A Spot of Tipple

Having nothing much to write about, I want to share two drink recipes that have been keeping me contented during the past weeks. [Warning: The quantities are an approximation.]

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The first is a refreshing and summery antidote to the winter, and very much like the punch which we traditionally prepare for New Year's:

1 canned peach half
syrup of canned peach
mandarin orange (optional)
white wine
sparkling mineral water

Cut the peach half into neat little wedges and put those into a wineglass. Pour enough syrup over the fruit to cover it generously; plunk in about three of the mandarin orange's segments, cut in little wedges or just in half. Pour in white wine perhaps in a 1:2 or 1:1 ratio to the syrup. Then add enough mineral water to bring out the flavour of the peach again (the alcohol tends to blot it out) but not so much that the drink tastes watery. A mint leaf would probably be a pretty garnish, but I haven't tried it and couldn't say if the flavours fit.

Often the pieces of fruit refuse to slide out of the glass on their own, so we use a fondue or dessert fork to fish them out.

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The second recipe is warm and more wintery. Given the paucity of sugar and absence of cream, it is less flavourful and more healthy than Irish cream, and besides it's pretty much ordinary coffee with a splash of whisky, so I have no doubt that connaisseurs of alcohol or coffee or both would scorn it. But I make it often.

coffee, previously made
1 tsp. sugar
hot water
milk
dash of whisky

Put the sugar into the bottom of the mug, and pour two fingers of coffee onto it. Pour in hot water almost to the top of the mug or until the coffee is a little weaker than you would customarily drink it; then add milk until the coffee is as dark or light as you wish. Finally put in the whisky. When I make the coffee with Glenfiddich it's a nobler drink, but the plonk which we also possess under the name of whisky doesn't clash with the coffee as much flavour-wise and makes the drink more comfortably boozy.

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And here is a New York Times slideshow with links to *real* winter drink recipes. The most feasible are probably the eggnog (as long as you try the classic recipe, and not the modern ones for people with a venturesome spirit and far too much time on their hands) and the apple cider toddy.

On the Guardian website I also liked this lengthy debate on the merits of mulled wine/Glögg/Glühwein. Sometimes I do find Glühwein cloying and rather medieval due to the strong spices, but am not violently opposed to it.