By Judy O’Gorman Alvarez
Leeann Lavin of Atlantic Highlands thinks we could all use a nice, quenching drink. But it’s not just the libations that are important. The drink should also be pleasing to the eye.
Her latest book “The Art of the Garnish” is full of tips, tricks and instructional illustrations about how to prepare a wide range of cocktail garnishes.
Herbs, citrus, nuts, candy, meat and yes, jewelry, are all part of the repertoire of novel garnishes that can make any cocktail a festive quaff.
Leeann Lavin mixes up tantalizing and tasty cocktails for her latest book “The Art of the Garnish.”
“The Art of the Garnish,” part of Simon and Schuster’s Art of Entertaining series, offers easy-to-follow recipes and colorful photographs.
“I love everything about the cocktail culture,” said Lavin, a writer and award-winning garden designer. “It’s one of the few pastimes that has its own language and design cocktail ring, design, dress. It even has its own time of day.”
“I believe plants have enormous, almost magical powers,” said Lavin who is the former communications director at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “Today people look at plants to have power to heal us.” “Cocktails have such great history,” she said and, according to Lavin, many people have claimed to have invented the cocktail. The drink has a long history, which includes “bathtub gin, drinking champagne to excess, the Great Depression and wars,” she said.
“From the Roaring ’20s and until now when we’re in the soaring ’20s, when cocktail culture is clearly American,” she said. “It wasn’t until the 2000s when cocktails came back around and we got into the cocktail culture we have now.”
Creating natural cocktails is also encouraged. “Drinks in my book are made with natural ingredients: simple syrups and real and regional spirits,” she said. And as any mixologist knows, a perfect cocktail is more than just the drink.
Lavin’s new book can help mixologists among us to whip up drinks, like this English Rose, that is pleasing to the eye as well as the taste buds.
“I love everything glamorous,” Lavin said. In her tastings she has used edible gold dust, puffs of smoke and other ingredients to excite, incite and present cocktails in a dazzling display.
“Originally garnishes were there to help excite your senses,” said Lavin, as the aroma of citrus would be obvious as a drinker brings a glass up to the mouth.
“The Italians say ‘the eyes eat first,’ ” she said, “but in drinking, the nose tastes first.”
amazon.com/Art-Gar-nish-Leeann-Lavin
The article originally appeared in the May 21 – 27, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
