Sam Kaplan for The New York Times. Food stylist: Suzanne Lenzer. Prop stylist: Rebecca Conroy.
The extent to which teenage girls will torture their mothers knows few limits. For me, part of the program was a Ye Olde Herbalist phase. I often took over the family kitchen to brew hyssop tea and goldenseal tincture and to prepare poultices of sage and compresses of comfrey. I grew my hair very long and learned how to write my name in runes. My favorite bedtime reading was a facsimile edition of the 17th-century English botanist Nicholas Culpeper's opus, "The Complete Herbal." I was totally going to Scarborough Fair.
With time, fortunately, most of the trappings fell away. But my love for herbs, and a tendency toward herbaceousness in both my cooking and my cocktails, abides. So when I visited a friend's garden in Bedford, N.Y., a few weeks ago, I couldn't help thinking how enthralled my younger self would have been by it. The idea of a garden in Bedford might evoke rows of neatly raised flower beds punctuated by chessboard topiaries, tucked behind a big neoclassical pile of a house. But my friend Michael Blakeney's garden is lush and cheerful, brimming with flora, buzzing with bees. Herbs abound. One garden fence is hung with garlic, drying in the late summer sun, which looks fiercely and anciently talismanic. Here and there, a soft carpet of camomile flowers falls underfoot; it is both fragrant and practical — a natural deer deterrent.
Blakeney, a visual artist and teacher, is a self-taught gardener who regularly brews batches of camomile ptisan — a far stronger, headier proposition than the meek tea that helps lull the weary to sleep. His ptisan is also an earthy base for a cocktail, I discovered, when fortified with camomile-laced grappa and dry vermouth and accompanied by a full, furry sprig of lavender with which to stir it. Gin (plus pisco and a splash of absinthe) worked perfectly with Blakeney's sweet, diminutive Concord grapes, garnished with the edible purple-blue flower of the licoricey hyssop plant, a member of the mint family.
But what to do with the rest of the garden's bounty — the verbena and lime balm and thyme and the less familiar specimens? Muddled husk cherries in a manhattan, maybe. Papalo leaves in a bloody mary, perhaps. I asked Kevin Denton, the creative bar director at New York City's Alder and WD-50 restaurants, what sort of cocktail he might make with an abundance of rosehips. He devised a shrub — broadly, an infusion made with vinegar — including plums, rosebuds and rosehips. (The recipe here is not as complicated as it looks and comes together very quickly.) Denton likes it best spiked with tequila, but it's great with gin too, and he notes, "It also makes a delicious nonalcoholic cooler."
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Drink: Garden of Earthly Delights
Dengan url
http://koraninternetonline.blogspot.com/2013/09/drink-garden-of-earthly-delights.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Drink: Garden of Earthly Delights
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Drink: Garden of Earthly Delights
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar