Fresh fruits add to the spirits of summer
Cocktails using seasonal berries and herbs help make warm weather entertaining fun
Fresh produce is as enjoyable in the glass as it is on the plate. Summer’s best apricots, blackberries, peaches and watermelon, to name but a few of this season’s products, can take your cocktails up a notch. Equip yourself with a shaker, strainer, muddler, bar spoon and citrus press and hit the market for the freshest ingredients.
Bridget Albert, author of Market-Fresh Mixology: Cocktails for Every Season (Agate Surrey; Second Edition), comes from a long line of women bartenders who owned a bar near Chicago. In fact, her Great-Great Aunt Tilly’s recipe for limoncello is included in the book along with other infusions. They were Italian immigrants and served alcohol in a time when women were not expected to be at the bar, let alone behind it.
“They pretty much sold whiskey with ice. Not anything too terribly fancy, and my grandmother always said that if it wasn’t from nature — meaning if it wasn’t growing in their backyard — it wouldn’t be in the cocktail. So if they didn’t have mint, there wouldn’t be juleps,” Albert says with a laugh. “So they truly were the originators of market fresh.”
Seasonal berries and herbs are perfect partners for spirits. Albert’s favourite summer ingredient is watermelon. “I really love the summertime when they’re that deep, gorgeous pinkish hue and they’re so sweet and just ridiculously juicy ... I love that fruit, and it doesn’t take a whole helluva lot of watermelon to make a great cocktail. ”
As a cocktail expert, Albert is used to being asked to make drinks for her extensive family members at their weekly Friday get-togethers. Her answer to that particular entertaining quagmire is cocktail stations.
“Cocktail stations save my life ... It makes it easier to have everybody serve them- selves or serve each other. Make it fun.”
She recommends writing the recipe on a card to leave at the station. Prepare the ingredients — e.g. fruit, vegetables, herbs, garnish and ice — and set up the station with glassware and necessary implements such as muddlers, bar spoons and cocktail picks.
Demonstrate the cocktail at the beginning of the party and have guests help themselves.
Or make a punch. “... Just throw together a beautiful punch in a matter of minutes and make it look sexy with a bunch of berries, maybe some frozen ice with berries in it, and call it a day,” Albert says.
Recipes reprinted with permission from Market-Fresh Mixology: Cocktails for Every Season by Bridget Albert with Mary Barranco, Agate Surrey, March 2014.