I've made a stinger before several times (123) and
it's turned into a regular drink for me. It's quite easy to make –
just two ingredients – and I've found myself tweaking the ingredients
over time.
Firstly, I've found myself serving it on the rocks instead of "up" in
a cocktail glass. This is easier to make, and also a more relaxed
drink: it allows for sipping the drink over a longer period, savouring
it a little more and not worrying too much about a little meltwater.
Secondly, I've found myself adding less and less mint liqueur. I
happened to get a bottle of green crème de menthe, where the colour
really shows up, and I realised the mint flavour is quite
overpowering. I've ended up using the mint as a sort of trace
ingredient, like the absinthe or bitters in a tuxedo.
That's led me to the absurd 15:1 ratio here: just under a teaspoon of
crème de menthe mixed into a generous double brandy. The flavour
really comes through and adds a delightful lift to the brandy, exactly
what an aromatic ingredient should do to a cocktail.
As I've mentioned before in a previous post, there's an unbearable snobbery around
how little vermouth people want in their martini ("Oh, extremely dry
please", "Add a drop of vermouth from your finger", "Stir it carefully
while looking at an unopened bottle of vermouth", and so on). Ernest
Hemingway apparently used to demand his martini at a 15:1 ratio, which
he named "Montgomery" after Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who in
the Second World War was said never to launch an attack without
outnumbering his enemy by that ratio. In his memory, and in memory of
cocktail snobs everywhere, I decided to give the same name to this
stinger.
I don't know how it works, but this really tastes like a jaffa cake. I think a wedge of orange might improve the appearance, but as far as taste goes, it's syrupy perfection.
My brother found this on the menu in a pub and recommended it. I'd have it again!
Thanks to Lydia for providing cocoa bitters several years ago. I was glad to finally have a use for it.
Pour the Curaçao into a rocks glass, then fill up the glass with ice. Shake the
whiskey, lemon juice and sugar syrup together with ice and strain gently into
the glass, disturbing the Curaçao as little as possible. Pour the wine on top,
again trying not to disturb the drink, perhaps by pouring over a teaspoon.
My triple sour was a major breakthrough that I was immensely proud of, and my journey into layered drinks continues here. After a red-yellow-red drink, I thought three distinct primary colours would be a fun thing to try, and the only blue thing I had was Curaçao, a sweet orange-flavoured liqueur from the Dutch Caribbean.
I was concerned that liqueur wouldn't stay at the bottom. As I mentioned in my triple sour post, layered drinks are all about density, and while it was easy to keep syrup at the bottom I didn't know whether Curaçao would be sugary enough to manage it. But I was delighted to find that it stayed in place very nicely.
I enjoyed the drink! The sweetening progression from wine to cocktail to liqueur works well, and orange after lemon is certainly pleasing. Besides this, the colours are perfect.
Stay tuned for my upcoming attempt at a traffic light sour.
Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Add
a small pinch of dried chilli flakes.
Excellent!
I've tried this a couple of times, with mixed success. The liqueur is
fiery and quite harsh, and adding sugar syrup seems to make it sickly
without taking the edge off. In fact the liqueur has enough sweetness
already, and the way to take the edge off is to be more generous with
the lime juice than my usual sour recipe (3:1:1) and to add a little
water instead of syrup.
The result is still fiery, but drinkable, refreshing, and attractive
to look at. It was superb as an appetiser before the spicy chickpea
tacos that are
becoming one of our weekly meals.
Thanks to Parker and Liz, our good friends who got us this liqueur a
few years ago. I've got a lot out of it, and I'd never have bought it
for myself.
Shake the rum, lime juice and syrup together with ice and strain into a rocks
glass filled with fresh ice. Pour the wine over a teaspoon on the top of the
drink so that it floats on top. Add a piece of stem ginger on the rim of the
glass.
This is my variation on the classic New York Sour,
with a Caribbean twist: rum instead of whiskey, lime instead of lemon, and a
spicy piece of ginger for aroma and decoration.
Like the New York Sour, this drink starts with a beautifully smooth chilled red
wine, which blends gradually into the rest of the cocktail as you drink it.
This keeps it interesting and varied, and the flavours work surprisingly well
together.
The change to rum and lime is a welcome variation, somehow a bit smoother and
easier to drink than the whiskey and lemon. Ginger also seemed like the
appropriate Caribbean garnish, but a cherry or something else would have been
just as good.
2 parts no added sugar pineapple cubes flavour sparkling drink
a dash of Angostura bitters
Pour the rum and no added sugar pineapple cubes flavour sparkling drink into a wine glass with lots of ice, then add the bitters, a cherry and a cocktail umbrella.
I invented this cocktail suddenly, with very little planning, and with poor results.
The dark rum is a strong flavour, which dominates the rather sickly and weak no added sugar pineapple cubes flavour sparkling drink, itself a disappointing purchase from the local Aldi. The bitters intensified the harsh alcoholic burn, and the cherry and umbrella did little to improve things, although they give it a reasonably pleasing look.
Pour the gin and cordial into a mug. Add the hot water straight from the kettle.
Claire invented this at least 10 years ago, and we've been having it occasionally ever since. We're just getting over Covid, and after our first day out of the house in well over a week, this was just what we needed tonight.
Altogether it's what you'd expect: warming, sweet, and with a satisfying gentle burn as it goes down. Simple but glorious.
With summer ending, the nights drawing in and the weather turning colder, we'll be having more of these.
This is the first spring that I've been paying attention to wildflowers, and so for the first time I've discovered the delight of bluebells, the familiar spring bulbs that appear every April and May, laying an unmistakable purplish-blue carpet across Britain's woodlands and gardens. They're the last major spring flower to arrive each year, and therefore a nice herald of the pleasant summer we're sure to have very soon.
Some bluebells on Lade Braes, St Andrews.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been doing my best to identify any plants I see, so when bluebell season rolled around in St Andrews a few weeks ago, I went for a walk along Lade Braes with Collins British Common Wild Flower Guide, and stopped to take a proper look at the plants around me.
Interestingly, it turns out that some bluebells aren't blue: if you walk through an area with bluebells you'll see some plants that are pink or white, scattered among the blue ones. Other than the colour, they're identical to the plants around them, a bit like a shiny Pokémon.
Three different colours of bluebell together on Lade Braes, St Andrews.
I was already vaguely aware of the two main types of bluebell people talk about in the UK: the common bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) and the Spanish bluebell (Hyacinthoides hispanica) – or as my mum calls them, "nice English bluebells" and "nasty Spanish bluebells". Basically, H. non-scripta is native to Britain, while H. hispanica only appeared recently as a garden escapee, and has spread rapidly. There's some concern that the invasive H. hispanica could pose a threat to the population of native H. non-scripta, but from what I've read online, there's some doubt about this: the native species is still widespread, and I'm not sure experts are seriously concerned.
There are several key characteristics that separate H. non-scripta from H. hispanica.
Native bluebellH. non-scripta
Spanish bluebellH. hispanica
"Nodding" head, with all flowers on one side
"Erect" head, with flowers on all sides
Tubular flowers (long and narrow)
Campanular flowers (open bell shape)
Cream anthers
Blue anthers
(Anthers are the six pollen-bearing dots at the ends of the stamens, found easily by looking into the flower.)
So, I sat down on a bench and looked at some of the bluebells around me, expecting to quickly find out which of the two species they were. But I soon found out it's much, much more complicated than that.
The plants I found didn't fit the neat dichotomy of the key above. I found plants that mixed different features from each species – nodding but with campanular flowers, or erect but with cream anthers – and I couldn't find any consistent pattern that would let me sort them into species. This is mentioned in the book as an afterthought: the two species "hybridise freely", making the hybrid species Hyacinthoides × massartiana, which seemed to explain the variation I was seeing. Apparently this hybridisation occurs so easily that some botanists consider the two to be variants of the same species, which I can easily believe.
I wanted to know more, so I went home and checked the ultimate authority: Clive Stace's New Flora of the British Isles. And along with thorough descriptions of the different species, the entry for the hybrid H. × massartiana ended with a very telling sentence:
It is intermediate in all characters and fertile, forming a complete spectrum between the parents and often natd in absence of both.
—Clive Stace, New Flora of the British Isles
Yep, that's right: the hybrid bluebell can have literally any random features of either parent species, and they can all breed together without any restrictions. I'm not a botanist, but why these are considered separate species is beyond me. What a cop-out!
However, this is not where my adventure ended, but where it began. Being unable to find anything on hybrid bluebells other than "they're somewhere in between", I decided to do some research for myself. The key above has three characteristics that can each go two different ways, suggesting 8 possible combinations of characteristics. Besides this, flowers can appear in blue, pink and white, making 24 possibilities in total! How many of these were possible, and how many appear in St Andrews? I got my boots on and went out to do some research.
Within one hour, I'd found and photographed 16 different varieties of bluebell, each with a different set of characteristics in the key above. I was delighted by how easy it was to find all these different combinations, and I think it's probably all the ones that exist. The reason I couldn't find all 24 is that it seems blue anthers are only present on blue flowers: the pink and white flowers I found all had cream anthers, and I'm guessing this is due to a lack of pigment preventing any blue anywhere on the plant.
So, ladies and gentlemen, here's my new mathematically rigorous naming scheme for Hyacinthoides in Britain!
Each bluebell is identified by a triple from the cartesian product
\(\{b, p, w, B\}\) is the flower colour: \(b\) for blue, \(p\) for pink, \(w\) for white, and \(B\) for blue-with-blue-anthers (the first three have cream anthers);
\(\{n, e\}\) is the apex shape: \(n\) for nodding, and \(e\) for erect;
\(\{t, c\}\) is the flower shape: \(t\) for tubular, and \(c\) for campanular.
So, for example, a pink bluebell with cream anthers, a nodding head and campanular flowers would be denoted \((p, n, c)\). A blue bluebell with cream anthers, an erect apex and tubular flowers would be \((b, e, t)\). The classic H. non-scripta is \((b, n, t)\) while H. hispanica is \((B, e, c)\). And so on.
There are 16 possible combinations in this system, and I've got photos of all of them right here. These are all easily found along a short stretch of Lade Braes between viaduct walk and Canongate Primary School. Here are a few samples:
Hyacinthoides\((p, e, c)\)
Hyacinthoides\((b, e, t)\)
Hyacinthoides\((w, n, t)\)
The system isn't perfect – the two flower shapes are also a bit of a spectrum, with some flowers difficult to put into either \(t\) or \(c\), and some plants bearing flowers in both categories. Again, I'm not a botanist, so it's possible I've also made other mistakes. I'd also like to hear from anyone who's found pink or white flowers with blue (or pink or white) anthers, since I don't actually know this is impossible.
Anyway, I still think it's a good checklist for anyone who wants to go bluebell-spotting. If you try it, let me know which ones you can find!
If there's a bigger point to make here, maybe it's the joy of biodiversity. A couple of decades ago, St Andrews would only have had "pure" H. non-scripta, which would have dominated the landscape with no variation at all except perhaps the petal colour. Today we are treated to a beautiful diversity of flowers with a whole spectrum of shapes and features, and it's made for a really interesting project. I can only assume this diversity is as attractive to insects as it is to amateur botanists, though I'm willing to be corrected on this.
H. hispanica and H. × massartiana have been variously described as "invasive", "threatening" and even "dangerous" due to the perceived threat to the native H. non-scripta population; but with the diversity and beauty of the flowers on display in St Andrews, I can't bring myself to wish they had never arrived. "Native" status is arbitrary anyway, with Collins defining it as any flower that was here before the year 1500, and often needing to use guesswork to apply it. In a few years' time, no one will be left alive who remembers a time before the hybridisation of British bluebells, and is this such a sad thing?
I for one welcome our "nasty Spanish" visitors. I hope they continue to thrive in our woodlands, and I hope that anyone nostalgic for the good old-fashioned \((b, n, t)\) can comfort themselves in the knowledge that any hybrid they see with the slightest one-sided nod or the slightest elongated flowerhead is carrying within it the DNA of our traditional bluebells. In this sense, the "nice English Bluebell" will never be lost.
Pour the cranberry syrup into a rocks glass, then fill up the glass with ice. Shake the whiskey, lemon juice and sugar syrup together with ice and strain gently into the glass, disturbing the cranberry syrup as little as possible. Pour the wine on top, again trying not to disturb the drink, perhaps by pouring over a teaspoon.
Since I first tried the New York sour I've been fascinated by layered drinks, and have been wanting to take the whole thing further by making a good-tasting drink with three distinct layers. I tried and failed to do this at New Year, using port as the bottom layer; it just all blurred in together and didn't look good at all. So I approached the problem scientifically.
The thing that keeps layers in drinks from mixing is density. The red wine floats on a New York sour because it's less dense than the whiskey sour underneath. This is largely because of sugar content: sugar is very dense in solution.
If you want to see this in action, try making some sugar syrup. Most of my recipes include "sugar syrup", by which I mean 1:1 simple syrup. You make this by mixing equal weights of sugar and water, and if you do this you'll notice how dense sugar is. If you mix 100g of water and 100g of sugar, you end up with 200g of syrup, but in the jug it only measures about 160ml, much denser than the 200ml you'd expect from fresh water. Whiskey sour is sweeter than red wine, largely due to the syrup in it, so it should be no surprise that it is denser. In fact, in an early experiment I tried a less sweet whiskey sour, with half as much sugar, and it mixed with the wine much more easily. Take this lesson: if you prefer a drier cocktail, you might end up with more blurring!
Now, what we want is a third layer at the bottom. We've already established that we need something more sugary than whiskey sour, and that's easy enough. The other criterion is a bright colour, which will stand out from the pale liquid above it. I took a look at my drinks cabinet, and I had several syrups that I thought could work: grenadine and strawberry both fit the bill, and I tried the grenadine in an early attempt; but cranberry was the winner, with its sharp tartness cutting through the sickly sugar beautifully, and even acting as a curious mirror to the dry fruit flavour of the red wine. Monin sell a standard cranberry syrup which you can get online or in bottle shops. Finally, we had a recipe!
If I say so myself, this is an excellent cocktail. Aside from the novelty and the look of the thing, the flavours work very well together, and the complexity of the changing flavours as you work your way down makes every sip interesting. I'm going to play with the proportions, but I think I've got something that really works here.
Next experiment: make the bottom layer green ("traffic light sour"?) possibly using sirop de menthe or waltmeister. Stay tuned.
Shake the first five ingredients together with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, then add the sparkling wine. Add a new mint leaf on top.
I wrote all about this recipe the other day in my post about the Bangkok Cuban. In short, I was trying to make an Old Cuban but substituted lime leaves for the mint, which ended up very distinctive. Today I wanted to try the real thing, and got hold of some mint especially.
It's nice! The mint is refreshing, and lightens up the rich flavours of the other components.
I might criticise by saying the rum is drowned out a bit – I like to taste the spirit in my cocktails, and so I might try 3 parts rum next time instead of 2, more in line with my usual 3:1:1 sour cocktail recipe.
