Gillian Helquist, food and beverage manager at Shed in Healdsburg, California, says that “shrubs are the epitome of utilizing a season’s bounty when it’s on its way out.”  And the great thing about a shrub is that you are really only limited by your imagination—using whatever fruit is on its way out of season, and any mix of herbs and/or spices, you can experiment to your heart’s content to come up with a flavor combination (or two, or three, or twenty) that you love.  The best shrubs have a flavor that is both tart and sweet so that when you mix the cordial-like fermented syrup with carbonated water, what you have created is a refreshing concoction that will keep you cool on even the hottest of days, or will be reminiscent of warm summer sunshine even in the dead of winter.

To make a shrub, start by choosing a fruit.  And the beauty of choosing the fruit is that it doesn’t have to be the perfect batch—blemishes are fine because you are making syrup.  You may even want to ask for a discount for purchasing less-than-perfect produce.

Second, choose your sugar.  Most shrub makers recommend using basic white sugar when starting out, and working your way up to experimenting with fancier brown sugars.

Lastly, choose your vinegar.  Apple cider vinegar is a great place to start, but red wine will work too.  They are less bland than plain white vinegar, and add some flavor without funkiness.

Add equal parts sugar and water to a pan and heat until the sugar dissolves.  Add the fruit and simmer until well blended.  Strain out the solids and add vinegar to the juices.  Store in the refrigerator until you are ready to make a drink.

The heated process is the fastest, but certainly not the best.  For purer and brighter fruit flavor, try the cold process:

Lightly crush the fruit and cover with sugar.  After a couple of days you can strain the syrup away from the solids.  Add vinegar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Bottle this and store in the refrigerator, but check it often to make sure there is no remaining sugar settled at the bottom of the bottle—you’ll want to shake it up if there is.

For both versions you will want to use about a 1:1:1 ratio, but over time you may tweak the amounts just a bit to find the combination that you like best.

For a lovely and refreshing Blackberry Basil Shrub Cocktail, make your shrub using one of the above methods and add in some basil leaves.  When you are satisfied with the length of time the shrub has fermented, follow this recipe:

2 ounces vodka

2 ounces blackberry shrub infused with basil

4-5 ounces sparkling water

Mix ingredients in a tall glass and top with ice.  Enjoy!

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Trending “healthy” buzzwords

When you think about healthy eating, what do you think about exactly? Low calorie? Vegetarian? Diet? Organic? All-Natural? Fresh? Fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free? There is no doubt that each of these can have an effect on your health, and with just a quick internet search you can find the reasons that each style of eating is good for you—or even why it may be bad for you. And with each personalized diet taking on extremely specific forms as customers become more aware of how food impacts their individual bodies, as they strive to follow the diet that they have deemed healthy for themselves, restaurants have been scrambling in an attempt to adjust their food offerings to placate all diners who enter their establishment. Recently, though, the jargon is changing as rapidly as you can say “buzzword.” In addition to the “healthy” low-fat, low-calorie, sugar-free crazes that lately have reached almost commonplace status, new descriptors continue to crop up at an amazing rate. And restaurants have worked hard to offer variety to these fads as well. According to Entrepreneur, for example, “from 2010 to 2012, gluten-free options increased from slightly over 100 items to more than 1000 items on full service menus.”

So what is a restaurant to do? How can they possibly keep up with this ever-changing stream of hypes that customers latch on to? How do they accommodate vegan dieters while at the same time catering to those who eat strictly paleo? The answer, it seems, is to offer a “choose as you go” style for diners, the option to pick items that fit neatly into their regimen of choice. QSR Magazine notes that “In the past year, customization has become even more important. People like that they can customize and create their own experience.” And a growing list of restaurants across the United States are buying in to this customization concept as they realize they style helps them to reach more and more patrons. The simple truth is that when customers know they can rely on a restaurant to supply them with a meal that meets both their dietary demands while also satisfying their flavor desires, they will likely frequent that establishment. Welcome to the seventh restaurant trend of 2015, where chains are striving to offer a variety of toppings for their main food offerings that allow for different food tastes, different healthy requirements.

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