Whisky tangerine cocktail and buttered toast

This might sound a wacky pairing (OK, it is) but it’s sooo good I had to pass it on. One for Christmas morning, even.

It was created by the great Nick Strangeway at a fascinating event I went to called The Art of Blending which brought together a chocolatier (Chantal Coady of Rococo), a tea blender (Henrietta Lovell of Rare Tea Company) a perfumer (Angela Flanders), a mixologist (Nick) and Dr Jim Beveridge, the master blender of Johnnie Walker which sponsored the evening.

The idea obviously was to show that blended whisky is not an inferior product by showing how other preparations and high-end products benefit from being blended, cocktails being one.

Nick made this extraordinarily delicious cocktail from a bitter orange syrup - essentially an unset marmalade with peated malted barley added, shaken with Johnnie Walker Blue then handed round some buttered toast for us to nibble with it. Amazing - the cocktail tasted like liquid marmalade.

Obviously this wouldn’t be that easy to replicate at home but there are plenty of recipes for breakfast martinis which should work equally well particularly if you can make them with homemade or, even better, a freshly made marmalade.

Hawksmoor’s* version is below:

1 tsp bitter orange marmalade

50ml good gin such as Beefeater

5ml Campari

15ml lemon juice

a dash of orange bitters

a twist of orange peel

Place a heaped barspoon (or teaspoon) of marmalade in a shaker. Add the gin and stir, pressing the marmalade against the side of the shaker to loosen it up. Add the other ingredients, fill up the shaker with ice cubes and shake hard to break down and dissolve the marmalade. Strain into a martini glass and serve with a twist of orange peel.

The other option is to use Chase’s marmalade-flavoured vodka.

Breakfasts will never be the same again . . .

* recipe from Hawksmoor at Home, published by Preface Publishing at £25