Mint, cucumber and snap peas: The key to the best spring drink may be in your grocery bag

UNITED STATES – Cucumbers, sugar snap peas, fennel: Spring cocktail ingredients are now cosplaying as parts of a farmers’ market haul. Introduce a green snap to your next drink by borrowing inspiration from the garden.

“This time of year, we get so excited with the world waking back up,” said Annie Williams Pierce, owner of Law Bird, a bar in Columbus, Ohio.

In 2017, she won the title of most imaginative bartender from the United States Bartenders’ Guild, with a martini that featured a blanc vermouth infused with sugar snap peas. She used a pressure infusion, but there is an even faster, easier tool that home bartenders can use to add instant vegetal flavour: the muddler.

Using a muddler – or the end of a wooden spoon or rolling pin – to crush fruits, vegetables and herbs imparts their flavours and aromas into the final drink.

Unless you are building the cocktail directly in the glass or are fine with more texture, Williams Pierce suggests a double strain to catch every smashed bit before serving. “It adds a little extra layer of refinement,” she said.

To do so, strain the shaken cocktail into the glass through both the Hawthorne strainer (or the strainer on top of your shaker) and a small fine-mesh strainer.

Williams Pierce suggests avoiding barrel-aged spirits, which can overpower delicate flavours. Instead, look to clearer, botanical-leaning ones – such as gin, a grassy tequila or pisco – which enhance the drink’s savoury notes.

Should you want to double down on the greener elements, incorporate an herbaceous liqueur – such as a quality fennel liqueur, Chartreuse or genepy – or green-leaning bitters.

“My staff has to keep me from putting celery and green cardamom bitters in everything,” Williams Pierce said. “We put them in margaritas. We put them in gimlets or daiquiris, anything that’s just going to want that little extra oomph.”

Simple syrups offer another excellent means to a garden-fresh end. Try infusing a standard sugar syrup with mint, celery leaves, basil or tarragon and swopping it into your next drink.

Or make a cucumber syrup by juicing peeled cucumbers and combining the strained juice with equal parts sugar by weight. As this method does not use heat to extract flavour, it keeps the refreshing essence at the forefront.

But, Williams Pierce suggests, if you are not using it right away, add a bit of vodka to the mix to help stabilise it.

When plucking ingredients from the garden or getting them from the store, “freshest is best, obviously”, she said. This is especially true when working with herbs. “They do not have the world’s longest shelf life,” she added. “If you’re going to get them, commit to using them.”

Plenty of traditional cocktails can easily be modified into seasonal variations.

The snap pea gimlet combines muddled snap peas with gin, lime and mint simple syrup.

In a mildly peppery take on the Pimm’s Cup, arugula, mint sprigs, cucumber slices and citrus wheels are crushed together, and the drink is garnished with even more leafy greens.

Combined with lime juice and something bubbly – alcoholic or not – you have the ideal spring formula for a bright, savoury spritz.

“If all of your green flavours are coming from fresh vegetables and already non-alcoholic-based things, then that’s an absolute no-brainer to turn that into an NA,” Williams Pierce said, using the acronym for a non-alcoholic drink.

Combine muddled snap peas with lemon or lime and a splash of club soda, swop in mint simple syrup for the standard in your next lemon- or limeade, or mix up a celery sour mocktail, which adds both stalk and leaves to an elegantly green non-alcoholic drink.

Looking from garden to the bar offers drinkers the taste and often colour of the season. Vegetables for spring? Ground-breaking.

Arugula-mint Pimm’s Cup

The classic Pimm’s Cup calls for lemonade or ginger ale, lemon juice and Pimm’s No. 1, a gin-based liqueur, and is garnished with fresh fruit and a generous spray of mint. It is a simple recipe that encourages many adaptations.

This peppery, springtime take adds a bouquet of arugula, muddled alongside cucumber, mint and citrus. Fresh arugula also makes it into the garnish, increasing the garden-to-glass energy of the final drink. Topping up with ginger ale leans this Pimm’s Cup a bit more towards mild and sweet, though you can riff further by using lemon soda or ginger beer or a combination of ginger ale and lemonade instead.

Ingredients

Method

Serves one

Snap Pea Gimlet

Served cold, this bright green combination of snap peas, gin, lime and mint-infused simple syrup is about as fresh as it gets. Depending on the gin you choose, your drink will shift slightly in flavour. For example, using a London dry gin – such as Beefeater, Tanqueray or Sipsmith – will lend a clean, crisp, juniper-forward backbone to your gimlet. Hendrick’s adds a distinct cucumber note, and Plymouth results in a more mellow, citrusy drink. Whatever you use, make sure to crush your snap peas well to ensure their crunchy green flavour comes through – and save the extra mint simple syrup (it can be stored in the fridge for a few weeks) to swop for standard simple syrup in any number of cocktails, whether a frozen daiquiri, sherry cobbler or hard lemonade.

Ingredients

For the mint simple syrup:

For the cocktail:

Method

Serves one

NYTIMES