Happy Hour at Home - Clover Club Cocktail

This cocktail has a lot to recommend it.  It has an interesting history, uses fresh berries and an egg white, and it's absolutely gorgeous to look at and very delicious. 

The cocktail dates back to 1880s Philadelphia and it was a pink drink men loved.  It's not too sweet and the egg white gives it a foamy contrasting head that looks beautiful.

First, you'll need to make a raspberry syrup, but it's easy!  This is a no-cook syrup that keeps that fresh raspberry flavour.

Raspberry Syrup 

1/2 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

Muddle the raspberries with the sugar. Let sit 30 minutes until syrupy. Add the water and stir until sugar is completely dissolved. Strain through a fine mesh sieve. Store leftover syrup in the fridge up to a week. 

Clover Club Cocktail (makes one drink)

1 1/2 oz gin

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

1/2 oz dry vermouth

1/2 oz raspberry syrup

1 small egg white 

Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake for 20 seconds.  Strain into a glass. 

Cheers!  

Happy Hour at Home - Watermelon Mojito

I love making cocktails but I don't make frozen cocktails very often. Partially because they always seem overly sweet, and partially because it's just a hassle to haul out the blender and crush ice. 

But this cocktail is an exception!  It is so good, so summery and refreshing, I will definitely make it again and again.  

The trick here is frozen watermelon instead of ice.  This way the watermelon is the star, and it's not diluted by anything but liquor.  I love the way the watermelon's colour just says SUMMER!

The recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen, a great resource for well-tested food and drink recipes.  

Here's how to make this fabulous summer treat:

Frozen Watermelon Mojito Recipe (makes 2 drinks)

1 lb frozen watermelon 

1/2 cup fresh squeezed lime juice (about 3 limes)

1 tablespoon sugar

4 oz rum

10 mint leaves, plus sprigs for garnish

To freeze the watermelon, remove the rind from one small or 1/2 a large watermelon. Remove seeds if necessary and cut into 1-inch cubes. Freeze in a single layer on a tray lined with plastic wrap or parchment for at least one hour.  Save any leftover frozen watermelon in a zip-top bag in the freezer.

To make the cocktail, mix the lime juice and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Blend the frozen watermelon, lime juice and rum in a blender until smooth.  Add the mint leaves and blend briefly until chopped. 

Serve in a roomy glass with a straw, garnished with a mint sprig. Cheers!

Happy Hour at Home - Montparnasse Cocktail

This cocktail is a real find!  I'm obsessed with Calvados and love to find new ways to use it.  I learned about this cocktail from David Lebovitz's blog and Instagram, where he has been posting French cocktails.

I have a dream to go to Normandy where Calvados is made (and to Brittany where the similar Lambig apple brandy is made).  Until then I'll enjoy this cocktail.

Here's how I made it.

Montparnasse Cocktail Recipe

1.5 oz Calvados

0.75 oz elderflower liqueur

0.5 oz lemon juice

0.5 oz sparkling hard cider

Garnish:  apple slice 

Combine the Calvados, elderflower liqueur and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with ice

Shake until well chilled

Pour into a cocktail glass and top with cider

Garnish with an apple slice

Happy Hour at Home - Pimm's Cup

Sometimes I can be resistant to buying a bottle of alcohol just for one cocktail recipe. It seems wasteful and expensive. So I resisted buying Pimm's for a while, but I'm so glad I took the plunge. 

Pimm's No.1 Cup is an unusual gin-based liqueur with herbs. It is traditionally served at British events like Wimbledon. Some Pimm's Cup recipes you see might call for lemonade, but that's British lemonade, which is more like Sprite or 7-Up.  I made my Pimm's Cup with ginger ale, which is an acceptable substitute. 

Muddling cucumber and lemon in the drink makes it even more refreshing. I've seen some recipes call for muddled strawberries as well, which seems a little overboard, but I might try it next time!  I love to garnish the drink with long strips of Persian cucumber, thinly sliced lengthwise to curl around the inside of the glass. 

You can hardly ask for a more refreshing summer cocktail than a Pimm's Cup.  Pimm's is pretty easy to find at the LCBO, and not too pricey, so I'd recommend picking some up!

Pimm's Cup Recipe

1/2-inch chunk of cucumber

1 lemon wedge

2 oz Pimm's No.1

4 oz lemon-lime soda or ginger ale

Garnish: lemon wheel, cucumber

Gently muddle the cucumber and lemon in a tall glass with a wooden spoon or cocktail muddler.

Pour in the Pimm's and soda and stir to combine.  

Garnish with cucumber and lemon.

Happy Hour at Home - Sidecar

I haven't been doing much cooking lately, so I haven't had food posts to share, but I have been making cocktails a lot more frequently so I thought I could share those.

The Sidecar is one of my very favourites.  For the longest time I didn't have cognac at home, but I splurged on a bottle to make these, as well as another favourite - Champagne cocktails. 

A Sidecar is simply cognac, orange liqueur and lemon juice.  I use Triple Sec as my orange liqueur, but you can use Cointreau or Dry Curacao if you prefer. 

Some folks add simple syrup and some like a sugared or half-sugared rim on their Sidecar, but I don't think it's necessary.  

As for Cognac, it can be pricey but it is nice to have in a well-stocked bar. Cognac is a type of brandy made from distilled white wine. It is labled VS, VSOP or XO based on hoe long it is aged (2, 4 or 10 years).  VS Cognac (the least expensive) is fine for mixed drinks, in my opinion. You can also use Armagnac which can be less expensive. 

You'll find recipes with different ratios of cognac to orange liqueur and lemon juice.  This is the mix I prefer.

Sidecar Recipe

2 oz Cognac

1 oz Triple Sec or Cointreau

3/4 oz lemon juice

Add cognac, triple sec and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker filled with ice.

Shake well until chilled.

Strain into coupe glasses and garnish with a twist of lemon.

Quarantine Meatballs

This post is by Matt, the Beer Baron

When she isn’t being awesome in the kitchen, the Clockwatching Tart actually works for a local health unit, which means she is incredibly busy at the moment. Between that and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, cooking has been a bit of a challenge lately. 

One thing that has definitely helped us out has been a delivery service from one of our favourite local restaurants, Grace. Rather than deliver actual meals, Grace has rebranded as Grace Pantry during this time of physical distancing and is using their connections in the food industry to deliver an amazing selection of locally sourced meats, produce and other tasty treats. You can check out their online store here.

When I was unpacking our very first order from Grace Pantry, I was blown away by how beautiful the ground pork from Stonecroft Farms looked. I wanted to do something special with it, so I decided to try a variation of my favourite recipe for meatballs from Anne Burrell. 

I don’t normally refer to ground pork as “pretty”, but there’s the evidence. For my version of the recipe above, I just omitted the veal, substituted dried parsley for fresh (we are in a pandemic, after all), and used more than a cup of parmigiano (pandemic or not, I like what I like). 

Another interesting note about cooking in the age of a pandemic is the absolutely bonkers number of onions I go through in a week. I suppose it is because I have all the time in the world, so I’m making everything from scratch, which often includes onions in one form or another. Luckily, I love dicing onions. I find it soothing and the OCD part of my brain enjoys the symmetry of the process.

While I love garlic, I wouldn’t call the process of smashing it with the flat blade of a knife soothing, but it is certainly satisfying.

When I have the luxury of time, prep work is my absolute favourite part of cooking. It’s obviously the OCD thing, but having nicely diced ingredients all out in their own little bowls or own their own little plates is a very satisfying feeling. 

While the Clockwatching Tart tends to individually weigh her meatballs on a kitchen scale, I opted to just eyeball it and am pretty proud of how they all turned out. I suppose I missed my true calling in meatball forming. C’est la vie.

Apart from quality ingredients, it is how you cook them that really brings out the flavour in these meatballs. Searing each side as best you can in the frying pan before they get finished off in the oven adds so much flavour.

These photos are about two weeks old as I write this post and oddly enough, we had some store bought meatballs for lunch today and I was so disappointed with them that I wanted to throw them out. That is how good these homemade meatballs are in comparison.

Cheers to wonderful comfort food and finding the silver lining during strange times. (And a shout out to Grace Pantry for their awesome, contact-free delivery.)

Homemade Bagels

I see so many people posting online about getting into baking and I love it!  The circumstances are unfortunate, but there's no better time to bake. I've always found baking so relaxing and satisfying. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, and delicious smells and tastes to enjoy. 

I've been extremely busy with work lately, so Matt has been doing all the cooking.  We've had some wonderful meals and I'm able to focus on work without worrying about planning and shopping. 

I finally had a real day off and decided to make these bagels. It's actually a 2-day process.  Make and shape the dough the first day, let it rise in the fridge for 24 hours, then boil and bake the second day.  

Warm fresh bagels just out of the oven are well worth the wait!  

We had them with plain cream cheese, but next time I'll add fresh chives or minced red onion.  

To make bagels you need a few special ingredients and items that may not be in everyone's kitchen.  They use bread flour (hard flour) not All-Purpose flour.  They also need instant yeast, not active dry or rapid rise yeast.  The recipe also calls for barley malt syrup.  I found one jar on Amazon.  It was expensive but I was going to go for it.  Unfortunately it was sold out by the time I tried to check out.  I used brown sugar instead and had a dark, crunchy crust on my bagels.

The recipe I used is from Serious Eats, by Stella Parks at BraveTart.  The method uses a Yukone, flour and water cooked on the stove to make the bagels brown and crisp. It's then added to flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a food processor with water to make a very stiff dough.  My food processor struggled a little because the dough was so stiff, but it came together in the end. 

The most challenging part for me was rolling out the dough balls. I had a hard time getting them smooth without seams. But the final bagels turned out ok.  

Poking the hole in the dough to make the bagel shape was the fun part.  The bagels then sit overnight in the fridge. 

Boiling and baking is quick and easy.  My bagels were dark golden brown after only 23 minutes in the oven. I also added Everything Bagel Seasoning to two of the bagels, and left the rest plain. 

The recipe makes just 8 small-ish bagels, which was perfect for us. The bagels turned out nicely.  I would like to try again with the barley malt syrup to see if it makes a difference.  

I recommend reading the whole story on Serious Eats before making the bagels. There's also a video.  But this was a very simple, satisfying baking project!