How to make simple, great cocktails

You may find the idea of making cocktails daunting but bar consultant Kate Hawkings says it's simply a question of stirring a couple of good ingredients in a glass. Here are four of her current favourites.

Those of us of a certain age will remember when the cocktail world was all about novelty glassware, silly umbrellas and ridiculous 'flairing' - that preposterous juggling of bottles and shakers made famous by Tom Cruise in the execrable 1988 film, Cocktail.

The drinks were often sweet and fruity; layering and sugared rims were cool. Then considered sophisticated and glamorous, it now all seems the very height of naffness and we should be grateful those days gone.

Today, hipster cocktail bars are all the rage and the best of them serve astonishingly good drinks, made by clever bartenders who take their subject so seriously they could be accused of geekery.

They have access to incredible ranges of arcane spirits and other ingredients, and many now infuse, distill, barrel-age and even smoke their own. While it can be such a pleasure to drink these creations, they are generally better left to the pros and few of us could, or should, attempt to recreate them.

Good cocktails can be hard to get right - mojitos are one of my particular bug-bears - so delicious when properly made; so often, er, cocked up - but, while many do require skilled bartenders with finely tuned palates, encyclopaedic knowledge and the full panoply of bar paraphernalia behind them, it's perfectly possible to create stonkingly good drinks with very little in the way of training or special kit.

I write the drinks list for Bell's Diner, a small neighbourhood restaurant in Bristol, and wanted just a few great cocktails that are foolproof to make but taste pitch-perfect. The bar there is tiny so there is no space for special glasses or bar utensils, let alone a huge array of bottles, so the list has to make the best of what we've got to hand.

After months of arduous research and testing, these are some of my current favourites, all quick and very easy to make.

All except the Gingerbell start the same way - take a rocks glass or tumbler and fill it with ice. Don't skimp on the ice: it's there to chill your drink and keep the flavours precise, and while I rather like gradual dilution as ice slowly melts, if you're stingy the ice will melt too quickly and make the drink watery.

Gin and Co.

Inspired by the Gin and It, an iconic cocktail made with gin and Italian (sweet) vermouth, this uses The Collector, a new vermouth made by Jack Bevan from The Ethicurean restaurant near Bristol (which I made my drink of the week recently FB). Its gorgeous orange and caramel notes sit beautifully against gin's juniper twang.

25ml gin - at Bell's we use Portobello Road but if I had to choose one all-purpose gin it would be Beefeater. It's the classic bartender's gin for a very good reason.

50ml The Collector vermouth

1 bay leaf

Pour the gin and vermouth over the ice, stir well then garnish with the bay leaf, threaded onto a cocktail stick if you're feeling fancy.

Classic gimlet

A gimlet is one of my favourite drinks, and is what I call my 'store cupboard' cocktail because I always have the ingredients to hand at home. In Raymond Chandler's 'The Long Goodbye' it is Philip Marlowe's drink of choice. "It beats martinis hollow," as the great detective said. Purists would probably shake it on ice and serve it in a martini glass but I think it works just as well on the rocks.

50ml gin

35ml Rose's Lime Cordial (it MUST be Rose's)

Mix the two together. No garnish required.

Rhubarb ginger gimlet

Chase Distillery's rhubarb vodka doesn't come cheap but is absolutely delicious. I could quite happily drink it neat over ice; here it becomes something really quite special.

50ml Chase rhubarb vodka

5ml Belvoir ginger cordial

1 lime wedge

Mix the vodka and ginger cordial together, squeeze the lime over the top and drop it into the glass.

Gingerbell

This is a great drink for winter - it's a kind of rum-based bastard child of whisky mac and hot toddy.

At Bell's we heat it in a small jug using the steamer of the coffee machine but you could easily warm it in a small saucepan or microwave. Just be careful not too let it boil.

25ml Havana Club 3 year old rum - I like its gentle notes of vanilla and ripe bananas but other aged rums could work just as well. Avoid Bacardi or other white rums.

100ml Stone's Original ginger wine

1 lime wedge

Heat the rum and ginger wine, pour into a small wine glass, squeeze over the lime wedge and drop it into the glass.

Kate Hawkings is a polymath: a food, wine and travel journalist, an events organiser, a maître d', a staff trainer, a wine buyer and a drinks consultant. Oh, and chair of the Guild of Food Writers. You can find her on Twitter @katehawkings

Hawksmoor's Marmalade Cocktail

Unless you've been living in outer Mongolia you can't fail to be aware that the Paddington movie goes on release today. Cue for a marmalade cocktail!

This recipe comes from my son Will's restaurant Hawksmoor. His business partner Huw Gott fills in the background:

"Based on one of Harry Craddock’s from his time at the Savoy in the 1920s, this has become one of the most popular drinks on our list. We’ve added a splash of Campari to Harry’s recipe which reinforces the bitter-sweet of the marmalade and turns this anti-fogmatic into a perfect aperitif.

At the Savoy Harry had to deal with more than his fair share of Bertie Woosters and Gussie Fink-Nottles the morning after the day before. Bertie was so familiar with hangovers that he had names for different varieties: the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie. Unlike Jeeves, who served his famous hangover cure (brandy, clam juice, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and a raw egg) with his trademark wry deadpan, Harry Craddock was a man passionately obsessed. He saw it as a ‘great necessity of the age’ to develop effective anti-fogmatics and recommended that they be drunk ‘before 11.am. , or whenever steam and energy are needed’ (Savoy Cocktail Book, Harry Craddock, 1930).

MAKES 1

1 tsp Seville orange marmalade, preferably homemade (Hawksmoor uses my mum's recipe here)

50ml good gin such as Beefeater

5ml Campari

15ml lemon juice

a dash of orange bitters

a twist of orange peel

Place a headed barspoon (or teaspoon) of marmalade in a shaker. Add the gin and stir, pressing the marmalade against the side of the shaker to loosen it up. Add the other ingredients, fill up the shaker with ice cubes and shake hard to break down and dissolve the marmalade. If you’re left with a big glob of marmalade after shaking you either haven’t shaken hard enough or your marmalade is particularly resilient – in which case dissolve it in a small amount of boiling water and shake it all up again (but do it quickly so the drink doesn’t become too diluted). Strain into a Martini glass and serve with a twist of orange peel.

For the twist of orange peel

To make the orange twist, use a potato peeler to pare off a rough rectangle of rind from the top of the bottom of an orange. Using your fingers bend the rind over the drink -outer side of the orange over the drink – until the oils in the skin spray over the drink. Then twist the rind into a spiral and drop into the drink.

Extracted from Hawksmoor at Home by Will Beckett & Huw Gott.

How to make the perfect caipirinha

With the World Cup in full swing it's essential to know how to make the Brazilian national drink, caipirinha. Top chef Alex Atala reveals all you need to know . . .

A treatise on caipirinha

Caipirinha is one of the drinks that are most representative of Brazil. It became famous some time ago, and variations on it have been created both at home and around the world.

Instead of using cachaça, people started substituting vodka and saké. I have nothing against variations on themes, but they should not be given the same name as the original. The true caipirinha is made with cachaça, lime, ice and cane sugar. At D.O.M.’s bar, we have developed an impeccable ritual which I shall share with you here. We also prepare caipirinha derivatives. And I especially like the one that uses limão-cravo, limão-rosa, passion fruit, mint, priprioca and, of course, the essential cachaça.

Lime

The ideal lime for caipirinha is thin-skinned and soft. Lemon skins are too thick for caipirinha, even though their capacity for oxidation and their incredible aroma are great to add a final twist.

The skin of the lime is important for flavouring the drink. At D.O.M. we cut the tips off the lime, then cut it in half and delicately slit the outer part of the skin. D.O.M.’s caipirinha looks like a lime sashimi. It is not true that the inside of the lime makes the drink bitter; but neither does it contribute to the drink’s looks. A good drink must look good as well as taste good. Avoid crushing the lime too much. Three or four turns with the reamer are enough, after you make the slits on the skin.

One of the characteristics of cane sugar is that it is made of crystals, which rarely dissolve completely in the cachaça. We solved this problem by making a sugar syrup. We use 700 grams of regular refined sugar, or caster sugar, per half a litre of water. We boil the water, then turn off the heat. We add the sugar, stir vigorously and produce a temperature shock by adding ice cubes. We use about 50 ml of this syrup in each caipirinha.

Glass

At D.O.M., we use Old Fashioned glasses to serve caipirinha.

We use seven ice cubes per glass. They must be crystal-clear, which means they must have the lowest possible oxygen content.

Cachaça

We have a huge range of cachaças in Brazil. Good caipirinha is made with good cachaça. The caboclos from Minas Gerais – the state which produces Anísio Santiago, the most esteemed cachaça in the country, which is left to age for twelve years – say that good cachaça is one that produces ‘pearl necklaces’. How so? Shake the cachaça bottle. It must form a ring of bubbles where the drink ends, below the cork. If it is a good cachaça, the bubbles will be small. Big bubbles are a sign of inferior quality. There are some cachaça counterfeiters who use lye to cause the same effect.

So take note of some of the places where good cachaça is made. Minas Gerais produces good cachaça, especially in the towns of Salinas, Januária, Ponte Nova e a Paracatu. In Rio de Janeiro, the ones from Paraty are the best. Pernambuco, Ceará and São Paulo also produce good liquor. Oh, and caipirinhas made with good cachaça do not cause hangovers!

Extracted from D.O.M. Rediscovering Brazilian Ingredients by Alex Atala, £35.00, Phaidon. Photography © Sergio Coimbra

Getting hold of quality caipirinha is not so easy in the UK but Marks & Spencer is stocking an interesting organic one called Abelha for £22.99 in 127 branches. It's quite sweet so you may find you need slightly less sugar syrup.

Mandorla Sour, Polpetto

It’s been a while since there’s been a new craze in the cocktail world but I’m betting the Mandorla Sour will catch on.

First of all it’s on the menu at the impossibly hip Polpetto* and second it’s got that irresistible balance of sweet and sharp exactly right.

Turns out It’s been out there for a while, promoted by Nardini the producer of Mandorla, a deliciously natural tasting almond liqueur. According to their website it's made from an infusion of bitter almond with Aquavit di Vinaccia combined with a cherry distillate - so a sort of almond- and cherry-flavoured grappa.

The recipe here is pale though: as you can see from my appallingly blurry photo, Polpetto’s is tutti-frutti pink due, I’m guessing, to the amarena cherries they're using - another on-trend ingredient we’re going to have to get familiar with. (They’re small sour cherries from Bologna and Modena which are bottled in syrup and more commonly used in desserts or baking)

At around £36 a bottle - Mandorla’s not cheap but it is a walloping 50% ABV so you shouldn’t have to use much of it. Just the perfect drink for this unseasonably spring-like weather.

*And also at Cafe Murano who use Visciolata del Cardinale, a cherry-flavoured dessert wine