours invited us to harvest their bumper crop of blackcurrants and redcurrants. We made off with 10 kilos of them! We froze a few bags and made the rest into a Victorian Hunter’s Flask that Nick Strangeway had discovered (see box below).

Frozen berries are particularly good because they offer you a chance to decide if you like a particular concoction and are willing to commit to growing a bush or two. Which reminds us: we’d like to introduce you to the most tolerant fruit bush you’ll ever meet. The Ben Sarek blackcurrant is made for small gardens and plant containers; growing less than a metre tall it’s a hardy bush that can produce abundant fruit by midsummer.

But back to the seed catalogues. Take it from us: if this is your first venture into planting a Real Libations garden, do not start with rhubarb from seed. Those tempting stalks take a couple of years to mature! Go easy on yourself. Get some borage, wormwood and mint seeds. Clear a sunny windowsill and buy a plant propagator. Start with borage. Besides freezing individual, brilliant blue blossoms into ice cubes for your summer Pimm’s Cup, you can craft up a Borage Punch.

Next, start up some wormwood. Not only an essential ingredient for handmade bitters, it’s a great garden protector. Slugs and snails hate the stuff. The Hawksmoor cocktail menu features a Gin and Wormwood recipe from the 1800s, shaking wormwood-infused gin with absinthe and a touch of gomme syrup, garnished with a lemon twist. We’ve also heard rumours of a Gin and Wormwood Fizz in recent times!

Harry Johnson’s 1882 Bartenders’ Manual contains a simple recipe for creating this aromatic concoction: put six to eight sprigs of wormwood in a litre bottle and fill it up with London dry gin. Infuse for two or three days.

Meanwhile, as we’re in the midst of pomegranate season, it’s time to make grenadine. Nothing could be simpler:

GRENADINE
500ml water
the seeds of 1 pomegranate
600ml caster sugar
Method: Combine them in a saucepan and simmer for about 45 minutes. Strain out the pomegranate seeds. Add a crushed vitamin C tablet to help preserve the grenadine. Allow it to cool and then bottle it. Keep it in the refrigerator.

Other syrups you can make this time of year: saffron, pineapple, lemongrass, ginger (be sure to bury the cooked ginger slices in sugar after you make this syrup to set up a batch of candied ginger while you’re at it), and Earl Grey tea.

Now let’s talk about a lovely libation that you can make now. This will beat the socks off your garden variety Espresso Martini or Pharmaceutical Stimulant.

IRISH RISTRETTO 240ml fresh-brewed Illy espresso
700ml Jameson Irish Whiskey
Half a vanilla pod split lengthwise
Superfine sugar to taste, about 125ml
Method: Brew espresso and pour into a pitcher with the sugar. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Let the mixture cool and add whiskey. Pour into a Kilner jar and add the vanilla pod. Infuse for two to four weeks. Strain and remove the pod. Bottled, it has a shelf life of about a year.

When it comes to setting up your bar garden, two is company and three’s even better. Find a few friends to work on gardening, foraging or working an allotment. Draw up a rota; one person can grow berries in rooftop containers, while another tends to bitter herbs in a small garden. Another can trek public paths to spot blackthorn bushes and brambles for picking in late summer. Sharing the harvest, bartering and exchanging items make the work even easier.

The same holds true with purchasing equipment such as Kilner jars – case discounts can be substantial.

We also recommend keeping a journal, jotting down variations and refinements year on year.

And if you’re not quite the master gardner you would like, then farmers’ markets can be a great source of organic, seasonal and locally sourced produce, along with companies such as Goodness Direct, which will deliver frozen berries and other fruits right to your door.

See the next issue of Imbibe for our stroll through the spring garden…

Hunter's Flask

Fill a litre-sized Kilner jar about three-quarters full with thawed, frozen blackcurrants. Add 3cm of thinly sliced fresh ginger, a horse’s neck of lemon peel, and caster sugar to taste. Fill up with Jameson Irish Whiskey. Infuse for four days, gently shaking the jar each day to encourage the juice out of the berries. Strain through a tea strainer and then again through cook’s muslin. Bottle in clean, sterile bottles.

SOME USEFUL ADDRESSES

Plants & seeds
Unwin’s: www.unwins.co.uk
The Green Chronicle:
www.the greenchronicle.co.uk

Bottles, jars & bottling accessories
Just Preserving:
www.justpreserving.co.uk

Frozen berries & fruits
Goodness Direct:
www.goodnessdirect.co.uk

Landshare & allotments
Landshare:
http://landshare.channel4.com
Allotment Growing:
www.allotment.org.uk

Get propagating

BLACKCURRANTS

So long as you don’t transplant your fresh-from-the-nursery blackcurrant bush into soil that is waterlogged or frozen, you should have fruit from mid-July through to mid-August. The best time to plant is mid-November to mid-March. Find a spot where it will get full sun or the best share of sun. Plant your bush about 5cm deeper than the depth of its original container and wide enough to avoid cramping the roots. In a small garden, allow about 1.8m between bushes.

BORAGE

Propagate indoors in February or March. When the seedlings are about 5-7cm tall, they can be sown outdoors in a sunny spot in March or April. During the summer harvest time, save the seed from flowers allowed to remain on the plant and turn brown to be grown next year.

WORMWOOD

Don’t plant wormwood next to culinary herbs as its natural bitterness is so strong it will affect the flavour of nearby plants. Seeds are slow to germinate (about 10-20 days). Plant in a sunny spot.

MINT

Split up the standing stalks of existing mint into two or three sections and re-pot them. If you are starting mint from seed, propagate the seedlings indoors and transplant them to a partial shade area in the spring. Water plants only when they are dry. Mint loves abuse.

Editorial feature from Imbibe Magazine – March/April 2010