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发表于 2012-7-20 05:01:14
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i’m back up in cape cod, feeding what has for several years been a smoldering mania for beach plums (prunus maritima), with an eye to making not jelly but rather a homemade liqueur i stumbled onto quite coincidentally. i happened to be here while researching an article on a number of years back. i learned that sloe berries are a type of wild plum, the fruit of a shrub called a blackthorn tree that grows in hedgerows in england. the english have never been able to cultivate them, and the fruit ― being mostly pit surrounded by a thin pulp that is equal parts bitter, sour and astringent ― is used, when it is used at all, for making sloe gin. it’s macerated in the strongest gin available,borse gucci prezzi, and sugar is added to the final result to create a homespun liqueur.
i couldn’t help drawing comparisons to a cape cod specialty, the small wild plum that grows in the sandy soil down the northeast coast: it’s mostly pit,chanel sito ufficiale louis vuitton pas cher ebay.,ralph lauren, surrounded by a ferociously bitter and astringent fruit. the locals, when they bother with it at all, turn into a jelly that has a cult following for its unusual, piquant flavor. the plums are so difficult to harvest and tedious to pit that even most locals ignore them.
with all the englishmen who’ve been dragging up and down this coast for the past 400 years or so,longchamp pas cher ralph lauren femme education -, i can’t have been the first to make this connection,ralph lauren prada occhiali gagosian gallery - t magazine bl, but i’ve yet to find a precedent for my beach-plum gin.
that first year i figured,prada scarpe gucci sito ufficiale scarpe gucci wom,prada scarpe, what have i got to lose (aside from a magnum of good gin)? i stashed some ziploc bags in my golf bag and raided a stand of beach-plum shrubs i’d seen ripening on a nearby course. i followed the protocol for making sloe gin i’d gleaned from english friends and from sean harrison, the master distiller of plymouth,prada borse,sac pliage longchamp, whose sloe gin is perhaps the best commercial example available. i washed and picked through the fruit and then pricked each “berry” with a fork to allow the spirit to soak in. from there it’s a layup; you just plunk them into the gin and wait. and wait.
sloe gin is considered something you make in late summer that is ready anywhere from that christmas to the following one; i found that to be about right with the beach-plum gin as well. for quite some time, it seemed to take on a slight pink tinge but offered nothing in the taste or smell departments. i thought it hadn’t worked, so i left the bottles in the storage room of my bar and forgot about them. the next time i thought about them was late the following spring. the color had turned a deep red, the beach plums swirling in it were blanched,polo lacoste pas cher, and the liquor was a marvel: spicy,ralph lauren femme energy transfer says it is, fruity,prada occhiali, bitter and astringent, it came alive with a dash of simple syrup. i felt like i’d discovered the northwest passage.
this is my fourth year making it,ralph lauren, and each year i refine the recipe. now i just bring mason jars to the beach and fill them with fruit, pouring over enough gin to cover. i generally use tanqueray, which at 94.6 proof gives the endeavor a running shove and stands up to the eventual dilution of the plums’ juice, and also because its straightforward aromatics won’t interfere with the fruit. beefeater also bottles at 94 proof, and if starts making its 114-proof navy strength gin available here, as is lately rumored,longchamp, those would also make excellent base spirits. a stronger gin is a more powerful solvent to draw out the color and flavor.
i first experimented by both pricking and freezing the plums to open up the skins and allow the gin to permeate the fruit. as it turns out,polo ralph lauren, neither is necessary. the whole plums, well rinsed, work just as well after a number of months. i learned from the jelly and jam makers that a combination of slightly underripe and ripe berries give a rounded,polo lacoste pas cher, puckery mix.
typically one adds sugar to the recipe right off, but i find that different years and even different sides of the same tree can produce fruit with markedly varying degrees of sourness and sweetness. i prefer to keep the gin unsweetened,prada, adding simple syrup to taste when i make drinks with it to better control the sugar. when drinking it straight, in fact, i often prefer it unsweetened. this would not be for everyone; the naturalist euell gibbons, who loved them, called beach plums’ tartness “almost ribald,” while the fruit sage david karp in the new york times that they’re addictive,ralph lauren femme, but “not for sissy palates.”
though beach-plum gin is clearly different from sloe gin ― its fruit is briny and bracing, where sloe gin’s is earthy and raisiny ― i maintain that it is every bit as interesting and delicious. you can use it in any capacity in which sloe gin has been revered: sipped neat from small cordial glasses or a flask in the winter,longchamp pas cher, made into a fizz or a swizzle to slake the heat,sac longchamp pliage, or adding a dramatic dash to a french 75 with prosecco or champagne.
the whole of this enterprise is in the solitary thrill of locating and gathering the fruit. it is a cranky, difficult plant,ralph lauren pas cher, and you have to approach it on its terms. last year i was panicked when i couldn’t find a single plum at any of my secret spots. i wasn’t sure if i’d missed the window, or if global warming had poleaxed the setting of the fruit. i found out that the tree has fallow years, a peculiarity that cornell university’s cape cod cooperative extension calls “biennial bearing.” even when they’re in raving bounty, as they are this year, gathering beach plums is no sinecure. a pound per hour might be considered a geyser. this harvest found me pulling wooden spines out of my shin; getting covered in bloody scratches as i pushed into dense,prada borse,polo ralph lauren lunettes ray ban pas cher disney movie clu, barbed shrubbery; stretched out in comically abusive yoga postures with my hands snaking through prickly labyrinths toward the chalky bloom of a perfect dark plum just out of reach. none of it will sway me.
even during the window of ripeness, which is roughly late august through early october,longchamp,polo ralph lauren pas cher, you’ll find trees bearing fruit that ranges from hard and unripe to bloated on the same branch, with pin-up beauties buried amid clusters of withered or dried plums. it’s perhaps partly this thorny unpredictability, this swing from paucity to flush plenitude ― and that kiss of hard-won sweetness amid the sour and bitterness ― that causes one to ardently pursue this fruit. isn’t that typically the way with these mad, one-way infatuations?
beach-plum gin fizz
2 ounces beach-plum gin
1 ounce fresh lemon juice
3/4 ounce simple syrup (or to taste)
brut champagne or prosecco to fill
lemon peel, for garnish.
in a shaker filled with ice, combine first 3 ingredients and shake well. strain into a champagne flute or wine glass and fill ― carefully, to avoid frothing ― to the top with champagne or other sparkling wine. garnish with a long,longchamp pas cher, thin lemon peel. serves 1. |
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