Recipes: Drinks and Cocktails with Herbs

Chamomile tea
The sweetly scented flower heads are the part of the herb used to make a delicately flavoured herb tea. This is the most important of all herb teas, made famous in Beatrix Potter’s ‘Tale of Peter Rabbit’. The flower heads can be harvested and dried, and will retain their flavour for up to a year.

Traditional recipes call for 1oz (25g) of flower heads to be steeped in boiling water for 3 or 4 minutes in a covered jug – to prevent the escape of the aromatic steam. The resulting tea can be sweetened to taste with honey or sugar if desired.

Moroccan mint tea

            2 tsp china tea
            6 tsp Moroccan mint – chopped
            900 ml boiling water.

Spoon the tea and mint into a large warmed teapot. Pour on boiling water and leave to infuse for 5 minutes.
Strain into glasses or delicate cups and sweeten to taste, serve garnished with a whole mint leaf.

The tea maybe strained and chilled, and stored in the fridge, to serve as iced mint tea. In this case sweeten to taste whilst still hot.

Parsley herb tea

Fresh leaves make the best tea, use about ¼ cup of bright green chopped leaves and fill up with boiling water. Leave to steep for 10 minutes and then strain and sweeten to taste. Some people find the taste of this tea too astringent, if so then try halving the amount of leaves or reduce the steeping time if this is the case.

Mulled cider

            ½ pint of dry cider
            4 sprigs rosemary (each about 10cm long)
            3 tsp brown sugar, or to taste
            3 tbls dark rum

Bruise the rosemary in the cider in a large pestle and mortar (or improvise with a plastic basin and a rolling pin). Stir in the sugar and leave to infuse for 15 minutes.
Strain the cider off of the rosemary and heat until very hot. Traditionally this should be done with a red-hot poker, but a microwave or a saucepan will do very well as a substitute! 
Spoon in the rum and stir well before serving.
Just the thing after a day out in the cold!
           

Cucumber and Lemon Thyme Martini

Flavoured vodkas are one of the most popular drinks at the moment, this recipe uses lemon vodka but it is every bit as successful made with ordinary vodka, just add a tiny bit more lemon juice

            5cm (2 in) cucumber
           The leaves from 4 sprigs of lemon variegated thyme
            A dash of vanilla essence
            1 tsp lemon juice
            Gomme syrup or 1 tsp caster sugar
            50ml vodka – lemon vodka if possible but by no means essential
            Ice cubes

            A cucumber twist and a sprig of the thyme to garnish

Those of you with cocktail will be well away whilst the rest of us can manage very well with a pestle and a clean jar with a lid! All of the ingredients are variable, you may for instance prefer to add extra sugar for a sweeter cocktail

Chop the cucumber roughly and put into a small bowl with all the ingredients except the vodka and the ice. Bash and press it with the pestle until the cucumber is well bruised but not totally pulped and all the sugar ( if you are using it) is dissolved in the resulting juice.

If you have a cocktail set this can all be done inside the shaker with the end of the bar spoon.
Add the vodka and 4 ice cubes to the cocktail shaker.
 If you are managing without a shaker then transfer the crushed ingredients to the jar and add the vodka and ice, rinsing out the crushing bowl with a little of the vodka to make sure that you transfer over all of the flavours.

Shake for a minute to chill thoroughly then strain into a glass, garnish, relax and enjoy.

Apple and Lavender Cocktail

            100ml Gin, vodka or white rum
            Juice of a large lime
            50 ml apple juice
            1 tbls caster sugar
            2 small handfuls of lavender flowers
            Ice-cubes

Bruise the lavender lightly with a rolling pin to release the essential oils.
Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake for a full minute.
Strain into 2 chilled glasses and decorate with a couple of sprigs of lavender.

Lets hope for some sunny evenings to sit outside and enjoy it!

Classic mint julep

Make a sugar syrup by dissolving equal quantities of sugar and water in a small saucepan. 1 cup of each is ideal.
Once the sugar is dissolved, simmer the syrup gently for 10 minutes then allow to cool.

Tear up several eau de cologne mint leaves and put into a tall chilled glass. Add a little sugar syrup and a measure of whisky, stir well and top up with lots of ice.

Relax on a balmy warm evening with one of these and feel your stresses melt away.