Cooking Lesson #291: Blackberry-Black Pepper Cocktail

… from the Nashville Honky Tonk Bar

How y’all doin’?  I love when chefs and bartenders get experimental.  There is usually a lot of down time in restaurants and bars where the staff can attempt to outdo one another coming up with new concoctions.  In Tennessee these last couple of years, it’s all been about spicy hot chicken and hasselback potatoes. But the drinks have been kind of remakes of the same old thing. So, move over shooters, margaritas and overly sweet, fruit-infused “girly” cocktails––there’s a new ‘tender in town and he’s all about spice!
 
Peppery Cocktails are hitting center stage this summer in Nashville and they’re going to cool you off and heat you up, all at the same time. Here’s a distinctive, delicious and unlikely pairing of blackberries and black pepper—Blackberry-Black Pepper Cocktail. Raise ‘em up and drink ‘em down, pardner! Isn’t that what Blake Shelton might say?
 
Prep time:  5 minutes
Yield: 1 cocktail
 
Ingredients
4 blackberries, plus 2 more for garnish
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 teaspoons simple syrup
1/4 teaspoon coarse fresh ground black pepper
1 sprig mint, plus more for garnish
2 ounces vodka
1/2 to 1 cup club soda
 
Garnish with 2 skewered blackberries and a sprig of mint.
 
Directions

1. In a highball glass muddle the blackberries, lemon juice, simple syrup, pepper, mint and vodka. You can muddle with a bar muddler or with the back of a wooden spoon.
2. Fill the glass with ice and top off with club soda and lightly stir.
3. Garnish with blackberries and a mint sprig.
4. Serve chilled immediately.

 
ChefSecret:  You can “hotten” this cocktail up a notch by floating a pinch of cayenne pepper on the top.

Covid-19 Quip of the Day: “I’ve taken up puzzles this past year. I don’t want to brag, but I finished my last one in under a week, even though the box said 2-4 years.”
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