Of all the christmases that we've had if there was ever a time that we deserved a nice little drink,
it's probably this christmas right, and I want to show you a brilliant way of taking your
everyday vodka and infusing it with the flavors of christmas, and this is fantastic for christmas
and beyond and it's so easy. So look here I've got things like cloves here standard
like that kind of mulled wine vibe. We've got cinnamon sticks, we've got things like the red
peppercorns, you could use black peppercorns. You know herbs like rosemary or bay even a
little sliver of chilli makes the most incredible difference and then citrus. Clementine, lemon, lime.
Any mixture or combination of these the zest or the peel actually is what you want. So I've
got a pan here, I'll put it on a medium-high heat and we're gonna toast these spices. So the stick
goes in, let's get the flavours waking up right. Let's toast those spices. I'll take three or four
cloves, not many, be subtle. We're gonna put the red peppercorns in there. I'm gonna take a little half
of chilli through the stalk there, like that. I will remove the seeds because that's too hot
right. We want it to be very subtle just a nice little hum of heat and we're going to take that
chiLli and just pop that in too. Then we're going to use a peeler and take little bits of lime peel,
and two or three will be more than enough. The same with clementine, get that peel in there. Then a few
peels of lemon. Give that a little shake, as the pan heats up you can hear it scolding and heating up
all the natural oils in the peel and the spices. We'll take a little bit of herb as well, rosemary
and that is going to be lovely. That smells amazing. So take this off the heat and then just
carefully pick up your toasted herbs, spices, the cinnamon goes in. That little bit of chilli goes in.
All those amazing bits of orange and lemon zest, honestly that little bit of heat makes such a
difference and immediately it will change the flavour of the vodka. Let's take those peppercorns
get them in as well. So put the lid on and then give it a little shake, move it around
and look it's a beautiful thing, it looks nice, a nice little label, a little bow. That makes a
beautiful little present for someone you love and after three days that gets really good and
then beyond it keeps changing and evolving. So the question is what to do with a beautiful, infused
vodka? I've got one that I've made before and I'm gonna make you a beautiful christmas cosmopolitan.
It's a brilliant cocktail and in the last sort of five or six years I've enjoyed making myself a
civilised, grown-up cocktail just to kind of set things off nice. I think we deserve
a little cocktail this year. So get some ice in whatever kind of beaker or cup you want
and then we're going to get one of these of course. You can use like a little jug or something like
that, you don't have to be uptight about how you do it. I'm going to take some ice, put that
into your receptacle. I'm going to use 40 millilitres of your infused vodka.
So in that goes, this is last year's one. So that will be tasting absolutely fantastic. Then we're
going to go in with 10 mls of triple sec. So that goes straight in as well. Now traditionally
for a cosmopolitan you'd use cranberry juice and I love that but as it's christmas,
come on let's go pomegranate, I love it. I love pomegranate, it's such a beautiful,
beautiful thing and look at that, fantastic. So either or, cranberries, christmassy. Pomegranates
are christmassy. What I love to do and the flavour from this is amazing and so much better than
any juice you'll get out of a carton is just grab it with your hands, get this and squeeze
about 25 mils of your pomegranate juice into there. So what I'm going to do now is put this on top,
give it a spank, shake it. It doesn't matter if you haven't got one of these,
you can just stir it. You can use your sieve or any small little sieve. Get your glass which
you've got cold which I love. Goes nice and frosty and then you can pour your beautiful
christmas cosmopolitan into your glass, come on. Right, let's have a try...
Christmas in the glass, come on! Christmas cosmopolitan
for yourself or someone you love, cheers.