Forever Summer (34 page)

sugar syrup or caster sugar to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and pour into a shot glass. Or, if it’s easier, add sugar to taste when you make the espresso and then just mix with the coffee liqueur when it’s cold; this way you don’t need to bother with making or getting hold of any sugar syrup. If it’s a real morning-after wake-up call you need, add a shot of vodka as you mix.

Makes 1.

SANGRIA

This is party-time, Spanish-style. And like all drinks that become debased through popular consumption, it is much better than snobbish instinct would lead you to believe.

1.5 litres red wine – a good, fruity Cabernet Sauvignon if you can

200g caster sugar

50–75ml brandy, to taste

1 lemon, sliced

1 orange, sliced

1 apple, cored and sliced

fizzy water

Mix everything together, except the fizzy water, and using the smaller quantity of brandy, in a large jug and let it macerate overnight in the fridge.

Taste and add more brandy and sugar if necessary, it should taste fairly strong and syrupy. Then mellow the drink with some fizzy water until it has the consistency of wine, add ice to chill but not so much as to dilute it. To be entirely proper, this should be ladled into glasses out of a large bowl, but I don’t think we need to be too fanatical on this point. Even I admit there is such a thing as going too far.

Serves 6.

KIWITINI

There’s something about the intense, sour fruitiness of this, as well as its beautifully black-speckled, lusciously thick greenness, that induces a feeling of summery well-being. The kiwi had its moment in cuisine many years ago, and has since been a cipher for culinary silliness, but in drinks it has a serious argument to make. Part smoothie, part martini, pure heaven: and you are only a blender-moment away.

25ml chilled vodka

50ml chilled dry martini

1 peeled kiwi

Put the above ingredients in a blender (with a handful of crushed ice if you so wish) and blitz to a cool, velvety purée. Pour into a martini glass and enjoy.

Makes 1.

MOSCOW MULE

The hot kick of ginger beer is peculiarly desirable in the heights of summer. If you want to wallow a little more intensely in the experience, then grate in – with a microplane, ideally – a little fresh ginger for a more heady pep.

45ml (3 tablespoons) vodka

juice of half a lime

fresh ginger, finely grated

ginger beer, ice cold

Pour the vodka into a glass, add the lime juice and, if you’ve got some around, some fresh, finely grated ginger, and then fill up the glass with ice-cold ginger beer.

Makes 1.

WHITE LADY

When I was an undergraduate in the Brideshead (that’s to say Re-Revisited) Era of 1980s Oxford this was the drink of choice at many a pretentious cocktail party. It’s not a cheap way to get drunk, but remember we’re talking the age of the
jeunesse dorée
here: I seem to remember sipping this under a veiled pillbox hat, the ash from a Sobranie Black Russian flicked from a mesh gloved finger tip. I feel better for getting this off my chest now.

Ideally, this should be shaken over ice, so as not to dilute it, but if you’re making a jugful (and basically, it’s just one third of each ingredient, sugar syrup to taste) it makes life easier if you just toss a handful or so of ice cubes in with it.

25ml Plymouth (or other) gin

25ml Cointreau

25ml lemon juice (about half a lemon’s worth)

1 tablespoon sugar syrup (or dissolve a tablespoon of caster sugar in the lemon juice first)

ice cubes

Shake the ingredients over ice and pour into a glass.

Makes 1.

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Text © 2002 Nigella Lawson
Photographs © 2002 Petrina Tinslay
Landscape photographs © Art Directors and Trip Photo Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in paperback in 2005 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain in 2002, and simultaneously in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Lawson, Nigella
Forever summer / Nigella Lawson.

eISBN: 978-0-307-36398-5

1. Cookery. 2. Summer. I. Title.

TX829.L39 2002 641.5′64    C2002-902096-4

Design and Art Direction: Caz Hildebrand
Cookery Assistants: Hettie Potter with Angela Boggiano
Additional Research: Skye Gyngell
Stylist: Helen Trent

www.randomhouse.ca

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