I would say that I have a mild interest in drinks. It's pretty interesting to flip through a cocktail recipe book and see the actual ingredients behind incredibly cool sounding names that I've only ever heard uttered by figures of urbanity behind a television/cinema screen; I'm imagining Sex In The City despite never seeing it nor having any such desire to. I also take a great fascination in the craftspeople who go beyond the hallowed classics to make something intriguing (wasabi martini? sign. me. up.)
The only issue I tend to come up against is actually drinking the stuff. Now, this is usually where someone would fill you in with scandalous stories of debauchery and bacchanalia. Well, would Bacchus have become drowsy after just one beer? Did the ancient bacchanals involve slumping on the sofa, struggling to concentrate on the game of Final Fantasy X you have ongoing? I can't say for sure, but probably not.
This wasn't always the case. I'd say that I developed a good resilience to ingesting heavy quantities of intoxicating spirits around the age of sixteen? This begun to wane at around the time that I reached the legal drinking age (18 for any international readers). Contrary to the usual student experience, my alcohol consumption actually plummeted as a student. We could go deep into this, but let's just say that I spent a lot of my time as an undergraduate hiding away. There weren't too many opportunities within that self-limitation for convivial merriment. However, very occasionally I would retreat from my hermitage (to an extent) to take part in a "night out"; over three years, this probably happened about seven times. With about three of those taking place in the first week of the first year. Safe to say, my resilience took a hit.
I also had the tremendously slow-burning realisation that alcohol does absolutely nothing to combat my social anxiety. Quite the opposite, being tightly wound up in these situations makes any situation in which a sense of control has to be ceded a very troubling one. It's probably a positive thing to finally come to terms with, as I've heard from a few reputable sources that alcohol may not be the healthiest or the most sustainable balm for a precariously whirring mind.
Is this where you expect me to start handing out flyers for the temperance movement? Aside from desiring the complete expulsion of casual alcoholism jokes from society (tote bags that say "prosecco made me do it" need to insert themselves directly into the nearest available incinerator), I'm a big advocate for moderate drinking. At the age of 25, I don't particularly enjoy feeling as if I need to make a special effort to push through drink number one. My thought here is to think more often of drinking as something to enjoy for itself, rather than it primarily being the pathway to other sources of fun. Something I've been thinking about for a while is infused gin (I believe some people call these ginfusions). You mean that you can imbue spirits with flavour in the same way that you might make a herbal infusion? Revolutionary.
Okay... not new at all. But the great benefit of infused spirits is that they don't require a lot of (potentially costly) ingredients to create something that feels multifaceted. I don't know about you, but I don't think I'm ever going to have a cocktail bar. The idea of walking into a store and spending £20 at once on a bottle of alcohol makes me feel something similar to that first drink feeling. If I had to keep a cabinet for cocktails stocked, I would be a nervous wreck. Neither my heart, nor my wallet are really in it. Admittedly, the only reason this recipe came to be was that my father recently stopped enjoying gin. He didn't broadcast this fact very widely, however, and come Christmas he became the recipient of a few bottles of his once favourite (Gordon's - if you are a gin snob then maybe navigate away from this page). This is the anxiety-free way I managed to get my hands on some.
For a long time now, I had the idea that I was going to use some of the fragrant aromatics found in Thai cooking for a flavoured gin. It has just been a long time since I've had actual ownership over a bottle of the stuff. As well as my father, I need to give a shout out to FOTB Keith (the usual suspect) who bought me a gin-infusion kit for Christmas; really the festive period provided the perfect set of circumstances to create my long-nurtured concoction.
This is incredibly easy to do if you have a moderately neutral tasting gin in your store cupboard, and the various herbs and spices in your store cupboard. If not, the ingredients are all things that are now very commonly found in supermarkets. I stipulate a fairly small quantity of gin here, so if you read this and you think you might like it but aren't sure, you're not going to be sacrificing an entire bottle. By the way, when I say "neutral tasting gin", use one that is balanced and doesn't have a particularly distinctive flavour profile; we don't want our aromatics to be in competition!
As a last note, can I just say how much I dislike the word fragrant when used to describe Thai aromatics? I wasn't sure what to call this without using that word, but I find pretty twee. Surely, it can refer to any pleasant smell? Thai herbs and spices are incredibly characteristic to distill down to such a vague word. It also kind of feels like it's playing into somewhat orientalist notions of the delicacy of South East Asia, but we won't go too deep into that rabbit hole. Was that a pointless rant? Potentially! Let's proceed.
Thai Aromatic Infused Gin
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Infusion time: 8 hours
Ingredients
250 ml of neutral flavoured gin
3 lime leaves, dried or fresh (*see notes)
1/3 of a red chilli, cut into thin strips
1/2 inch slice of ginger, cut into thin strips
1/2 a stalk of lemongrass, crushed
3 strips of lime peel
Method
Prepare all of the ingredients as specified above, and insert them into a bottle that has enough room for 250 ml of gin to be poured into it.
Pour the gin over the ingredients and seal the bottle tightly. Turn the infusion over in your hands gently a few times, before leaving for at least eight hours.
After the infusion time is over, strain the ingredients and store your gin in the desired receptacle.
Notes & Adjustments
(*) Lime leaves are most commonly found in supermarkets with the name k**fir lime leaves, however I do not want to use this name as I've found that it is actually a racist slur for Black Africans in South Africa. I'm going to refer to these simply as lime leaves from here on in.
I imagine that this could be made with vodka if preferred; perhaps even white rum?
The list of aromatics stipulated here is by no means exhaustive. If you wanted a more complex taste, you could add some fresh coriander for a more lively taste; galangal or turmeric for a herbal root kick; Thai basil or star anise for a shot of aniseed; or tamarind for a sour edge. I would probably advise against garlic, but if you were to try it then I would observe with a morbid curiosity.
I made this into a gin and tonic, as I'm a simple boy of humble origin. However, if you have greater mixology intuitions than I then I'm sure this could be taken in many other directions. Personally, I would like to try making a gin martini with a twist of lime using this (just have to psyche myself into buying a bottle of vermouth).
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