Two last minute Thanksgiving cocktails

You're probably all organised for the great day but just in case, here are a couple of clever ideas for festive cocktails using storecupboard ingredients from mixologist Myles Davies.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Cranberry Sour

50ml bourbon (Myles recommends Buffalo Trace)
25ml freshly squeezed, strained lemon Juice
15ml cinnamon sugar*
1 very fresh small/medium egg white
1 tsp cranberry sauce

Shake all the ingredients together and strain into an ice-filled wine glass.

* If you buy cinnamon sugar it's best to blitz it in a blender or food processor for cocktails to make the consistency finer. Make a batch while you're at it. If you're making your own mix caster sugar in the proportions of 1 - 1 1/2 tsp to 250g/9oz sugar and blitz together as described

NOTE: this recipe contains raw egg

Pilgrims Punch

50ml Plymouth gin
25ml lemon juice
15ml cinnamon sugar (see note above)
1 tsp homemade or shop-bought apple sauce
1 very fresh small/medium egg white
Appletise

Shake all the ingredients together, and strain into an ice filled highball glass. Top up with Appletise. Garnish with an apple slice and a fine dusting of sieved cinnamon powder.

NOTE: this recipe contains raw egg

Sherry Cobbler

Given the growing popularity of sherry cocktails and the fact that it's World Sherry Day this weekend here's a recipe for a sherry cobbler from Hawksmoor at Home (my son's restaurant, I have to confess).

Will and Huw write: "As the discerning drinker’s pre-air conditioning coolant of choice, this was, according to the New York weekly New World in 1840, ‘the greatest “liquorary” invention of the day’. Its popularity continued, leading Harry Johnson to observe in the 1888 edition of his Bartenders’ Manual, that it is ‘without doubt the most popular beverage in the country, with ladies as well as gentlemen’. A description in The Gentleman’s Magazine explains why: ‘[The cobbler is] a light vinous punch, exceedingly well iced, and grateful to the delicate æsophagus’ (William Burton, 1840.)

Sherry seems to have had a rather different image back then as it was deemed the perfect match for an evening of debauchery: ‘[at a San Franciscan saloon] we find the governor of the State seated by a table, surrounded by judges of the supreme and superior courts, sipping sherry cobblers, smoking segars [cigars], and reveling in all the delights of anticipated debauch’ (Dreadful California, Hinton Helper, 1855).

Early recipes call for it to be made with slices of orange. We think it makes for a more refreshing drink if lemon and lime are added as well.

For each person

2 slices each of lemon, lime and orange

100ml manzanilla sherry

50ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

25ml sugar syrup (gomme)

crushed ice

Dice one slice of each fruit into small pieces (about 3cm x 3cm) and put these at the bottom of a large glass tumbler

Add the sherry, lemon juice and sugar syrup, then fill the tumbler 3/4 of the way up with crushed ice. Churn the drink until well mixed and top with a little more crushed ice. Add a straw and garnish with the other slices of lemon, lime and orange.

How to make the perfect Caipirinha

A smart new Brazilian restaurant and cocktail bar, Mocoto, has opened in Knightsbridge, so I thought I’d go down and check out their Caipirinhas, which is to Brazil what the Margarita is to Mexico. And one of my very favourite cocktails.

I got the barman, Hindaugas, (Lithunian not Brazilian!) to take me through how he made them. The ingredients are dead simple: cachaa (pronounced ka-sharsa) a rum-like spirit made from sugar cane, limes and caster sugar. Cachaa can be a bit rough but theirs was the much-hyped Sagatiba (pronounced sagga-cheeba, which apparently means ‘never-ending story’. Hmmm). The limes they use are also special, very juicy and much more fragrant than the ones you find in supermarkets. (It would be worth sourcing them from a specialist fruit and vegetable shop)

First he halved the lime and made several vertical incisions through the skin without cutting right through the lime. He put both halves in a tumbler and added 2 good teaspoons of sugar then pounded it with a muddler ‘Not too much otherwise you’ll get too much bitterness from the skin’. He filled the tumbler with cracked ice (‘not crushed ice which melts too quickly’), poured in 2 shots of cachaa and stirred.

The crucial tip though was not to drink the Caipirinha straight away but to let it rest, stirring it a couple of times to melt the sugar and let the spirit pick up the flavour of the lime. The last bit of the drink is the best’ said Hindaugas. (Personally I thought it was pretty good all the way through.)

You can drink Caipirinhas with the same sort of snacks you’d eat with a Margarita, Daquiri or a Mojito - salsa fresca and tortilla chips, guacamole and empanadas (of which there is a Brazilian version at Mocoto) but I enjoyed the Pasteles de Palmito, little deep-fried pastries stuffed with palm hearts and cheese.

There’s also a rather swanky restaurant downstairs. A bit corporate but the food is really good. We shared a terrific crab gratin served with hot chilli-flavoured oil and a wedge of lime and then each had one of Brazil’s famous seafood stews, a Moqueca and a Vatapa, both based on shellfish and coconut though the Vatapa also contains dried shrimp and peanuts. They were spicy but not hot and went stunningly well with an exotically floral Torrontes, from a producer called Colom in Salta. I’ve always been at a bit at a loss as to what to pair with Torrontes, which I confess is not one of my favourite wines, but this was a good example and a great match.