Pure Food and Wine’s: WHITE LIGHT TINI

Pure Food and Wine’s: WHITE LIGHT TINI

Serves 4, (recipe from Living Raw Food, by Sarma Melngailis, Harper Collins, 2009)

This cocktail, created by our lovely Italian sommelier Joey Repice, is made with green tea infused with fresh lemongrass. We used unfiltered Momokawa Organic Sake at our book party. It’s milky white (because the rice particles have not been filtered out) and has a mild, sweet, and refreshing flavor.

2 tablespoons loose green tea leaves

One 1-inch piece of fresh lemongrass, outer husk removed and

Thinly sliced or shaved with a peeler

A little more than 1 cup hot, filtered water

3 cups unfiltered sake

1 /2 cup ginger juice*

1 cup freshly squeezed lime juice

1 /2 cup agave nectar

4 fresh orchid blossoms or other edible flowers

Steep the tea and lemongrass in a little more than 1 cup of hot water and let it sit for 30 minutes or more.

Strain the tea and let it chill completely in the refrigerator.

Combine the tea with the sake, ginger juice, lime juice, and agave nectar and stir well to dissolve the agave. In a martini shaker, pour the chilled liquid over ice and shake or stir very well to chill. Strain and pour into martini glasses.

Garnish with orchid blossoms or other edible flowers.

* To make ginger juice, simply grate ginger on a fine grater and pack the pulp into cheese- cloth. Squeeze the cloth with your hand to extract the juice. Roughly one tablespoon of pulp will produce one teaspoon of juice.