Clover Club

Gin, Raspberries, Lemon

Created in the city of brotherly love, his cocktail is one of the original gentlemen's drinks using egg-white and raspberry syrup to take the edge off. Since we are using easy to find & fridge-worthy ingredients, this recipe uses fresh raspberries rather than a raspberry syrup. This cocktail is meant to be created in just a few minutes.

I learned about this cocktail working at a late night cocktail bar in Australia. It was one of their featured classic cocktails on the menu. They also used fresh strawberries instead of raspberry syrup.

Pink, frothy, and fabulous! The fresh raspberry adds a subtle complexity and a finish that gently beckons you back. You will order a second and likely a third, because they go down sooo easily!

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Ingredients:

2oz Gin

1oz fresh lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup or raspberry syrup

4-5 fresh raspberries

Egg White

How To:

Add all ingredients into your cocktail shaker, add one cube of ice into the shaker, seal and shake hard until you feel like the egg has been whipped enough, then shake for 5 more seconds. Open the shaker and add a scoop of ice. Seal and shake again.

Fine strain into a coupette.

Garnish with a skewer of fresh raspberries.

Sit back and have a few!

Bloody Mary

Vodka, Tomato Juice, and the Spice Cabinet

A bloody mary is of the few acceptable, yet all telling, drinks you can have before 10am. It's such a popular morning drink, that New Years Day has been named National Bloody Mary Day, because 50% of the planet is hungover and have the day off. Cue more drinking!

I am a personal fan of this cocktail and I don't even need to be hungover to have it. I'm that weirdo that orders a bloody mary at 7pm. It's almost an appetizer with all the garnishes. In fact, I once saw a bloody mary that came in a pitcher and had a fried chicken on top. Yes, a whole fried chicken....That was more like a main course rather than an appetizer.

I wish I had ordered it for myself, but hindsight is 20/20.

Anyway, as a lover of this vegetative cocktail, it's been my mission to create a bloody mary that makes you want another. I hope you enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 oz vodka, Grey Goose or Tito's are my go-to's

A dash of Salt

A dash of Pepper

2 dashes Worcestershire sauce

2 dashes of Tabasco

5 oz tomato juice, preferably organic

...I am not the biggest fan of horseradish in my bloody mary's, but it’s a common ingredient that you can try, about a bar spoonful will suffice.

Garnish:

Pickles, lemon, chili salt rim, celery stalk, bacon, whatever you want really...

Process:

Depending on how many neurons are firing in your brain after last night, it's best to prep the garnishes before-hand because they can get out-of-hand quickly. After your garnishes are prepped, you’ll need a lemon wedge and a saucer of salt with a touch of chili powder.

Grab the Collins glass, rub the lemon wedge around the rim then roll the moist rim in the spicy salt mix. Squeeze the lemon wedge into the glass & discard.

Add all ingredients (except for the garnishes of course) into the cocktail tin. Add ice, close the tin, and move the tin back and forth slowly. You're essentially softly shaking the cocktail. Not just for the noise level, but tomato juice thins out really quickly if you shake too hard, and by "rolling" the drink you are maintaining the consistency of the juice.

Taste for preference. If it’s too heavy on tomato juice, add more Worcestershire sauce. If it's too spicy, don't worry, it'll clear your sinuses.

Strain into your ice-filled glass.

Garnish with the pickled produce aisle, as if you're creating a mezze platter but in your drink. Sweet pickle, cocktail onion, cornichon, celery stick, pickled green beans, bacon, lemon/lime, chicken wings, stuffed jalapeños...you get the drill.

Take a few slugs and you'll feel better in about 5 minutes...

The Strainer

As for strainers, the one stop shop is the Hawthorne strainer, or classic coil strainer. The coil is fine enough to keep large ice chunks and the majority of fruit pulp out of your drink and the spring is adjustable to fit most vessels from pint glasses, cocktail tins, and beakers. Whatever you’re using to make your home cocktails, this strainer will be fine.

If you want to get fancy, or you’re very particular about your cocktails (“Hi, that’s me”) you can use a tea strainer, aka fine mesh strainer, to filter out any small ice fragments that may have broken off but not yet melted. When your Vesper Martini looks like global warming in the Arctic with a sea of tiny icebergs, you’ll know that you need a fine mesh strainer.

Hawthorne. Julep. Fine Mesh/Tea.

Finally there’s the classic julep strainer. More commonly used for straining stirred drinks, this strainer was originally used to hold back mint and crushed ice when enjoying a mint julep. Now-a-days, most people use straws, but since straws are the devil's work and end up in the floating plastic islands at sea, I’m hoping that this strainer will become more popular for enjoying crushed ice cocktails. Fin, Noggin’, Duuuude.