Cocktail hour

It's a bank holiday weekend in the UK and the weather promises to be warm and sunny, so what better time to enjoy a cocktail or two?

You can pay around £8-10 a time for cocktails in a bar, but you can mix up several at home for the price of a round in your local pub.

For cocktails you don't need the best brands of spirit. Supermarkets will sell you their own label, and by the time you've mixed them up you won't notice the difference.

So pop a couple of ice trays in the freezer and hop off down to your local supermarket while they solidify. Pick up a half bottle of sweet vermouth, a half of bourbon, a half of white rum, a couple of oranges, a couple of limes and some fresh mint. And you're made. You should also have change out of £25 if you shop wisely.

You don't need posh glasses. You don't need a proper shaker. You can use any old wine glasses, a jug and a long spoon.

Manhattan
Don't have a spirit measure? I bet you have some measuring spoons. Measure equal amounts of vermouth and bourbon into a jug, Add ice cubes and give it a good stir. Meanwhile remove a sizeable slice of peel off one of the oranges, wipe the orange side around the rim of a wine glass and drop it into the glass. Your cocktail should be cold by now. Strain it into the glass (a tea strainer is fine!) settle into the garden or anywhere comfortable, and enjoy.!

Mojito
Whizz up some ice cubes in a food processor or grinder and put into a jug. Add a measure of white rum. (A standard pub measure is 25ml, or five teaspoons.) Squeeze half a lime into it. Add half a teaspoon of sugar. Crease up a few mint leaves and mush it all up together. Then tip it onto your glass. You can decorate the edge of the glass with a lime slice if you like. Bottoms up!

Bramble vodka, damson gin and other yummy booze

Today was warm and sunny and perfect for hedgerow harvesting. Here's my haul from my locality. There's blackberries, haws, wild plums and elderberries.

There were also some sloes:

Some of these things are going to be turned into a hedgerow jelly (with the help of some crab apples that aren't in the photos) but the rest will be yummy drinks by Christmas. Here's how to make bramble vodka.
Bramble, for those who don't know, is a country name for blackberry.


Start by washing a big jar that can be sealed. Rinse some blackberries and put them in the jar.

Add enough sugar to cover them well. About like this:

Now chuck in a bottle of cheap vodka. The cheaper the better. You really don't need posh stuff for this recipe.

Now give the jar a good shake until the sugar has all dissolved. Leave it somewhere cool and dark. It will need a good shake once a day for a week, once a week for a month, then whenever you think about it for another couple of months. In three months or so you can decant it into fancy bottles. Just in time for Christmas.

The same method works with gin and sloes, or (as in the photo) gin and damsons.