Forager’s Cocktails: Botanical Mixology with Fresh Ingredients

1½ ounces (45ml) bourbon

1 pickled dandelion or chive flower*

Pour the whiskey into a shot glass. Top with a pickled flower. Shoot the contents.

*Pickled Dandelions or Chive Flowers

1 cup (roughly 100g) dandelion or chive flowers,

gently rinsed and allowed to dry thoroughly

1 quart (approx. 1 liter) white wine vinegar

Add the clean, dry flowers to a quart-sized (1-liter) mason jar. Fill with vinegar. Place in a cool, dark place for 5 to 7 days.

WILD ONION GIMLET (#ulink_cbaad074-a85f-5fca-8680-c0a4087a6248)

When I was a kid playing in the backyard, I used to like to grab the skinny, green, scallionlike stalks of wild spring onions from the ground and pry them free. Then I cut off the tops, plopped the the onion bulbs into my doll’s supermarket cart, and let them have some real, live produce, not the plastic stuff they came with. That’s still how I feel about these onions—why buy some unknown supermarket source of cocktail garnish when I’ve got fresh, perfectly sized, beautiful, gimlet-ready onions right in my own backyard? Go dig up some onions, and make this easy-peasy cocktail accoutrement.

2½ ounces (75ml) London dry gin

½ ounce (15ml) dry vermouth

1 pickled wild spring onion*

Fill a mixing glass half-full with ice cubes. Pour in the gin and vermouth. Stir for 30 to 45 seconds. Strain into a coupe or cocktail glass, and garnish with a pickled wild spring onion.

*Pickled Wild Spring Onions

6–12 wild onions, washed, leaving just a little green tail

1½ cups (355ml) white wine vinegar

½ cup (120ml) water

1 tablespoon (15g) sugar

1 teaspoon (5g) kosher salt

1 sprig of dill

1 teaspoon (5g) juniper berries

1 teaspoon (5g) black peppercorns

Add the onions (I like to leave a little tail on them), vinegar, water, sugar, and salt to a pot and simmer for about 2 minutes. Allow to cool. Drop the dill, juniper berries, and peppercorns in a 16-ounce (475ml) mason jar and pour in the vinegar solution and onions. Store in the sealed jar in the refrigerator for up to 6 months.

Wild onions © Alamy

LOCUST POCUS (#ulink_46555f14-e6c3-5305-94a8-ec26cc16101a)

Black locust trees in the spring are some of the most beautiful examples of the season—and the most prolific. They’re everywhere in North America and Europe, even if you haven’t noticed them before. This normally humble, craggy-bark tree busts out with tumbling bouquets of blossoms, white-petaled and pinkish at the bottom. The best part: they are edible and both mild and gently sweet. It’s the way things should taste in spring. Like any flower, edible locust blossoms are fleeting, which is why I like embellishing something sparkling with them. There’s an urgency to sparkling wine—the bubbles rising quickly as if they can’t fly to the top fast enough. It’s the ultimate embrace-the-moment embodiment. As to the homemade grenadine: you can use this for lots of things, both alcoholic and not (and in cooking, too). It’s thoroughly worth whipping up a batch. And feel free to nosh on the blossoms after you sip on this.

½ ounce (15ml) homemade grenadine*

½ ounce (15ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice

4 ounces (120ml) sparkling wine (brut-level dryness recommended)

1 black locust blossom, for garnish

Pour the grenadine and lemon juice into a champagne flute. Top with sparkling wine and garnish with a locust blossom.

*Grenadine

¾ cup (150g) sugar

1 cup (235ml) unsweetened pomegranate juice

In a saucepan, combine the sugar and juice over medium heat, stirring until the sugar starts to dissolve. Simmer, stirring, for 5 to 7 minutes. Allow to cool. Store in an airtight jar in the refrigerator for up to a month.

NOTE: Feel free to play around with your grenadine, adding other herbs or fruit to the mix. In the summer, I like throwing in ¼ cup (20g) of chopped rose hips.

Black locust blossoms

VIOLET LADY (#ulink_0fb406c5-d66e-5c56-88b0-93d29030242a)

This riff on the classic Pink Lady cocktail is easy enough to make pink instead if you prefer—just swap in rose-petal syrup. But I like the way the vibrant purple adds a twist to this tipple. Note that to make the egg whites really frothy, you should first do something called dry shaking. That is, shake the ingredients vigorously without the ice, then add the ice and shake again to chill it down and give the cocktail the requisite amount of dilution.

1 egg white

¾ ounce (22ml) London dry gin

¾ ounce (22ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice

¾ ounce (22ml) apple brandy

¾ ounce (22ml) violet syrup*

1 violet flower or candied violets (and optional violet leaf), for garnish

Drop the egg white into a cocktail shaker without ice. Pour in the gin, lemon juice, apple brandy, and syrup. Shake for 25 to 30 seconds or until frothy. Add ice, and shake again for about 20 seconds. Strain slowly into a cocktail or coupe glass. Garnish with a fresh violet flower or candied violets.

*Violet Syrup

1½ cups (355ml) water

¾ cup (150g) sugar