Tomato & Gin soup -> Bloody Mary -> Carrot & Ginger soup -> Kamikaze Carrot!

It’s winter, and compared to the rest of Canada, I suppose it's not really that cold.  Regardless, its soup weather.  Recently, I was enjoying a great spicy Italian soup at the nice little place behind my apartment.  ‘Tis the season.  Lately I’ve taken several ideas from the kitchen as jumping points from which to create some delicious cocktails.  While, a regular boring Mary is made with vodka and I’ll be the first to admit that I did not bother to research the timeline of whether gin went into soup before vodka went into tomato juice, the point is, that a flavour pairing that works well in the back of house will probably work in the front as well.  And then best of all is when the dishes themselves can be offered as a pairing.  

So back to the title.  A while back I was asked to create a cocktail list for a small Japanese restaurant opening up in a former cocktail bar.  Naturally, I wanted to incorporate ingredients into the drinks that would make sense with the plates offered on the food menu.  Ginger seemed like a logical place to start and so I first took my bottle of gin, transferred it into another container and filled it with shredded ginger to sit for a couple of days.  As well I made some ginger syrup and thought about what I could do with these.  This restaurant was going to be a small operation opening on a shoestring budget (the $1000 i had for a liquor inventory in British Columbia dollars came very close to nothing).   Basically I could have twenty or so bottles of alcohol behind the bar, tops.  Here we go cocktail list!

   

I already had a juicer at home that I simply brought over so I could at least have some flexibility without adding too much to the overall capitol required to open up the place.  Cucumber juice and Japanese was a given so what else could I use the juicer for?  Enter the carrot and ginger soup.  I started out basic with ginger infused gin, Cointreau®, fresh carrot and lemon juice topped with soda.  It was passable but definitely not worth writing home or anywhere about.  It needed zing.  So the first step was to add bitters (it was going to be a cocktail after all) and just as with the Bloody Mary, pepper is the quickest way to add some lively spice to a soup.  Lastly I added just a touch of ginger syrup and there it was – a world of difference.

Kamikaze Carrot

1 oz ginger infused gin (used Bombay Sapphire)

½ oz Cointreau

¾ oz fresh lemon juice

1 ½ oz fresh carrot juice

¼ oz ginger syrup

3 dashes orange bitters (used Victoria bitters)

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into tall cocktail glass with fresh ice

Top with approx. 1 oz soda

And fresh cracked black pepper

Garnish with lemon slices and (if you’re feeling artistic) a flourish of carrot twists.

Photo by Maryanne Carmack

Enjoy!

(Ps. the great thing about this cocktail is that because of the carrot juice and the alcohol, it’s both good and bad for your eyes at the same time).