The New Year From Here, and other Cocktails to Ring in The Year

Celebration comes easy in a room full of friends. In a room full of friends who are also gardeners, foragers, explorers, kitchen-witches, preservers and fermenters…well, it’s a jolly affair, indeed. This is why we gather, and cook, and experiment, and preserve; to share our findings, to nourish our community, and to have fun doing it.

Amber Turpin is a local food and travel writer, as well as a dear friend. Her adventurous palate and inventive flavor combinations always surprise and delight, as do her luscious sentence structures. We’ve shared many a meal and lifted many a glass together, over the years. It’s been a long standing tradition of ours that we picnic with our families together on New Year’s Day, and this year we invited her up to the yurt kitchen ahead of time, to help us devise some appropriate New Year’s cocktails. We invite you too, to join in the festivities, and to lift a glass together with us, in celebration and anticipation of the year ahead.

Cheers, friends.

The New Year From Here

This cocktail stole the show, both for its festive presentation, and the way it blended the flavors of home and season so seamlessly. It is everything we want to toast a new year with. The fir syrup that gives the drink its coniferous notes is easily made ahead of time, and is equally at home when paired with gin, whiskey, or just plain soda and lemon, for future cocktail creations.

Directions

Make a Douglas Fir syrup. Snip a branch of young fir needles from a Douglas Fir tree. (All our local conifers are edible, but fir has the nicest flavor, as well as a host of healthful benefits.) Trim the edges of the needles to allow the flavor to escape from the needles more readily. Bring 1 cup water to a boil, and drop the fir in. Allow the fir to infuse for at least an hour, and preferably overnight, for maximum flavor. Strain out the fir needles and bring to a boil.



Add 1 cup of sugar and stir to dissolve. If desired, slip another sprig of fir into the syrup, to look fancy, and remind you of the forest. Squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon, to add acidity and balance to the sweet syrup. Store syrup in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.


To make the cocktail:
Add 2 ounces chilled gin to a champagne flute.  Add 2 ounces Douglas Fir syrup.

Top with champagne.
To make the garnish, strip most of the needles from a rosemary sprig, leaving a few needles at the tip. Rinse a few cranberries so that they are damp, and roll them in sugar. Impale a sugared cranberry or three on the rosemary sprig and set it on the edge of the flute.
A dash of orange bitters rounds out the flavor.

Boozy Crème of Baharat

This beverage is what you want on a dark, cold evening, a bright mug of warmth and spice to balance out the night. It is creamy and rich and decadent, but it feels nourishing, somehow, in the way that warm milk, fragrant spices, and self-care do. We have been experimenting lately with using oil in cocktails; just a teaspoon of oil adds an incredible, silky mouthfeel to a drink. Coconut oil is hard to use in most cocktails, because it is solid at room temperature; the decision to warm this cocktail added exponentially to its appeal, and enabled us to use coconut oil for a fragrant, tropical sip. If you want to drink it cold, walnut oil might be an interesting substitute.

Baharat is a Middle-Eastern spice blend that is the secret anchor of this tabbouleh recipe. It features cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, and other warming spices. Ever since we featured it in the journal, we have been making it in small batches to keep on hand for myriad off-label uses.

The smoked tea syrup was an experiment that we conducted to christen the first use of a newly built smoker; if you have not smoked your own Assam tea leaves, Lapsang Souchong is a smoked black tea available at local stores. Brew the tea and use it in equal portion with white sugar to make a simple syrup.

Directions

Make the baharat, if you do not have any on hand.
Make a simple syrup with Lapsang Souchong or other smoked tea in equal proportion to sugar.

In a small saucepan, bring 1 cup whole milk or coconut milk to a gentle simmer. Add the coconut oil, baharat, and smoked tea syrup and stir to combine; remove from heat.
Add a shot of dark rum, and pour into a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously, until a rich foam coats the surface. (Alternatively, use a milk foamer or pour from a very high elevation to create the the froth.)
Pour into a warm mug for optimum enjoyment, and add a sprinkle of baharat to float on the surface, too.

Mama’s Magic Marmalade

This, right here, is a chief joy of pantry-stocking. To muse in front of the shelves, to reach back a season or two for a flavor that has been preserved in a jar until just this moment, is a true luxury and blessing. The bitter orange sweetness of this marmalade plays well with the softly bitter notes of olive oil, the sweet fire of bourbon. Lime cuts the sweetness and sparkling mineral water makes it trill and sing. Remember that olive oil comes in many flavors; a bitter, peppery olive oil will stand out more than a mellow, grassy one against the other ingredients. We like it bitter, which incidentally is a good indicator of the healthful phenolic compounds that support heart health, but choose a flavor that speaks to you.

Directions

In a cocktail shaker, add 1 tablespoon marmalade.

Add bourbon.

Add olive oil

and the juice of 1/2 lime.

Shake vigorously in a cocktail shaker and pour into a chilled cocktail glass filled with ice; the olive oil will make a delightful bit of froth on the surface.
Top off with sparkling mineral water to taste, and garnish with a wedge of lime, or some fresh curls of lime zest.

Burning Leaves

Oh didn’t we have fun, this fall, infusing various flavors into alcohol to give as gifts to friends. Luckily, we have a bit left over from the giving frenzy. The ancho mezcal is smoky, peppery, a little bitter, in all the best ways. The pumpkin syrup has been a fun way to use up small bits of pumpkin and winter squash, warm and spicy, and it’s probiotic, too, as it is fermented with a ginger bug. This cocktail might seem more reminiscent of fall, with reference to burning leaves, late summer peppers, and pumpkins. But the warm, spicy, smoky flavors might be just the thing in winter, too, as we begin a new year, carrying the flavors of the previous seasons into the promise of the next. In any case, it is delicious. May the bounty of years past carry over into this one, seeding the future with possibilities.

Directions

Infuse mezcal with Ancho peppers. Place a single dried Ancho pepper in a pint of mezcal, and allow to infuse for up to 24 hours; longer infusion times can make the mezcal too bitter, a result of the tannins in dried pepper skin.
Make a simple syrup with equal parts sugar and smoked black tea, such as Lapsang Souchong. Allow to cool before using.
In a glass, combine 3 ounces Ancho mezcal with 2 ounces pumpkin syrup and 1 ounce smoked tea syrup.
Add ice. Squeeze half a lime over the top. 

Top with soda water.

Add 3 dashes aromatic bitters, such as Angostura.

Over to You

It’s part of our mission here at Mountain Feed to help you make delicious, sustainable, homemade food more often. Stop by and say hello on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest. Or, as always, you can do it the old fashioned way and come by the store to speak with one of our in-house experts.