Strawberry hulls, water, vodka, lemon juice
One thing that’s impressive about Toque! is how they aim to waste as little as possible. This cocktail actually consists of two recipes from the book. Strawberry Stem Water is a component featured as it’s own recipe later in the book, so we’ve combined the two here. This recipe is the first in a set of strawberry recipes–in the book, each recipe uses the waste product from a previous recipe, so there was practically no waste at all!
We started with the Strawberry Stem Water. This was a fairly simple process that involved slicing the tops off of the strawberries and setting the strawberries aside for use in another recipe.
Next, we sprinkled the the strawberry hulls with sugar and covered them with water.
The resulting mixture was placed in the fridge to rest for 24 hours. Upon removal from the fridge, the strawberries had very nicely infused the water and the hulls looked a little tired.
We then passed the mixture through a conical strainer and threw away the hulls (okay, maybe there is a little bit of waste, but it served a purpose prior to being disposed of!).
Next we started on the Strawberry Hull Martinis as they required the strawberry water component we just made. We sliced some lemon rind to garnish the beverage and squeezed some lemon juice.
Finally, we added the strawberry water, lemon juice, vodka (no, we didn’t make that!) and some ice to a shaker.
After 30 seconds of vigorous exercise, the cocktail was complete! It’s pretty incredible how strongly the flavour of strawberry came through! It was a cool and delicious treat, not to mention an amazing way to use kitchen trimmings!
Stay tuned for more strawberry recipes!
