Lemon Verbena Daiquiri

One of our favorite vendors recently returned to the Ferry Plaza farmer’s market for the season, and last week was the first time we’d been at the market to see them. We love Green Gulch Farm, especially their gorgeous greens, and it’s always our first stop at the market since they sell really out quickly.

We probably went a bit overboard with our greens purchase, but they are so fresh, they keep much longer than store-bought greens in the fridge. Clayton also threw in a beautiful bunch of lemon verbena. We couldn’t decide what to do with it all week, and we didn’t want it going bad, so we settled on a lemon verbena infused syrup to use in cocktails.

We used our syrup in these daiquiris, and they were amazing! We couldn’t decide if it was an accident, so we made a second one with regular simple syrup to check. We definitely preferred the lemon verbena version. Now we know what we’re doing with our next bunch of lemon verbena from the market!

To make the lemon verbena syrup, we followed our usual simple syrup recipe, added a few sprigs of lemon verbena to the hot syrup to infuse while it cooled then strained it into a container (these work great). For our cocktails we used Diplomático Reserva Exclusiva (c/o), which we had never tried before but really liked.

For simple cocktails like a basic daiquiri, it’s all about the quality of ingredients and being precise with your measurements. We use these small flexible measuring cups for cocktails a lot, and always use fresh squeezed lime juice. We also learned from Stefano, the head barman at one of our favorite hotels in Italy, to chill your glasses with ice while you prepare the rest of the cocktail. For daiquiris, you want to shake them really vigorously. We used this shaker, which was a gift from a friend. It has a good tight seal and a measuring cup in the lid. We served our daiquiris in these crystal cocktail glasses that we really love. We’ve been using them for everything since we got them.