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Peace Love Pickles whips up batches of pickle based cocktail mixes

A housemade Bloody Mary mix and a ‘Pinney Baron’ mix featuring pineapple, brine, jalapeno and lime from Peace Love Pickles, formerly known as Elsie’s.

Joe Lamberti, Cherry Hill Courier-Post

Amanda Rodriguez has a garden in the front of her Cherry Hill home, and she has ducks in the back.

Both play a role in the homemade, handcrafted goods she produces for the family business, The Rod Homestead.

Rodriguez began by infusing her own vanilla extracts, offering them as gifts. Then she began to harvest herbs from her garden, which led to her create more things, such as basil salt for her pastas.

Eventually, she began creating simple cocktails for herself. The rest is, well, history.

“I have a friend who’s a beekeeper, so I used her honey for the honey syrup,” said Rodriguez. “And starting with homemade grenadine instead of store-bought was such a difference in the taste. It’s nice to know what’s going in your body, and It’s nice to know that it’s not just corn syrup and sugar.

“My orange syrup, I actually juice the oranges myself and peel the rinds and they sit and they reduce for hours together to get like a natural actual sweetness from it,” she said. “So they do have sugar but it’s more so sweetness from the juice. I just noticed such a difference, so I started making more and more,” she said.

“I started cooking out of a certified kitchen, and I started at the farmers markets and have just been going upward since then.”

The mother of five is very much on trend. There are quite a few entrepreneurs in the state who are making their own cocktail starters or shrubs or, in some cases, their own cocktails available for sale.

These items are often locally sourced. They are sold online, at boutiques and specialty shops, at liquor stores or local farmers markets — or sometimes in their own stores or restaurants.

Some people use The Rod Homestead flavored salts or sugars for rimming glasses for cocktails and mocktails.

“As an actual business, I started just this past year, about six months ago,” said Rodriguez, who sells the syrups and other products at local farmers markets, although some things can be purchased online. “I didn’t realize that people would love it as much as they do. They use them as cocktail starters.

“I don’t want to sell to just one market. I use it myself to see what it’s good with. I use the orange syrup on top of pancakes instead of maple. You can use the pomegranate on top of ice cream and pound cake as like a little extra thing. The honey syrup, I like in tea because sometimes you don’t want to mix it with straight honey that’s gloopy on the bottom, so it’s nice for ice tea as well. It’s just like universal.”

It takes her an entire day to make a batch, she said.

‘Do something interesting with it’

Ian Knauer knows food. He’s the founder of the Farm Cooking School in Titusville, located within Hopewell Township in Mercer County. He also happens to be a former food editor at Gourmet Magazine.

Knauer wrote a cookbook and created a farm-to-table cooking show that aired on PBS and Amazon Prime. But now, he can add liquor to his resume.

He co-created an Aperitivo brand called Amara that’s “a play off Amaro [an Italian herbal liqueur] but a feminine version of it, since the women on our team do the farming,” he laughed. It’s set to hit the market at the end of July with its first product, a radicchio Aperitivo.” 

The radicchio Aperitivo will be available at the Wrightstown Farmers Market in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and through the Farm Cooking School’s partner farm, Roots to River Farm’s, CSA program. It also will be available online soon.

The radicchio Aperitivo is a vermouth Aperitivo with a base of a wine made from fennel grown at Roots to River Farm. Then, radicchio, chamomile, thyme, lavender and sage are added – all also grown at the farm – as well as a neutral spirit from Eight Oaks Farm Distillery in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, which also grows their own grains.

“Most Americans think of vermouth as what you put a drop of in your martini, but this isn’t that,” Knauer said. Instead, it’s an herbaceous, Barcelona bittersweet with a lot of complexity, he continued.

He said it’s ideal over ice, with a brown spirit, or with gin.

It all started when Knauer’s wife gave him a case of radicchio because it hadn’t sold at the farmers’ market. She asked him if she could “do something interesting with it” – and he was up for the challenge. 

“I had remembered when I was in Barcelona, I had this delicious vermouth made bitter with wormwood, but I thought the radicchio could sub in for the bitterness of the Spanish vermouth,” Knauer said. “I tried it with some wine and it was so delicious, so I wrote it down and I’ve just been making it ever since.”

Get your veggies

Vegetables also find their way into the shrubs at the bar of Asbury Park’s Talula’s, where the fermented drinking vinegars – made from fruit or vegetables macerated with sugar then added to vinegar and spices – are mixed with seltzer or spirits. 

“You update the sweetener and the vinegars and the spices for (the flavor) you’re looking for,” said Shanti Mignogna, who owns Talula’s with her husband, Steve. “We might want to use apple cider if we’re making an apple shrub, or if we’re doing a Concord grape shrub, we want to do more of a white champagne vinegar.”

Talula’s bar manager Paul Check’s current shrub flavor is blueberry and lavender, with strawberry and mint most likely next. Prior shrubs include rhubarb and mint, spiced blood orange, and spiced grapefruit. 

The vinegars make for a drink that is tart but also sweet, Mignogna said. “Even if you try it and you think, ‘That’s a little much,’ I bet if you keep sipping on it, you’ll also kind of get hooked.”

A real pickle

Speaking of tart, Katherine Cohen, co-owner of Peace Love Pickles (formerly Elsie’s Pickles) in Haddon Township, Camden County, has managed to grow her business during the pandemic, via franchising. Two other locations have opened in Northfield, Atlantic County, and Atlantic Highlands, Monmouth County.

All three locations offer cocktail starters, including signature brine, Bloody Mary, Pickled Surfer and Pinney Baron.

“We resurrected an old family pickle recipe that was on my mom’s side, that’s where the pickles come from,” said Cohen, who co-owns the business with her husband Chad Jordan. “The Bloody Mary was actually my dad’s recipe. I added our brine to it. People love it. It’s spicy. It’s made fresh every day. It’s available online for purchase on our website and also at all three of our locations as well.

More: COVID One Year: How have these South Jersey restaurants survived the pandemic?

More: Elsie’s Pickles in Haddon Township goes viral often – and now you can own a franchise

“We have our signature brine. We call it our fine brine, because it’s in a wine bottle. That is the brine from our pickles that’s sold separately by the bottle … We also offer a Pickled Surfer, which is our brine, jalapeño and lime. You can mix that with vodka, tequila or Irish whiskey.”

Pinney Baron is the pickle brine, pineapple, jalapeno and lime.

“You mix that with vodka or tequila for the best margarita you’ll ever have in your life, the best pickle margarita,” Cohen said.

“People love it, they’re gluten free, they’re sugarfree,” said Cohen, who said all the mixers need to be kept chilled and have an expiration date within a month.

How about lemon kiss?

Nearby, also in Haddon Township, is a woman-owned beverage brand, Brody’s Crafted Cocktails.

Owner Cristy Neunson, who grew up in Haddon Heights and lives in Haddon Township, offers ready-to-pour cocktails, such as the Minted Mule, a minty mingle of vodka and spicy ginger with a splash of lime; French 75, notes of bright juniper gin with a tart lemon kiss, and a lingering licorice finish; Air Mail, rum infused with rich honey, bright lime and earthy aromatic bitters; Black Orchid, a fresh bouquet of vodka, fruit and flowers, featuring black raspberry, citrus and violet and more.

The business office is in Haddon Township but the distilling is done at Faber Distilling Co. in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

“We’re in approximately 20 liquor stores in New Jersey and we’re also available online,” said Neunson, who founded the company 1½ years ago and runs it with her family, including daughter Kirstyn Neunson, and business partner and beverage professional Ken Dee.

They launched the product May 1 and offer five cocktails. Two gin-based, two vodka-based and one rum-based.

“They’re made to drink on their own or add a sparkling component,” said Cristy Neunson. “I kind of created the company because I don’t typically like to drink beer or wine, so I was looking for something that I could take with me to bring your own to a party or camping or something like that.

“My favorite drink was always a French 75 which has a Champagne component to it … I did kind of create this to be on trend. I’ve seen cocktails becoming more popular and I was like, ‘Yea!’ because I love cocktails and I’m glad it’s kind of taking off in that direction.”

 ‘As purely as possible’

The old saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention.

John Granata, co-founder of Jersey Spirits Distilling Co. in Fairfield, Essex County, said they refused to put their carefully crafted whiskey, vodka, rum, gin and bourbon in cheap mixers. They already were mashing and mixing fresh ingredients for their spirits. So, they started doing the same to make cocktail mixers.

“It’s been our mission from the start to make things as purely as possible,” said Granata. “We were sick of all the big commercial distilleries putting chemicals in as flavorings and dyes from the onset.”

Jersey Spirits has been lauded for its Bloody Mary mix, which they pair with their own horseradish vodka. A cold press juicer helps them make, not only their Jersey Apple, Jersey Pumpkin and cranberry holiday Nip hoochs, but their house-made mixers for margaritas, mules cosmos and more. They also make and sell bitters and tonic water.

More: ‘It’s all about learning’ for cooks of all levels at The Farm Cooking School in Hopewell

“We have relationships with more than 18 farms in New Jersey,” said Granata. “We try to source locally whenever we can.”

How sweet it is 

Isabella Abbate, who grew up in a restaurant family in Sicklerville, Camden County, uses locally sourced fruits and other produce for Simply Bella’s, which produces simple syrup.

Her syrups can be used in cocktail, mocktails, coffee, tea, lemonade, dessert and more.

“I was making cocktails for my friends all the time, so I figured why not start making cocktail syrups to make it easy?” Abbate shared.

“A lot of my friends didn’t know how to make these drinks with all the different flavors so I decided I’d do something fun. Not only does it impact the local community because you’re using local produce, but also you can do it in the comfort of your own home because it was during the pandemic at the time.”

More: South Jersey restaurant to host Harvest Benefit to aid New Jersey Farmers Against Hunger

Abbate began making the simple syrups at her dad’s restaurant, Villari’s Lakeside Restaurant in Sicklerville, a year ago when the pandemic struck. She makes larger bottles of her syrups for the restaurant.

Also a general manager at Panda Express, Abbate sells the syrups at local farmers markets, including Wenonah, Burlington County and Haddonfield, and they have also been sold in local shops.

She now hires someone to go out to the farmers markets, although she still makes the syrups, which come in more than 20 different flavors, including lavender, peach, ginger, cinnamon vanilla and jalapeño.

Meanwhile, the ducks in Rodriguez’s backyard produce eggs that they also sell at farmers markets.

The herbs, meanwhile, just keep giving.

“I started harvesting herbs and infusing salts, so the salt, I would mix with the herbs ground fresh and let it sit out and cure it together,” said Rodriguez, who attends the Burlington County farmers market, Haddon Heights, Collingswood, Mount Holly and Wenonah.

“Then I would grind it back up together and then I would have basil salt for my pastas and things like that. It started off with simple things like that and I went onto sugars for my coffee. I like vanilla coffee but I don’t like the flavor of vanilla coffee beans so I started to get vanilla beans, scrape them and infuse them into sugar and then sift them out and make sure it’s super fine. I made my own vanilla coffee with that. I kind of make everything from scratch.

 “… I’ve been really surprised,” she notes. “I was not expecting such interest.”

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Source: Asbury Park

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