Seasonal Produce & Drinks - updated

Partly this has been prompted by having to move it, but today we strained the rhubarb schnapps from the wide-mouthed jar in which it has been steeping to a bottle for storage. I blogged about making it in this post and it's now taken on a lovely vivid pink colour and already tastes really nice. A happy consequence of making these kind of drinks is that you can never quite fit all of it into your storage bottle and so you have to keep a wee bit in a jar for sampling. A great hardship. It should, though, continue to improve for a few months yet. It's a great way to use the forced rhubarb that is just going out of season now - you should still just about be able to find it somewhere. If not, it'd be just as nice during the main rhubarb season later in the year. It'll be a lot less pink though!

There's something very satisfying about steeping fruit in vodka and waiting for it to be ready. We'll have to put our minds to some cocktail recipes involving the rhubarb stuff. It's very nice on its own and can take being lightly chilled; and it's very good mixed with ginger ale, but maybe we should try to be more imaginative later on in the year.



Back in October last year we did something similar with a load of quinces someone very kindly brought round. Even though it's never ready for Christmas, we included a recipe on our Christmas website, as it's a nice thing to do while you're making other preserves and drinks that *will* be ready - and if you include a note to let it mature it does make a great Xmas present. This note is required because it's really not very nice for the first 3 or 4 months or so of its life. We made the mistake of trying our first batch in January - it was so foul we poured it away. Fortunately we missed a second bottle which hid in the back of the cupboard until we rediscovered it in the autumn. By which time it had been transformed by some beneficial alchemy into a mellow, delicious golden elixir.

The two pictures above show the 'before' and 'after'. Out of interest I dug out one of the bottles which we produced this year (pictured right) - and it's nice to see it on its way and precipitating out a load of grots at the bottom, which might have something to do with the acrid taste you get from a young batch. It's a while 'till autumn - and a good job we've got the rhubarb drink to sip before then!