Lockdown Liquor

Something about being locked down in self-isolation during a global pandemic brings out the ol' Blitz Spirit in a person, doesn't it? Makes you want to start making preserves and jarring pickled vegetables, drying herbs and chillies (that means I've been back in Blighty for a while, doesn't it? Spelling chillies with two L's!), not to mention making homemade booze. One of the simplest ways to liven up a potentially boring drinks cupboard, short of brewing it yourself, is to add ingredients to spirits to create your own liqueurs. You can add all kinds of fruits and herbs to alcoholic drinks to make them more interesting - I myself have done so several times.

A few years back I created my own blueberry gin and blueberry rum.

I happened upon a couple of punnets of blueberries in Waitrose that were almost out of date and reduced to a silly cheap price for a quick sale. It would have been churlish to ignore this, so i bought them and immediately froze them when I got home. A while later I remembered that I had them, and in my drinks cupboard languished a half-bottle of gin and a similar amount of white rum. All I did was add one punnet of berries to the gin and one to the rum. Having been frozen, the berries' skin split upon returning to room temperature, letting the beautiful flesh beneath be exposed to the alcohol in therefore able to infuse. If you use fresh, you need to prick the berries so this can happen as the skin is pretty impermeable. To the rum I also added a couple of tablespoons of demerara sugar just to sweeten up the tartness. It's not necessary to sweeten the berries for the gin, but if you want to, add a spoon of simple syrup.

All you have to do then is seal the bottles (or do this in Kilner jars, avoiding the need for funnels)and turn them once or twice a week for at least three months - the longer you wait, the better the results. When you're ready, sieve out the fruit and voila! Blueberry liqueurs.

The other day we were given a huge bag of oranges, and since we don't eat oranges that often, I had to come up with a way of using some up in a different way. We have had a half-bottle of vodka sitting in the cupboard since last August when I bought a bottle to use at Laura's birthday bash. We don't really drink vodka, hence the half-bottle sitting unused in the cupboard.

I remembered reading a recipe somewhere for making Arancello, like Limoncello but with oranges instead, although some people call it Orangello or Manderello - whatever you call it, here's the recipe!

Ingredients

peels from 6-10 oranges

juice from oranges

2 cups of good quality vodka

1 1/2-2 cups caster sugar

2 cups of water

Adjust amounts based on your needs/container size. You also might want to adjust the sweetness of the simple syrup if you like a sweeter arancello.

Method

Before you begin you'll want to scrub the oranges to remove any wax on the skin. Use a sharp peeler or knife and peel the oranges, you only want to remove the very top layer of the peel.

Add peels to a large jar along with the vodka and cover and place in a cool dark place for 7-14 days.

After a couple of days or weeks, make the simple syrup for your liqueur. Take a couple fresh oranges and juice them. Pour juice into a medium sized saucepan along with the sugar and water. Stir to dissolve and then place over a high heat and bring to a boil. Cook, without stirring, for a few minutes, or until the mixture thickens slightly and set aside to cool.

Strain the vodka to remove the peel and then combine the vodka and simple syrup. Pour into sterilized bottles and keep in the freezer for best taste. Under the right conditions, the liqueur could last up to a year in the freezer.

Of course, you can take this recipe and substitute lemons for limoncello, limecello or even grapefruitcello, which is a bit of a  mouthful! Try it with other tart fruits such as starfruit or even gooseberries!