Drink your fruits and veggies! Garden mixology is an increasingly popular trend, using ingredients from the garden to craft delicious and unusual cocktails. Booze Époque, a boutique craft cocktail catering company servicing the Greater Boston area, creates whimsical cocktails using fresh, local, organic, and seasonal ingredients for private parties and special events.
Booze Époque″We've always been inspired by the garden and that was one of the biggest reasons we started Booze Époque. We saw a dearth of fresh ingredients in the beverage catering industry and wanted to bring beautiful, vibrant ingredients directly to our clients, say Meaghan Sinclair, who with Harmony Dawn founded Booze Époque. ″We both have gardens and all summer we harvest herbs and vegetables for our cocktails. Each year we've been experimenting by adding new crops and seeing what we can incorporate into our drinks. This past year lovage and lemon balm were big winners.″
We asked Meaghan and Harmony to share a few of their garden-inspired creations with NGA. In honor of Valentine's Day, they've come up with very different recipes that all have one thing in common -- each contains at least one ingredient that's considered an aphrodisiac. In the Heartbeet, rose and cardamom do the honors; in Lovely Loretta, ginger and honey; in Evergreen, jalapeo, and in Pink Potion, watermelon. What a way to start off a romantic Valentine's Day dinner!
Heartbeet
Beets lend a beautiful color to this cocktail. We use a juicer to make the fresh beet juice.
Shake over ice. Strain into glass with fresh cubed ice. Garnish with small organic rose bud (use only pesticide-free flowers.)
*Rose Cardamom Syrup
Evergreen
This is like a boozy smoothie!
Blend all until smooth. Pour into a glass with ice. Garnish with jalapeno slice.
Lovely Loretta
Edible nasturtium blossoms make a lovely garnish for Loretta!
Dip moistened rim of glass into sugar/salt mixture. Combine remaining ingredients in ice-filled shaker. Strain into glass. Garnish with fresh ginger root and a nasturtium blossom.
Pink Potion
This non-alcoholic drink is bursting with fresh fruit flavors.
Mix ingredients together. Serve over crushed ice. Garnish with sprig of lemon balm.
* Strawberry simple syrup: Boil together 1 cup fresh strawberries, 1 cup raw sugar, and 1 cup water until sugar dissolves. Strain.
Find out more about Booze Époque at http://boozeepoque.com/ and http://facebook.com/boozeepoque.