Iced beetroot and gin shots

Wondering how to get your Eat For The Earth lunch off to a flying start? Jane-Anne Hobbs Rayner, author of the delectable Scrumptious blog, has the answer: iced beetroot and gin shots.

Jane-Anne’s Eat For The Earth menu:

Iced beetroot and gin shots

Slow-cooked Moroccan-style beef and apricot stew with naartjie and chickpea couscous

Pear and blackberry almond crumble

Here’s an idea for a zingy cocktail: cool, earthy beetroot soup, spiked with gin and served in smoking-cold shot glasses.

Ingredients:
This recipe makes 36 shots of 60ml (4 tbsp) each, or two litres of soup (which will serve 8 people, as a starter).

You need a good vegetable stock to give this soup depth. In this recipe, the peelings of the baked beetroot are combined with basic vegetable flavourings to make a tasty broth.

6 large beetroot, or 12 smaller ones

For the stock:
1 stick celery, chopped
3 stalks parsley
1 large carrot, scraped and roughly chopped
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 clove
1 bay leaf
6 peppercorns
½ tsp (2.5ml) caraway seeds
1 tsp (5ml) salt
1.2 litres water
Beetroot trimmings [see recipe]

To serve:
White pepper
1 tsp (5ml) Tabasco sauce
300ml gin, or more, to taste
Small spring onions, trimmed

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Trim the leafy tops off the beetroot, leaving 5cm of stalk intact. Wipe the beetroot with a cloth, but don’t wash, peel or cut them. Wrap them in a double layer of foil and place in the oven. Bake until completely tender when pierced with a sharp knife (how long this will take will depend on the size and age of the beetroot; for baby beetroot, an hour is enough; very elderly beets can take up to 3 hours).
3. Remove the beets from the oven and allow to cool.
4. Put a piece of newspaper or greaseproof paper on your kitchen counter. Trim the beetroot of stalks and roots, slip off their skins, and set all these trimmings to one side.
5. Quarter the peeled beetroot and place in the goblet of a liquidiser. Blitz until you have a fine purée (if the mixture is too thick for the blades to turn, add a little water). Pour into a large bowl and refrigerate.
6. Now make the vegetable stock: put the reserved beetroot trimmings into a saucepan and add the remaining stock ingredients. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for an hour, topping up with water every now and then if necessary, and skimming off any foam.
7. Strain the stock through a colander onto the chilled beetroot purée. Add the Tabasco sauce and season with white pepper, and a little more salt, to taste. Stir well.
8. Now pass the soup through a fine sieve. Place in the fridge again and chill for two to three hours. An hour before serving, place the shot glasses and the gin in the freezer.
9. Remove the soup from the fridge and stir in the cold gin. Put the soup into a jug with a sharp pouring nozzle and fill each glass almost to the brim. Add a spring onion to each glass and serve immediately.

Thanks to Jane-Anne for this party-starter of a recipe. Download printable version.

If you make this for your Eat For The Earth lunch, take pics and post them on our facebook page. There are prizes, people.