Pimp your Drink
Recipe, Food, Styling & Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald
Pickle forever!
Either they are brought along as a guest gift or they land spontaneously in the shopping cart because they arouse curiosity. The latter led me to impulse buy pickled blood oranges, the sweet and sour counterpart to the salt lemon. The blood orange season is a highlight for me every year. So I'm really pleased to be able to buy them preserved as an emergency supply for the rest of the year.
The pickled orange slices are perfect for adding to salads or burrata. With fennel, they can make a lovely topping for a risotto. Recipes will follow (subscribe to the newsletter if you like).
But what do we do with the liquid, the "orange water"? It's too good to throw away. It is perfect for pimping simple drinks. In the water of the preserved oranges, you can taste the sweet and sour flavours as well as the cinnamon used. In addition, there are tartnesses. The fruits are potted like salt lemons with peel.
The use of pickle water or similar is nothing unusual in the bar world. Let's think of the pickled martini, in which pickles along with the liquid play a role. For non-alcoholic cocktails, these sour additions are not to be underestimated. They take on the role of additives, such as bitters. The use of bitters, which often have an alcohol content of 15% or more by volume, is only partially suitable for alcohol-free cocktails. Even if it is only a dash and the drink does not exceed the 0.5% vol. range, it should still be used with the utmost caution. Although there are now completely alcohol-free bitters, e.g. Allthebitter, unfortunately they are only available in the USA and the UK to date.
When it comes to drinks, there are numerous options. I have three very simple suggestions here. In first place: Sanbitter. This traditional non-alcoholic drink from Italy has been on the market since 1961 and, apart from tonic, is probably one of the oldest non-alcoholic alternatives with an adult bitter note. In the mix with tonic, there is always something missing that works against the many bitter substances. That's why Sanbitter is often served with orange juice. That, on the other hand, is too much fruit juice for me. Therefore, my suggestion: pure on ice with a dash of the brine from the preserved blood oranges. It's amazing the effect it has!
But such a sweet and sour portion is also really good in Chinotto, the Italian bitter lemonade. You can find out more about what you can do with Chinotto here and here.
The pickled oranges go well with all dishes of southern and Levantine cuisine and therefore also particularly well with pomegranate. As a drink, it could look something like this: Red vermouth with pomegranate juice. Here the sweet and sour vinegar note comes into its own, and the cinnamon note is the gamechanger.
The suggested drinks should be flavoured according to personal taste. For the last drink, I have given a rough mixing ratio, but ultimately it is the taste and choice of non-alcoholic alternative to the Red Vermouth that decides which is used.
Cheers, sober buddies!
Food, Styling & Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald
The drink
5 CL non-alcoholic red vermouth
15 CL pomegranate juice
1 CL brine, pickled Orange
Ice
Optional: Some pomegranate
Garnish: Orange slice or lemon slice
Fill a glass with ice. Add vermouth, pomegranate juice and the preserved orange water and stir gently with a bar spoon. Garnish with lemon or orange. Optional: Add a little pomegranate.
Styling & Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald