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Monday 10 October 2011

Berry poetic


THE best strawberries come, some might say, from the Clyde Valley. Others would argue in favour of those from the farms of Fife around the Leven area. Southerners would naturally plump for the strain from the great Garden of England that is Kent.

Plump, however, is the operative word.
Thin strawbs don’t cut it.

Get some quick as there are not many local varieties left now that summer has rapidly disappeared down the plughole.
To the cocktail I’m proselytising about here I’ve added, in elegiac mood, a splash of rosewater. Ergo, the last rose of summer …



As the great poet of the so-called Scottish Renaissance might have put it...

The cocktail of all the world is not for me.
I want for my part
Only the frozen strawberry daiquiri of Scotland
That tastes sharp and sweet
And goes straight to the brain.

With apologies, of course, to McDiarmid, who perhaps might not have minded, given that he tried just about everything himself. And Scottish Renaissance? When did it ever die so that it required rebirth?

The cocktail lovers among you can continue with the occasional Banana Daiquiri that will see you through the winter and spring months, but if it’s local ingredients that you’re after in that green way of the ecological cocktail champion, then get this one over your neck sharpish.



Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri
Makes 4 (see pic above)

Ingredients:
14 decent sized ripe strawberries. Plump!
2 fl oz white rum
1 fl oz crème de framboises (or some sort of Strawberry liqueur)
1 tbsp caster sugar
Juice of two limes
Juice of 1 orange
Dash orange bitters
Splash of rosewater
4 ice cubes

Method:
Retain 4 of the strawbs then plonk the rest of the ingredients in a jug blender and whizz the mixture like it's the Large Hadron Collider
Rub a slice of lime over the rim of each glass then dip it in sugar up to a couple of millimetres.
Pour into four cocktail glasses
Do something fancy with a strawberry and skewer it along with a quarter slice of orange and lay it in the glass.

Don’t forget to say “Cheers!” or some other convivial toast.

Sip, don’t gulp.
Ahhh.....



Coming up in a future blog …
Why I’d rather sip a horse’s neck than tip a horse’s ass.
Hee haw! (Sorry, that was a donkey).

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