Caprese-ish Cocktail

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You’ll need the following equipment:

Ingredients:

Gooseberry Shrub
London Dry Gin
Absinthe
Burrata Water

Garnish Ingredients:

I always get my best cocktail ideas when I’m eating. I love a good caprese salad. Oddly enough, it has all the components of what I look for in a cocktail- great acidity, herbal notes, a creamy texture and just a touch of salinity. Instead of simply infusing the ingredients into a spirit or making a syrup, I thought it would be more fun to create a more abstract vision for this drink.

I will never turn down a caprese salad, but when tomatoes are out of season, you have to improvise!

I like to use cape gooseberries or golden berries as they’re also known. They are a relative of the tomato, but more closely related to a tomatillo. They have an amazing sweet and tart flavor that is a mix between sweet and savory. They kind of taste like a cherry tomato mixed with mango. These gooseberries with burrata and basil are a match made in heaven. To incorporate them into my caprese-ish cocktail, I made a zesty gooseberry shrub.

To balance out the shrub’s tartness, I used burrata brine, or whey. Which provides creaminess and a bit of salinity.

For the basil aspect, I made a basil flavored lace tuile as a garnish. I also spritz the serving glass with absinthe to mimic the anise notes from basil.

For the base spirit, I used Ford’s London Dry Gin - which is my go to London Dry.

I couldn’t find much on the internet on flavored tuiles on the internet, so I had to make this a few times until i found just the right recipe. I do not like using artificial colors in my recipes, and sometimes go to great lengths to avoid using them- like in my all natural blue curaçao recipe. Sometimes, there’s just no getting around it. After several attempts of blanching the basil, adding some spinach and adding citric acid to preserve the color i was left with a brownish green tuile that didn’t have the effect i was looking for. Defeated, I ended up adding 3 drops of green food coloring and the color was perfect!

I used 10 basil leaves that I blanched by pouring boiling water of the leaves. Once they turned bright green, I submerged them into an ice bath to preserve the color.

I took the blanched basil and 3 oz of water and blended it together with an immersion blender, then strained it to remove any large particles.

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To the basil water, I added a tablespoon of flour and whisk until there are no clumps. Once the batter was smooth, I added 3 drops of green food coloring.

Now comes the messy part.

I heated a pan over medium heat and then added some canola oil.

Once the oil is hot, I poured in about a third of the batter, and covered the pan with a splatter screen to avoid being splattered by hot oil. Be careful when attempting to make this at home.

Once it was only mildly sizzling, and the color had darkened I removed it from the pan and let it cool on a paper towel and lightly blotting the basil tuile to remove any residual oil.

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For the burrata part of this drink, I am utilized the leftover whey from a burrata container. Whey adds a nice creamy texture to cocktails and can also adds some foam too thanks to a bit of protein in the whey.

Before building the cocktail, spritz the coupe or serving glass of choice a few times with absinthe. The absinthe mimics the anise flavors from basil.

To build the cocktail, first add an ounce of the gooseberry shrub to the shaker tin.
Next add a half ounce of whey.
And lastly add one and half ounces of fords gin.

Add the ice and give this a good 10 second shake then strain it into your absinthe rinsed glass.

Lastly rest the basil tuile garnish on top.

I think the stark white color of the cocktail with the green leaf shaped tuile make quite a statement together and the gooseberry shrub turned out to be so tasty. I really like how the whey, gin and absinthe coalesce together, and the shrub adds a nice sharpness that cuts through the creaminess of the whey.

Does it taste like a caprese salad? It could definitely taste more like one- so I think I’ll try it again with a more neutral spirit like a cucumber infused vodka or my olive oil vodka that i made for my other salad cocktail: watermelon feta milk punch.