Raspberry Gin / Raspberry and Blueberry Gin / Pomegranate Gin

A flavoured gin's the thing. 

Raspberry Gin and Tonic

Added Value
It's good marketing -  grow your range of products and you expand your brand. How many different bottles of gin do you have on your gin wall? We went to one house and there were 12 different bottles on the central kitchen island. That's a lot of dead stock. On the other end of the scale, Gin and Juice in Cheltenham has 350 different gins and growing.
Take a look at the prices and the flavoured ones are substantially more expensive than normal gin. Like the difference in price between fresh salmon and smoked salmon which is 2 - 3 times as much. That kind of makes you want to make your own flavoured gins in itself. 

Last year I was experimenting with different flavours. Economics aside, the main reason you'll want to investigate flavoured gins is for all the amazing variations you can serve up to your friends that they'll never be able to buy in a shop.

Thirty years ago my great aunt was experimenting with a lemon and orange vodka liqueur - vodka, caster sugar, orange zest & lemon zest. You put them in a bottle and shook it up once a day for a month. One month later it was ready to go and was like a variation on cointreau. You could use a cheap vodka because you get the flavour from the citrus.
So I took the same idea - alcohol, sugar, fruit and here you can see the results.

I also found that you need to put these in the fridge while they are maturing. You might think the alcohol will preserve the fruit, which it does, but left out of the fridge it can start fermenting and go sour.

Raspberry and Blueberry Cotswold Gin

It's almost sacrilege to add things to Cotswolds Gin - it tastes so good in itself, but I had some left over from a tasting menu event. There were also raspberries and blueberries left from their dessert so I brought those 3 things together.

Fruit Gin Ratios
A good ratio is:
250g Fruit/ berries
100g Caster sugar
70cl Bottle of gin

Put your ingredients ideally in a kilner jar or other vessel that isn't plastic. I found storing this in a plastic container as I did with the pomegranate gin, below, the plastic can taint the contents.

Pomegranate Gordon's Gin

Taking the idea from my pomegranate rum, I tried a gin version. A lovely sweet-sharp taste. You crunch the seeds as you drink to release their flavour. Makes me think a cranberry gin could be really good for Christmas time, though it would need more sugar for the sharpness of the cranberries.

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Birthday meal cooked near Burford, Oxfordshire

Chocolate and almond torte with white chocolate ganache and berries - birthday cake aka torte becomes dessert to serve at the table family style

Served this up last night at Field House near Burford - love doing parties at this house. They only have an aga and the kitchen is more of kitchen-sitting room with 180 degree views of the countryside - great relaxed feel. Seriously chocolatey! I'd had quite an audience watching me prepare - five of them aged between 4 and 7 - most put out that I was cooking for their parents & grandparents rather than them. Next time guys!

Orzo risotto with grilled prawns and scallops & courgette carpaccio - lucky they were plain white plates or the pattern would have eaten too - went down rather well!

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Diabetic assiette of dessert

Coeliac, vegetarian, vegan, dairy free, diabetic - we seemed to have it all last weekend. With soya milk & 'cream' there's a lot you can do for vegans and dairy free guests. For the diabetic guest on Sunday night at Summer Lake 4 (part of Watermark in the Cotswold Water Park near Cirencester) there was no way she could have eaten the baileys ice cream, chocolate torte, creme brulee etc that were part of the other hens' assiette of desserts so I made this one up on the spur of the moment as soon as the main course had gone out.Shotglass of natural yogurt with poached berries
Roast apricot with brazil nut
Strawberry and pistachio spoon
Banana, clementine and basil spoon
Physalis and pommegranate

You can always rely on hen parties to have some natural yogurt in the fridge - always the health concious ones.
I had apricots left from making apricot and frangipane tart the day before. Roasting the apricot with a little balsamic drizzled over for this dessert was something I'll have to try again.

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Brandy snaps

Made the weekend before last between 2 and 3am on Saturday morning. Somehow I fitted in 13 parties in 5 days - lucky there are 25 hours in a chef's day.

These accompanied passionfuit panna cotta and the caramelised oranges, requested by the contact who had passed on my details for what turned out to be my first ever dinner party booking, almost 3 years ago. The two events I cooked for that week were following his father's passing, so he was choosing things that might appeal to his slightly older guests - a couple of days before I had done the smoked trout trio, with coq au vin, then crème caramel and a large pear and almond tart. The two desserts (above) on this day accompanied the grilled asparagus and rack of lamb dish made with saddle of lamb rather that racks.

I was going to pipe one of the left over brandy snaps with cream and accompany it with berries and coulis a bit like this, a real retro classic, but the left over ones mysteriously dissappeared......

Very easy to make in fact - like biscuits. You can make the dough and roll it into balls and bake them. As they bake they spread out flat, then you just leave them to cool for a couple of minutes before rolling them on a wooden spoon as shown here, or making baskets the same way as I make the tuile or filo baskets - ideal for ice cream or fresh summer berries spread over an overturned ramekin. If you keep the flat you could also make this simple dessert.

The recipe I used here came from Merilees Parker - but without the lime juice and zest. Jan may not have approved of her venison sauce recipe when she met her, but this worked for me - the BBC test everything of course before they publish it.

It has been bookmarked for anyone else who wants to try it on the virtual recipe drawer that is Bookmarked Recipes - where anyone from anywhere can blog about a recipe they had bookmarked from a cook book, food magazine, food blog, food website, from TV etc, make it and submit it to a weekly roundup. this week hosted by Divya at Dil Se….

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