Recipe

• 4 parts gin

• 1 part dry vermouth

Fill a cocktail shaker with gin and vermouth to the brim, in such a way that there's no room for any ice. Panic, and pour some out into the first bowl you have to hand. Put the bowl in the fridge overnight and frighten your girlfriend when she goes to get raspberries in the morning. Remove from the fridge in the evening. Add ice to the bowl and stir with a chopstick, then awkwardly remove the ice with a spoon. Strain into a cocktail glass. Put four cocktail onions (available in Morrison's) onto a cocktail stick and add.

Despite the confused preparation of this drink, it easily stands up to the versions with olives (1 2). If pickled onions sound horrible in a drink, remember how weird olives in a drink would sound if you'd never heard of that before. If anything, these are less weird, because they're tiny, delicate, and quite sweet, complimenting the flavours of the gin and vermouth nicely. Definitely a nice alternative.

I assume normal sweet silverskin pickled onions would be nice, though maybe just one or two. I wouldn't fancy trying a full-on chip-shop-style giant spicy pickled onion, but I'd love to hear whether anyone's tried it. The same aisle in Morrison's has "cocktail gherkins" which is getting a bit weird.

I'll pay money to anyone who tries it with a pickled egg.