Garnishing Your Drinks

  Cocktails should not only taste good, they should also have the flair to run the evening. Give your imagination and creativity free reign when you get to the final step of cocktail making—garnishing. There are very few drinks for which a garnish is superfluous or even frowned upon. Of course, there are the classics whose garnishes have been predetermined by generations of bartenders, such as the olive in a Dry Martini, the cherry in a Manhattan, the pearl onions in a Gibson, the mint for juleps, and the cucumber peel for Pimm's. For all exotic and tropical drinks, and especially for fancy drinks, you can do whatever your heart desires, but you should bear a few rules in mind.

  Only use ingredients for the garnish that are suitable for the drink in terms of both taste and color. This is the key. You don’t want to be awkward. Imagine a festive umbrella in a dry shaken martini. Even Connery would have a hard time providing lip service with that at his side.

  The garnish is supposed to decorate the drink, not adulterate it, overload it, or even push it into the background. Less is often more. Generally, just a slice of orange perched on the rim of the glass, a wedge of lime, a spiral of lemon peel, a maraschino cherry, or a sprig of mint is all you need.

  If you use fresh fruit, make sure that it is ripe and blemish free. Slice it carefully; we’re doing this for cosmetics, not flavor. Twists of citrus-fruit peel are best cut with a potato peeler or with a citrus zester. When choosing fruit, there is no limit to what you can use, provided it is edible. Small fruit is very suitable, as well as pieces of fruit, such as baby apples or pears, banana slices, black currants, Cape gooseberries, grapes, kumquats, lychees, maraschino cherries, melon balls, and raspberries. You get the idea, just mix and match. All tropical drinks go with all fruits.

  Cherries give you great scope because you can choose between red or green maraschino cherries. In specialist stores, you might even find golden, orange, and black cherries, as well as sour-tasting Amarena cherries which are preserved in rum syrup. If you want to use fresh cherries, choose pairs of cherries on the stem. Pieces or slices of apricots, citrus fruits, figs, kiwi fruit, peaches, pineapple, and star fruit, as well as wedges of mandarin and lime, are also very attractive. Black and green grapes can light up your drink brighter than that July 4th boat show.

  Strawberries and raspberries need a little extra to shine. Drizzled them with a little lemon juice then dipped in sugar; they look as though they are hosted. Fruit can also be dusted with confectioners' sugar for an attractive finish. Slices of apple and pear, on the other hand, are not very suitable for garnishing because they turn brown quickly. If you still want to use them just drizzle them with lemon juice to delay discoloration. Vegetable garnishes are suitable for savory mixed drinks and include fiery sticks, cucumber peel or slices, green olives, pearl onions, and cherry tomatoes. Thin slices of pepperoni also make an interesting garnish for robustly flavored, spicy drinks.

  Fresh herbs also provide variety in or on the glass. For example, fresh basil goes very well with mixed drinks including tomato or vegetable juice, lemon balm goes well whenever lemon juice is used; and mint leaves are "the icing on the cake" for drinks based on peppermint liqueur or syrup. A touch of green can be added with pineapple leaves, which are speared on toothpicks or kabob sticks and fanned out, but, of course, don’t eat them. There are various ways to practice the art of garnishing. Make a single incision in whole fruit or pieces of fruit from the middle to the edge and perch them on the rim of the glass. Toothpicks are your friend. Fruit kabobs go a long way across the rim of the glass but make sure you have places to stash the sticks, somewhere other than Stiller’s eye. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Pineapple kabob

  Cut a slice of pineapple into 8 pieces and cut out the heart. Spear a few pineapple leaves on a large skewer. Alternately skewer pineapple pieces, black grapes, and red maraschino cherries onto the skewer.

Mar fruit-kiwi fruit kabob

  Spear 1 strawberry with a stem, 1 slice of peeled kiwi fruit, a slice one star fruit, and a sprig of lemon balm leaf on a large toothpick or kabob skewer.