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.

Nick Strangeway's 'Disco Badger'

Despite the naff name I love the sound of this refreshing orangey beer cocktail created by legendary mixologist Nick Strangeway for Badger Ales. Great presentation too!

25ml gin

25ml lemon juice

2 tsp Seville marmalade

10ml gomme (sugar syrup)

Stir the above ingredients with a barspoon and top up the jar or glass with ice. Top with Badger Tanglefoot (or a similarly fruity golden ale FB)

Garnish with a lemon wedge

 

Hawksmoor's Bloodhound

A deliciously fruity but simple cocktail from Hawksmoor at Home that makes use of in-season raspberries.

Hugh Gott writes: "This precursor to the modern fresh-fruit ‘Martini’ (which usually only share the glass they’re served in with their namesake) started life in the American South in the first years of the twentieth century. During Prohibition it was brought over to London, apparently by the 9th Duke of Manchester, and soon became a hit amongst locals and expats at Ciro’s Club where Harry MacElhone was tending bar.

Harry had a colourful career. He probably perfected this drink (the earlier American version was nowhere near as good) and had a hand in creating the Sidecar and the French 75. After leaving Ciro’s he ran Harry’s New York bar in Paris where he founded the Paris Barflies, ‘a secret organisation devoted to the uplift and downfall of serious drinkers’ (Spirituous Journey II, Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller, 2009)."

serves 1

50ml good gin, such as Beefeater

25ml sweet (red) vermouth

25ml dry vermouth

6 raspberries

a dash of sugar syrup

Shake all the ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker, and double strain (through a Hawthorne and a tea strainer) into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish by floating a raspberry on the surface of the drink.

Food match: I'm a bit stuck on this one, I must confess. I'm actually thinking posh handmade white chocolates though you'd probably want to kick off an evening with this rather than end it with one. Some kind of smoked duck canapé, maybe. Any thoughts?

From Hawksmoor at Home. Photo © Dan Lepard.

Declaration of interest: my son, Will, jointly owns Hawksmoor and I helped with the book!