My Bar, Your Bar

In keeping with the theme of summer’s over from the Gimlet post, here’s a perfect summer cocktail my wife and I discovered too late this year. I recently read an inflight magazine article which sang the praises of combining strawberries and basil. Needless to say, since my wife had planted a couple types of basil in her herb garden, I couldn’t wait to get home and try this combo in a cocktail.

After heading out to the herb garden, we discovered that, for better or worse, our poor purple basil plant was a skeleton. We agreed the still living lemon basil would make a fine substitution. We picked our lemon basil and proceeded to make a most excellent summer cocktail.

The ingredients:

2 oz vodka

1 tsp cranberry juice

3 strawberries

3 or 4 large basil leaves

4 tsp apple liqueur

1 tsp simple syrup

1 pinch freshly ground black pepper

Start by muddling your basil leaves until they’re finely crushed (see previous Mojito post formore info on muddling). Then add the strawberries and puree. Once the berries and basil are combined, take a whiff. NICE. Add the vodka, apple liqueur, simple syrup, cranberry juice, and pepper. Shake vigorously and double strain into chilled cocktail glasses. Be sure and use a fine strainer over the glass to avoid small pieces of basil in your drink.

This is a very lite cocktail. No one flavor overpowers the drink. Feel free to try different liqueurs that may combine well with strawberries. Enjoy!

To see the drinks preferred by those mightier than I, head over to Cocktail Chronicles for mixology Monday.