Cocktail class: try these sophisticated shake-ups over the silly season
Hawksmoor restaurants are famous not only for their delicious steak, but also for their creative menu of drinks and cocktails. Here’s your chance to recreate some of them at home
Cocktail recipes by Liam Davy, head of bars for Hawksmoor, and Darren Geraghty, bar manager for Hawksmoor Dublin
Steakhouse Martini
A martini designed to be enjoyed either before, or with, a great steak. If you make the peppercorn tincture in advance it will keep indefinitely.
Ingredients
50ml vodka (we use the wonderful Boatyard vodka from Lough Erne)
10ml oaked Chardonnay
10ml dry vermouth
7.5ml olive brine
2.5ml green peppercorn tincture**
2.5ml sugar syrup
Method
Add all ingredients to a shaker and shake quickly and vigorously with ice cubes.
Strain into a martini glass and garnish with a pickled chilli and olive on a cocktail stick
**For the green peppercorn tincture, add 200ml vodka and 10g drained green peppercorns to a blender. Blend and then strain through a coffee filter. This will keep indefinitely in the fridge.
Vaimpír
An Irish version of the popular Mexican brunch cocktail the Vampiro. this cocktail is right on the edge of sweet and savoury and makes a nice change as an aperitif or lunchtime cocktail. You can play around with the ratios of this drink depending on the level of salt and sugar you like, but make sure you use the best tomato juice you can find!
Ingredients
20ml Jameson whiskey
20ml Micil Inverin (or a different peated whiskey)
3 dashes Tabasco
30ml tomato juice (best quality you can find!)
10ml lemon juice
10ml orange juice
5ml sugar syrup
Good pinch of salt
Method
Add all ingredients to a shaker. Shake well with cubed ice and strain into a coupe or
martini glass. Garnish with two mini peppers (Sweety Drop or Roquito) on
a cocktail stick.
Liberty Fix
This cocktail uses Chartreuse, which can be slightly hard to find as the closely guarded recipe is produced in limited quantities by monks in the Isère region of France. Luckily, Dublin's Stillgarden Distillery produces a pretty good facsimile that you can use for this cocktail.
Ingredients
40ml Teeling Small Batch whiskey
10ml Stillgarden Glas 55
10ml pineapple syrup (we use Monin)
20ml lemon juice
Method
Shake all ingredients with cubed ice and strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a mint sprig.
Apple Pie Toddy
An American bartender created a hot tea cocktail, The Duke of Suffolk, in New York which used tea but in the Irish-coffee style. This drink uses warming apple pie flavours to take that cocktail up a notch. Winter heaven and perfect after dinner on an icy-cold day.
Ingredients
30ml Glendalough Wild Botanical gin
10ml Monin apple pie syrup
20ml Cloudy apple juice
5ml Lemon juice
2 dash Angostura bitters
70ml boiling water
40ml vanilla cream (cold)**
Method
Add all of the ingredients except the cream to an Irish coffee glass and give it a quick stir. Carefully layer the vanilla cream on top and serve.
**Add 5ml of vanilla essence to 200ml of double cream and chill.
