Cucumbers, sugar snap peas, fennel: Spring cocktail ingredients are currently cosplaying as parts of a farmers’ market haul. Introduce a green snap to your next drink by borrowing inspiration from the garden.
“This time of year, we get so excited with the world waking back up,” said Annie Williams Pierce, the owner of Law Bird, a bar in Columbus, Ohio.
In 2017, she won the title of most imaginative bartender from the United States Bartending Guild, with a martini that featured a blanc vermouth infused with sugar snap peas. She used a pressure infusion, but there’s an even faster, easier tool that home bartenders can use to add instant vegetal flavor: the muddler.
Using a muddler (or the end of a wooden spoon or rolling pin) to crush fruits, vegetables and herbs imparts their flavors and aromas into the final drink. Unless you’re building the cocktail directly in the glass (or are fine with more texture), Ms. Williams Pierce suggests a double strain to catch every smashed bit before serving.
“It adds a little extra layer of refinement,” she said.
To do so, strain the shaken cocktail into the glass through both the Hawthorne strainer (or the strainer on top of your shaker) and a small fine-mesh strainer.
Ms. Williams Pierce suggests avoiding barrel-aged spirits, which can overpower delicate flavors. Instead, look to clearer, botanical-leaning ones, like gin, a grassy tequila or pisco, which enhance the drink’s savory notes. Should you want to double down on the greener elements — or don’t want to make a market run — incorporate an herbaceous liqueur (such as a quality fennel liqueur, Chartreuse or génépy) or green-leaning bitters.
“My staff has to keep me from putting celery and green cardamom bitters in everything,” Ms. Williams Pierce said. “We put it in margaritas. We put it in gimlets or daiquiris, anything that’s just going to want that little extra oomph.”
Simple syrups offer another excellent means to a garden-fresh end. Try infusing a standard sugar syrup with mint, celery leaves, basil or tarragon and swapping it into your next drink. Or make a cucumber syrup by juicing peeled cucumbers (in a juicer or a blender) and combining the strained juice with equal parts sugar by weight. As this method doesn’t use any heat to extract flavor, it keeps the refreshing essence at the forefront. But, Ms. Williams Pierce suggests, if you’re not using it right away, add a bit of vodka to the mix to help stabilize it.
When plucking ingredients from the garden or the market or the store, “freshest is best, obviously,” Ms. Williams Pierce said. This is especially true when working with herbs, she continued. “They do not have the world’s longest shelf life,” she said. “If you’re going to get them, commit to using them.”
A mint simple syrup and muddled snap peas infuse this take on the gimlet.Credit…Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell.
Plenty of traditional cocktails can easily be modified into seasonal variations. The snap pea gimlet combines muddled snap peas with gin, lime and mint simple syrup. In a mildly peppery take on the Pimm’s Cup, arugula, mint sprigs, cucumber slices and citrus wheels are crushed together, and the drink is garnished with even more leafy greens. (Ms. Williams Pierce suggests incorporating the aromatic leaves alongside mint and cucumber for an extra layer of crisp flavor.) Combined with lime juice and something bubbly — alcoholic or not — you have the ideal spring formula for a bright, savory spritz.
“If all of your green flavors are coming from fresh vegetables and already nonalcoholic-based things, then that’s an absolute no-brainer to turn that into a NA,” Ms. Williams Pierce said. Combine muddled snap peas with lemon or lime and a splash of club soda, swap in mint simple syrup for the standard in your next lemon- or limeade, or mix up a celery sour mocktail, which adds both stalk and leaves to an elegantly green nonalcoholic drink.
Looking from garden to the bar offers drinkers the taste and often color of the season. Vegetables for spring? Groundbreaking.
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