[Music Playing]
Hi, I'm Chef Scott Samuel here at
The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone.
Today we're going to make a red grape lavender soda.
Okay, so in this recipe, I'm using red grapes, but we can also use green grapes or black grapes.
I just like the flavor of the combination between lavender and red grapes for this drink.
It's a nice refreshing drink combination of some lime zest, lime juice,
fresh lavender (or dried lavender will work)...
And there's two things we need to do.
The first one is we're going to make a simple syrup
by combining a cup of water with a cup of sugar....
And that's the first ingredient in the recipe.
And within this simple syrup,
we're going to make an infusion. So, we have other ingredients in front of us. Lime juice,
honey, dried lavender... And we're going to do some fresh lime zest, using a microplane.
And these ingredients are going to be incorporated into this once it comes to a boil,
or we can put all of it together in the pot and bring it to a boil,
but the point of making the infusion is to pull out the flavor with heat, like making a tea.
The next thing we're gonna do is make a fresh grape juice.
So, I could use red grapes, green grapes... I choose red in this case.
Let's get these ingredients in the simple syrup:
our lime zest,
our lavender,
our honey...
and our lime juice.
So, taking a look at this....
It all comes to a boil, I'm just going to stir it to dissolve the honey in the sugar.
And I don't want to overcook this, because it will pull out too much flavor from the lavender.
I just — think of making a tea.
All right, this is the point. We'll just take it off the heat.
I like that to infuse for about 10 minutes,
and then we'll come over here and make our grape juice.
So, simple. All I want to do is take...
...fresh grapes. Make sure they've been rinsed and stemmed.
Place in a blender...
[blender sounds]
And then, what I want to do is... strain out all of the skin...
And what I'll have is a fresh grape juice.
What I've done here is a going to be a base for this drink,
that we could do ahead of time.
So, my simple syrup — once it's steeped for about 10 minutes —
I will also strain out the lavender and the lime zest,
add it to this fresh grape juice, and this will be considered the grape base.
And when we're ready to make our drink, we'll add this with the club soda, some ice...
....and, uh, maybe some alcohol as an option.
Okay, so we've got all the juice out of the...
...grape. The skins are left aside. Let's, uh, discard these.
And now my simple syrup infusion has had a chance to steep,
and incorporate the flavor of the lime and the lavender.
We'll strain that out.
So, the grape juice, the lavender, simple syrup — this is now our grape base.
We'll go ahead and chill it.
Get some club soda, or tonic water....
...and make a drink.
So, now that our base has had a chance to chill,
we're gonna make our drinks.
So, I'm gonna make a combination of....
...three ounces of our grape lavender base....
We'll make two drinks here, so... six ounces
[ice tinkling]
Okay, so I want to garnish with some nice grape halves....
Another neat thing would be to freeze the grapes, and put them in as a crunchy frozen garnish....
And then, since there is lavender in here, I'm going to garnish with some lavender sprigs....
And there we have it. Our red grape lavender soda.