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FOOD & DRINK | RECIPES
Just add alcohol
Experimental West Country cooks Susannah and Aaron Rickard have a way with booze – using it as a key ingredient in their food – and fortunately they have written it all down in a recipe book
W
hen the idea of cooking with alcohol captured our imagination, we couldn’t figure out why it isn’t more popular. Alcoholic drinks are delicious, and they have been fermented or distilled primarily for flavour and enjoyment. Just think of how many spices you have in your cupboard, and all the drinks in the grocery store or along the back of a bar! Each of those ingredients can bring a lot to the table. We’ve always been experimental cooks, and eaters. As a child, Aaron travelled to over 50 countries, and spent years living in the United States – developing a taste for wild and wonderful flavour combinations. Susannah, on the other hand, grew up with classic British and Australian home cooking, and then went to work for a spice recipe kit company (The Spicery) after university. This included a year in the recipe development kitchen, and instilled a passion for creating great food at home in an approachable way. So when we started cooking with alcohol, and realised just how intriguing and rewarding it could be, we got a bit carried away. Five years later, after countless hours creating this cookbook from our flat, our excitement about the topic has only increased.
As we developed recipes with these flavour pairings, we found that there’s almost always another way that the alcohol impacts the dish – the texture, caramelisation, gluten formation, acidity, or something else entirely. And in truth this was the most fascinating part of the recipe development process – discovering the science behind each dish, and figuring out how to explain it succinctly. For example, our prosecco panna cotta recipe uses slightly less gelatine than a traditional panna cotta, because prosecco itself is mildly acidic and this causes the cream to thicken and set. It was these discoveries that set us on a path to writing a book, where we could share the fascination and fun with others.
Developing dishes, discovering the science Recipe development is tricky, but most of the recipes in Cooking with Alcohol started out as a question: how could the flavours of this particular alcohol be used in cooking? In some cases, we started by looking for matching flavour characteristics to find the best uses for an ingredient. Both chorizo and red wine can be smoky and spicy, so we paired these together in our very first recipe – chorizo in red wine and honey – where they get along beautifully. We also considered how a dish could be adapted and improved with the addition of alcohol, using alcohol as a seasoning or garnish to add depth and complexity that might otherwise be missing from a dish, or take hours to develop with traditional cooking. A white wine might be described as zesty or buttery, and when we bring it into the kitchen, these flavours can enhance a recipe where zestiness or butteriness are desired – an example of this is our fennel and white wine tagliatelle.
Overall, the savoury and sweet baking chapters of this book were the most challenging – baked goods need to end up solid, and alcohol is liquid! This required a huge amount of recipe testing (and recipe failures), as we figured out the delicate balance of flavour and texture. We were really thankful for long-suffering colleagues and neighbours, who ate the results of these early recipe tests! A particularly runny batch of Kahlua fudge springs to mind… We really enjoyed writing this book, and hope it brings joy to others. After all, Cooking with Alcohol isn’t just a collection of recipes. It’s about encouraging you to think about alcohol as more than a drink, by showing how the flavours and functions can help to create some truly amazing food. We firmly believe that alcohol deserves a place in your kitchen, as well as in your glass.
Susannah and Aaron
48 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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AUGUST 2021
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NO¯ 201
Our prosecco panna cotta uses slightly less gelatine because prosecco itself is mildly acidic and this causes the cream to thicken
• Cooking With Alcohol, £25, Lendal Press; cookingwithalcohol.co.uk
