fine sea salt
Preheat the oven to 140°C/275°F/Gas Mark 1. Place the almonds on a baking sheet and, with your hands, generously coat them all over with the butter.
Bake for 25–30 minutes, checking every now and then and giving them a shake, until they are honey blonde.
Remove from the oven and place straight on to a sheet of greaseproof paper. Salt them generously straight away. Then crumple up the paper a little and leave to cool. Transfer to a bowl, sprinkle with the salt left on the paper and serve.
I Flip For Felicity
When my dear friend and agent Felicity got married, we asked what she’d like for a present. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I could use a drink.’ This is it.
The flip is arguably the oldest of cocktails, and certainly among the first of the American classics, combining spirit and egg with sugar and spice. We’ve lightened this one, removing the egg yolk, and sharpened it up with a little lemon. And, with its hint of English rose, need I say more?
50 ml (1¾ fl oz) gin
25 ml (¾ fl oz) fresh lemon juice
1 egg white
15 ml (½ fl oz)
5 ml (1 tsp) rose water
a good dash of Angostura bitters
Pour the gin, lemon juice, egg white, syrup, rose water and bitters into a cocktail shaker. Shake hard to emulsify. Fill with ice and shake until very cold, then strain into a cocktail glass. It should be frothy, with a slight blush, and delightfully cold.
KAY’S TIP: The qualities of rose water vary enormously. You need a pure rose water for this — if you only have one made with concentrate, use just a drop, otherwise the drink will taste too much like Turkish Delight.
The Vesper
This is the classic cocktail of Bond, named for Vesper Lynd, the chic femme fatale of Casino Royale (oh, to make one’s entrance in a dress of black velvet, ‘simple and yet with a touch of splendour that only half a dozen couturiers in the world can achieve’!). In the book it’s made with gin, vodka and Kina Lillet, a fortified wine bittered with quinine. Lillet modernized it in the 1980s to make Lillet Blanc, which is less bitter, and some bartenders now use Cocchi Aperitivo Americano to attain the original flavour. I think that touch of bitterness is appropriately Bond-esque. He may have named a drink after her, but it can’t ease the hurt of her betrayal. I like to think that in ‘the violet hour’, an older Bond might order one and remember Vesper a little more kindly.
60 ml (2 fl oz) gin
20 ml (¾ fl oz) vodka
10 ml (2 tsp) Lillet Blanc or Cocchi Aperitivo Americano
a large twist of lemon, to garnish
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and pour in the gin, vodka and Lillet Blanc. Shake vigorously until it’s ice cold. Then strain into a Martini glass and garnish with a large, thin twist of lemon peel.
Note: Bond says Gordon’s gin; I prefer something with 40 per cent alcohol.
‘When I’m…er…concentrating,’ says Bond, ‘I never like to have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made.’ Well… this is strong, and arguably enough for two ordinary mortals lacking in Bond’s super-human capacity for alcohol!
The Bronx
One of the Five Boroughs Cocktails, this drink was allegedly created by Bronx-born restaurateur Joseph Sormani in Philadelphia around 1905. Its proportions vary from recipe to recipe, ranging from equal parts of gin and the two vermouths with just a dash of orange juice and orange bitters, to the much drier version I use here. The Bronx also exists in silver and gold versions – the silver contains an egg white, and the gold an egg yolk. If you fancy either version, make sure you shake it vigorously before you add the ice so that it emulsifies properly, then shake again.
15 ml (½ fl oz) fresh orange juice
10 ml (2 tsp) red vermouth
10 ml (2 tsp) dry vermouth
40 ml (1¼ fl oz) gin
a twist of orange, to garnish
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add the orange juice, vermouths and the gin. Shake until it’s very cold, then strain into a Martini glass and garnish with a twist of orange. Serve at once.
The Queens
This is apparently a genuine Harry Craddock cocktail, or so says Robert Vermeire, author of Cocktails: How to Mix Them, published in 1922. He ought to know. Craddock was his contemporary, and the author of The Savoy Cocktail Book, one of the pre-war bibles of mixology.
Appropriately, for a Five Boroughs cocktail, it is very similar to the Bronx, replacing the orange juice with fresh pineapple.
½ slice of fresh pineapple
20 ml (¾ fl oz) red vermouth
20 ml (¾ fl oz) dry vermouth
40 ml (1¼ fl oz) gin
Crush the pineapple with a muddler in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. Fill the shaker with ice, then pour in the two vermouths and the gin. Shake well, then strain into a cocktail glass.
The Gibson
There are various stories about the Gibson’s origins. Two of them involve characters named Gibson, who would ask bartenders to serve them water in a Martini glass with a silverskin onion garnish so they could tell their drink apart from their friends’ alcoholic Martinis. A third version says that the Gibson – a much drier version of the Martini than was fashionable before the Second World War – sported its onion to single it out from its more vermouthified colleagues. Martinis have become drier and drier over time, but I think the Gibson’s onion makes it a perfect dinner cocktail, preferably served with a rare grilled steak.
5 ml (1 tsp) white vermouth
60 ml (2 fl oz) gin
1–3 pearl onions, to garnish
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and pour in the vermouth. Stir vigorously to coat the ice, then pour in the gin. Stir again. When the cocktail is perishingly cold, strain into a Martini glass and garnish with the onions.
KAY’S TIP: Replace the gin with vodka for a Vodka Gibson.
The Fine & Dandy
I think the Fine and Dandy is a bit of
