The Gardener

2 oz	mezcal or gin
1 oz	lime juice
1 oz	spicy ginger-cilantro syrup

• Add ingredients to a shaker filled with ice.

• Shake and strain into a coupe or martini glass. Great on the rocks or up.

• Mix: Shake
• Glass: Cocktail, coupe, whatever
• Over Ice: Yes/No
• Garnish: serrano/jalapeno slice, lime, cilantro sprig, or none

Spicy Ginger-Cilantro Syrup

60 g	cilantro, preferably mostly leaves rather than stems
25 g	fresh ginger root
12 g	serrano pepper
444 g	water
414 g	sugar

• Blend everything except the sugar in a blender.
• Let sit for at least 1 hour.
• Weigh sugar into container that will fit entire mixture (e.g. large liquid measuring cup).
• Strain blended puree into container, stir to dissolve sugar.
• Pour into bottle or jar. It will not freeze solid, so making it into ice cubes doesn’t work well. Try freezing in smallish quantities (i.e. in a jar to make batches of 2 or 4 cocktails).

Source

• Mezcal Phd

Notes

• NEXT TIME:
  • Rinse the cilantro, maybe weigh to confirm it is at least 60g, and use the whole thing.
  • Use a whole serrano
  • Blend with all sugar and water
• 2024-03-08:
  • After rinsing, spinning dry, and separating leaves from stems, cilantro bunch weighed 100g (40g leaves, 60g stems).
  • Used 12g of what was a pretty big/long serrano, from the distal end (not stem end). Almost no spice. Next time just use the whole serrano for a full batch.
  • Did a little simple syrup math.
  • For the cilantro syrup for a Gardener:
    • “25 ounces” (if volume) is 710ml
    • Sugar: 710ml*14g/24ml = 414g
    • Water: 710ml*15g/24ml = 444g
  • Color was dark/drab in the bottle, even though I don’t feel like I blended it too much, and I put the blender in the freezer to keep it chilled. Maybe heat doesn’t matter so much, and maybe blending with the sugar helps keep it bright green? Regardless, the finished cocktails were still a pretty nice bright green.
• 2022-06-11:
  • original recipes calls for “25 ounces simple syrup, half sugar, half water”. I’m not sure whether “half sugar, half water” is by weight or volume
  • used cilantro STEMS too (the leaves alone only came to ~30g).
  • a biggish serrano after removing seeds and membranes was 13g
  • I used 360g sugar and 360g water
  • I added all of the sugar to the solids, and as much water fit
  • Don’t do this next time – only add the water to the solids and blend. Adding the sugar now just makes things harder to strain, etc.
  • I only let the solids sit in the liquid for no more than an hour. I think it was better last time, when I let it sit longer.
  • Last time, this stuff froze solid in the freezer. Now that I poured it into ice cube trays, its still gooey sweat_smile . C’est la vie.
  • Overall, flavor seems milder. Not as spicy, cilantro-ey, or gingery as the first time I made it about a month ago