Cold Drink

Whenever we get a bucket of lemon verbena from Bill Dow, former doctor and for thirty years now a farmer on his Ayrshire Farm, its powerful scent takes over the kitchen and has me woozy trying to come up with different ways of using it. It’s one of those delicious aromatic herbs like winter savory, lavender, and rau ram (Vietnamese cilantro)—intoxicating when held in a big fresh bunch but tough to take as the main flavor in a meal. Lemon verbena goes well with summer fruits like watermelon and peaches, adds a mystery flavor when stuffed inside a roast chicken, and makes a fine sherbet. It’s easy to grow, and if you find yourself with a bumper crop on the eve of the first frost, it is simple to preserve it by grinding the leaves along with some white sugar in a food processor until it combines into aromatic, bright green sand. The sugar will last perfectly for months in the freezer and can be used to flavor drinks, ice creams, custards, and fruit compotes.

If ever we cross paths, there’s a 99 percent chance you’ll find me sipping a yerba mate tea. The South American beverage quickly became part of my routine once I discovered that it lifts my energy level without the highs and lows of coffee. Come summer, I ice it, stir in some Agave Lemonade (page 133), and relax with the day’s saving grace: the BabyCakes NYC version of an Arnold Palmer. If you’re confined to the kitchen and have a blender handy, toss in the ingredients, add ice, pulse for a minute or so, and sip your way through the afternoon.

Until the newest wave of mega-size frozen yogurt franchises catch on to the fact that even those of us who can’t have dairy would still like a frosty, probiotic-packed soft-serve now and then, we’ll just have to make do. And by “making do” I mean blending a chilled masterpiece that will have all the teenyboppers banging down your door for a taste. Tell them to take a number.

Inspired by my daily “free lemonade” that I used to make at the old KFC in grade school, here’s a recipe so simple and refreshing that you’ll be shocked there are only four ingredients!

I enjoy going out for Indian food and pairing a cool, calming lhassi with a heavily spiced meal. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to develop one for my dessert menu. This one—which I worked out with my friend and onetime sous-chef Jason Casey—is creamy smooth and softly perfumed with rose water and cinnamon.

Recently, I’ve become infatuated with bubbles and carbonation, and I’ve been on a mission to find ways to introduce bubbles as a texture in desserts. So adding a soda to the menu was a natural. With the help of David Arnold, Director of Culinary Technology at the French Culinary Institute, I’ve built a carbonation rig for the pastry kitchen at Jean Georges. Don’t let that scare you from trying this recipe, though. All you need at home is a soda siphon. Using a half-size hotel pan and perforated hotel pan (which you can buy online from BigTray) ensures that the strawberry water freezes and defrosts evenly during the clarification process.

In the summertime this is a refreshing alternative to iced tea. I keep the cinnamon syrup in the fridge so when my girlfriends drop by we have something cool and delicious to sip in the yard under the hot California sun.

This might be one of the more esoteric shakes in this book, but I hope you find it intriguing, not off-putting. The extra step of roasting the pineapple is well worth your time. Roasting concentrates the pineapple’s flavor and intensifies its sweetness as the heat of the oven caramelizes the fruit’s natural sugars. Tart lemon sorbet is added to balance that sweetness and for its icy texture. Using pineapple juice gives this shake a depth of flavor and refreshing quality that milk wouldn’t provide.

Crackles of chocolate are better than chips in milkshakes because they fit through the straw. You’re also better off starting with bar chocolate instead of chips because the chocolate is usually of a better quality. Make sure the banana is really ripe and the chocolate is still warm when you drizzle it into the milkshake. Warm chocolate combined with the cold ice cream will instantly harden, making thin little strings of chocolate.

This sparkling drink is ideal as a refreshing spritzer for brunch or on a hot summer day.

Gina: You don’t think my whimsy ends with cocktails, do you? Sweet iced tea is the elixir of the South, so I decided that our Neely “house” tea needed to have a little pizzazz. Honey, I found it by combining fresh raspberries with hibiscus tea, which has a brilliant crimson color and beautiful fruit-and-floral flavors.

Gina: This light-colored sangria, made with white wine, is as beautiful as it is refreshing and delicious. You can make and serve this drink immediately, but it’s even better if you can prepare it in advance, so the fruit flavors have a chance to permeate the wine.

This strong, tart sweet drink—made with equal parts fresh lemon and lime juice—can stand up to plenty of ice, and the addition of chopped crystallized ginger gives each sip a tingly, refreshing heat.

I like to refrigerate this lassi, covered, with all the seasonings in it, for a couple of hours. Then I strain and serve it. It is particularly good at the very start of a meal, served in tiny glasses to whet the appetite. (You may also strain and serve it as soon as it is made, with a couple of ice cubes. The flavors will be mellower.) You can easily double or triple the recipe.

This is best made when good fresh mangoes are in season. When they are not, very good-quality canned pulp from India’s excellent Alphonso mangoes may be used instead. Most Indian grocers sell this.

This is very sweet, but it is a syrup and not to be compared to orange juice. We used the smallish, slightly acid oranges with thin skins for this, but now that we have bottled freshly squeezed orange juice, that is what we use. Dilute 2 tablespoons in a glass of iced water.

A refreshing sweet-and-sour Persian syrup to be diluted in ice-cold water.

This fragrant drink was a favorite in my home. Commercial varieties of a concentrated version (a syrup) have an unpleasant synthetic taste.

In the early 1900s, New York state had more than one thousand stills on local farms. Then Prohibition started in 1920, spelling the legal end for the country's distilleries, both large and small. It took eighty-three years for a New York distillery to pick up the torch, but finally, in 2003, Tuthilltown Spirits launched, becoming New York's first small-batch whiskey distiller since the "Noble Experiment" put everyone out of business. When New York City bartenders Jim Meehan and Karen Fu set out to craft a cocktail that honors their home state, which happens to be the second largest producer of apples in the country, they reached for Tuthilltown's Heart of the Hudson vodka, made from apple cider from local orchards. Muddled Granny Smith apple plus fresh mint and saké give the drink a deliciously fresh, green-apple crispness.