Gin and Lime Mousse

A thistledown mousse flavoured with fresh limes and a poke of gin. I like lemony mousses, and I love a cold gin & tonic on a hot night, so I thought I'd combine these tinkling flavours in a light summer dessert.

Although I was pleased with the texture of these mousses when they came out of the fridge, they didn't have much  of a gin taste. Adding more gin wasn't an option, because alcohol sometimes inhibits the setting of jelly.

Then I remembered my mum's advice: when mixing a gin and tonic, you should always splash a few drops of neat gin over the top of the drink, so that  your nostrils are assailed by a pure blast of gin flavour as you take the first sip. This is known, in my family, as 'waving the bottle over the glass'.

 I hope I'm not making my mother sound like a lush. She's not. But she does appreciate a G & T - as we all damn well do, Delilah!  - when our large family gathers for Christmas at a beach cottage on the south coast of KwaZulu Natal.

So, heeding the advice of my sainted Mama, I dribbled a few teaspoons of neat cold gin over the top of each mousse. It worked.

I've used leaf gelatine in this mousse because I find that, when it comes to a delicate mixture like this, the leaf variety produces a beautiful soft texture that can't be matched by powdered gelatine. Leaf gelatine is available at speciality food shops and some supermarkets (I bought mine at my local Spar) in South Africa.

If you can't find leaf gelatine, use an equal weight of powdered gelatine - that is, 10 grams. (If you don't have an electronic scale, buy the powdered gelatine in sachets.)

Lime and Gin Mousse

6 gelatine leaves (weighing 10 grams)
5 T (75 ml) cold water
3  large, free-range eggs
one cup (250 ml) caster sugar
the finely grated zest of three small limes
4 T (60 ml) freshly squeezed lime juice
5 T (75 ml) neat gin
1 cup (250 ml) single (whipping) cream

To top:
shreds of lime zest
a little cold gin

Put the gelatine leaves on a deep plate and cover with the cold water. Set aside to soak for 5 minutes.

Separate the eggs into two large bowls. To the egg yolks, add the caster sugar. Using a rotary beater or hand-whisk, beat the mixture for a few minutes, or until it is thick, pale and fluffy. Don't worry if the mixture seems claggy at first: it will soon loosen up.

Set the plate containing the gelatine over a pot of simmering water. While the gelatine's melting, beat the lime juice into the egg yolk/sugar mixture, a little at a time. Now add the gin in the same way, beating well between each additon. Stir in the lime zest. Remove the melted gelatine from the stove, allow to cool a little, and beat it into the egg mixture.

Put the cream in a separate bowl and, using the same beaters, whip to a soft peak. Gently fold the cream into   the egg mixture.

Place the bowl in the fridge for ten minutes to firm up. Wash the rotary beater's whisks in hot soapy water, rinse well, and then dry with a clean cloth. Now whisk the egg whites to a soft peak. Using a metal spoon, briskly stir a dollop of egg white into the egg-yolk/sugar mixture (this serves to 'slacken' the mix). Now, very gently, fold in the remaining egg white. Spoon (or pipe) into martini glasses and chill for two hours, or until set.

Just before serving, sprinkle each glass of mousse with shreds of lime zest and a tablesoon or so of neat gin.

Serves 6

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Borscht in Small Glasses: Iced Beetroot and Gin Shots

Iced Beetroot and Gin Shots

Here's an idea for a zinging cocktail: cool, earthy beetroot soup, spiked with gin and served in smoking-cold shot glasses. I made this, last weekend, for my husband's 50th birthday party. I laughed my pants off when a guest (my sister, I think it was) said: 'What's good about this recipe is that it contains Vitamin C, and Vitamin G.'

Vitamin G being, of course, neat gin, a nutritious basic foodstuff for anyone over the age of 40. Or fifty.

Earlier that morning, in a pre-party kitchen frenzy, I'd wrapped six tennis-ball-sized beetroot in foil and put them in the oven, with a view to making my beetroot hummous. When I took the parcel out of the oven at noon, I was feeling grumpy, footsore and frazzled, and wondering how the hell I'd feed the 40 people expected at the party, considering I'd made only three trays of  hors d'œuvres (or horse-da-oovrays, as they are known in my family).

But my mood improved when I opened the foil and inhaled the glorious scents of earth, water, stone and blood: what I craved, I realised on the spot, was a borscht (of corscht!); very cold, with ginsk. And spring onionsk.

If you've read this far down, you must be a lover of beetroot.  And, if so, I don't think I need to sing its praises to you.

Here's what Tom Robbins had to say about beetroot in his novel Jitterbug Perfume:  "The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious." 

You do need a good vegetable stock to give this soup some depth. In this recipe, the peelings of the baked beetroot are combined with basic vegetable flavourings to make a tasty broth.

A big mistake I made, on the eve of this party, was that I didn't chill the soup for long enough. It needs to be very cold (but, then again, not so icy that it numbs your tastebuds).  Next time, I'll chill the shot glasses in the freezer before I serve it.

Beetroot and Gin Shots
6 large beetroot, or 12 smaller ones

For the stock:
1 stick celery, chopped
3 stalks parsley
a large carrot, scraped and roughly chopped
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 clove
1  bay leaf
6 peppercorns
½ tsp (2.5 ml) caraway seeds
1 tsp (5 ml) salt
1.2  litres water
beetroot trimmings [see recipe]

To serve:
white pepper
1 tsp (5 ml) Tabasco sauce
300 ml gin, or more, to taste
small spring onions, trimmed

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Trim the leafy tops off the beetroot, leaving 5 cm of stalk intact. Wipe the beetroot with a cloth, but don't wash, peel or cut them. Wrap them in a double layer of foil and place in the oven.  Bake until completely tender when pierced with a sharp knife (how long this will take will depend on the size and age of the beetroot; for baby beetroot, an hour is enough. Very elderly beets can take up to 3 hours.)  Remove the packet from the oven and allow to cool.

Put a piece of newspaper or greaseproof paper on your kitchen counter. Trim the beetroot of stalks and roots, slip off their skins, and set all these trimmings to one side. Quarter the peeled beetroot and place in the goblet of a liquidiser.  Blitz until you have a fine purée (if the mixture is too thick for the blades to turn, add a little water).  Pour into a large bowl and refrigerate.  Now make the stock:  put the reserved beetroot trimmings into a saucepan and add the remaining stock ingredients. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for an hour, topping up with water every now and then if necessary, and skimming off any foam.

Strain the stock through a colander onto the chilled beetroot purée.  Add the Tabasco sauce and season with white pepper, and a little more salt, to taste. Stir well.

Now pass the soup through a fine sieve. Place in the fridge again and chill for two to three hours. An hour before serving, place the shot glasses and the gin in the freezer.  Remove the soup from the fridge and stir in the cold gin.  Put the soup into a jug with a sharp pouring nozzle and fill each glass almost to the brim.  Add a spring onion to each glass. Serve immediately.

This recipe makes 36 shots of 60 ml (4 T) each, or two litres of soup (which will serve 8 people, as a starter). Print Friendly

Earl Grey Granita with a shot of gin: good after curry

Atul Kochhar's unctuous and fragrant Almond Lamb Curry (Vadama kari kozhambu) was on the menu on Wednesday night, when my friend Bertrand, a wonderful cook, was up from Cape Town for the night. This Southern Indian recipe comes from Kochhar's brilliant book Simple Indian, which is my all-time favourite Indian cookbook, eclipsing even those of my food heroine Maddhur Jaffrey. I love the contemporary feel of Atul's food, his light and simple approach, and his extraordinary talent with spices.

Atul, the owner of London's Benares restaurant, was the first Indian chef to be awarded a Michelin star, and, Egad, Sire, I can see why.

Anyway, I was so caught up in spicing and dicing and all the whirling-dervishing that goes into making a curry that I did not give a thought to dessert, and there was nothing vaguely pudding-like in the cupboard.

Apart from sugar, tea, lemons and gin. And here was the result: a perfect zingy end to the meal.


Earl Grey Granita with a shot of gin

160 ml [3/4 cup] granulated white sugar
750 ml [three cups] boiling water
three Earl Grey tea bags
juice of one lemon
very finely grated lemon rind
a little gin, very well chilled. Bombay Sapphire is nice but Gordon's will do.

Six or so hours in advance, put a large, flat metal dish [a clean roasting pan is ideal; a ceramic one will do] in your freezer and turn the freezer to its lowest setting. Pour one cup of boiling water over the tea bags and allow to steep for ten minutes. Remove the teabags. Pour the remaining two cups of boiling water into a glass bowl, add the sugar, and stir until completely dissolved. Add the lemon juice and the tea. Allow to cool completely, then refrigerate. Two hours before serving, strain the mixture into the frozen dish, which should be smoking cold by now, and place back in the freezer. After about half an hour, or when the mixture starts to get slushy, scrape and scratch the mixture with a fork to form crystals. Continue scraping and scratching every twenty minutes or so, so you end up with a pile of icy, fluffy, crystalline flakes. Set a timer so ensure that you don't forget to scrape: if you do, the mixture will harden and you will have to start all over again.

Half an hour before serving, put some martini glasses or small dessert bowls in the freezer.

To serve, add a scoop of granita to each glass, top with a pinch of lemon rind, and trickle a tablespoon of ice-cold gin down the side of the glass, so that it pools at the bottom.

Serves 6.

Note: if you'd like a snowy, sorbet-like consistency, whip the slushy mixture with an egg beater two or three times during the freezing process. Print Friendly