Liz Dobson’s lockdown Pages

My Alcoholic Lockdown Pastimes By Liz Dobson

I’m a gin drinker, always been a gin drinker. My father’s only sister was a gin drinker and a forceful personality. My siblings and I all grew up with an ambition to drink gin. Aunty Margaret would have been proud to see six of the seven of us drinking gin in Hong Kong on the occasion of one brother’s 40th birthday celebrations. So I start with gin. A few years ago my daughter-in-law gave me a bottle of bright blue Australian gin called Ink. I read the label and it said it was infused with butterfly pea flowers. Oh, I thought, you get butterfly pea in Thailand. I think I’d seen shampoo for dark hair containing butterfly pea. I collected some flowers, it climbs and looks like a dark blue sweet pea as it’s the same family. I dropped some petals in a bottle of gin and put it in a cupboard to see what happened. Very quickly the gin turned blue (it works with vodka too, I haven’t tried other spirits). The magic happens when you put in the tonic and it turns pink. I collected seed pods and now have it growing all over my iguana cage. Let me know if you’d like some flowers. I was hoping to host a decent sized lunch to say goodbye to our friend Jane Upperton. My thoughts turned to Pimms, what better for a ladies’ lunch. The recipe for Pimms is :GIN : SWEET MARTINI : ORANGE CURACAO I looked in my cupboards, I always have gin, as I said, I’m a gin drinker. I’m quite partial to a Negroni now and again so I usually have the sweet martini. The recipe for a Negroni is :GIN : SWEET MARTINI : CAMPARI Shock horror, no Orange Curacao, but two bottles of Triple Sec and so my thoughts turned to Tequila. Tequila was easier to find than Orange Curacao I can tell you, but by now we were only allowed to meet in groups of five and Jane’s lunch had shrunk. We drank sparkling wine, my kittens really enjoyed playing with all the corks next day, and for pudding we had Salted Margarita Bars. Just let me know if you want the recipe for that, but a Margarita is :2 PARTS TEQUILA : TRIPLE SEC : LIME JUICE Don’t know if many of you know this, but I am a minor petrol head. A follower of Lewis Hamilton (still a bit undecided about the British Grand Prix). My annual trip to Singapore for the Grand Prix is a definite highlight of my year (well it was). No sweating in the Pits for me I sit in the bar at the Mandarin Oriental watching turn 16 and last time I had the most wonderful Gimlet. It consisted of a lovely French gin (well there’s a surprise) called Citadelle, such a pretty bottle which now contains a candle in my garden. The Mandarin said the gin was infused with kaffir lime and the lime syrup for the cocktail also infused with kaffir lime. Gimlet recipe :-

GIN : LIME SYRUP Ratio up to you 1:1 or 5:1 according to taste. Home in Bangkok I tried popping a few scrunched kaffir lime leaves into a bottle of gin and I really liked the taste. Haven’t got around to faffing about with the kaffir lime syrup yet and yes, I know it was nearly two years ago. Next I think I’ll see what happens if I wash my hair with the butterfly peas.