At The Farm and Fisherman Tavern, the locavore restaurant in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill, Danny Childs manipulates apples for The Farm and Fish House Punch, a crowd-pleasing batch cocktail that appears in his newly released seasonal cocktail book, Slow Drinks. The New Jersey bar’s signature punch is based on a nearly 300-year-old recipe for Philadelphia Fish House Punch, originally created by a social club about 20 miles from The Farm and Fisherman Tavern.
“Anytime you look critically at an ingredient, especially one as intertwined with human history as apples, you inevitably get into the backstories of how our ancestors took the wild relatives of these ingredients and manipulated them,” says Childs, an ethnobotanist, bartender and author. These ancestral manipulations, whether on a genetic level or through processes like fermentation and distillation, help “develop all of the diversity between different varieties and products we see today,” he says.
Childs’ version pays further homage to regional specialties by featuring locally pressed apple cider and Laird’s Applejack, an apple brandy from America’s oldest distillery located in Scobeyville, New Jersey.
The Farm and Fish House Punch includes both soft and hard cider, the latter of which Childs wild-ferments himself to add texture from carbonation and additional brightness to the drink. (These elements can also come from commercial ciders if you need to substitute.) Childs recommends buying something dry and bubbly, perhaps with hints of leather notes or barnyard twang from Brettanomyces yeast. Consider the Brett-laced, dry-hopped Ironbound Highlands Farmhouse cider from Asbury, New Jersey; the rustic, oak-aged Graft Farm Flor from Newburgh, New York; or the crisp, organic Shacksbury Classic Dry made in Vergennes, Vermont.
Cider Cocktail Recipe
The Farm and Fish House Punch
Makes
Approximately 1.6 liters
Ingredients
8 medium lemons, peeled (You will juice them later – and possibly a few more – for 1½ cups fresh lemon juice)
½ pound demerara sugar (approximately 1 cup)
½ cinnamon stick
1 star anise
2 cloves
10 coriander seeds
2½ cups unfiltered and unsweetened apple cider
1¼ cups Laird’s Applejack
1¼ cups funky, ester-rich Jamaican rum (such as Smith & Cross or Plantation Xaymaca)
Sparkling homemade wild-fermented hard cider for serving (Or a commercial alternative like Ironbound Highlands Farmhouse, Graft Farm Flor or Shacksbury Classic Dry)
Grated nutmeg, for garnish
Directions
Directions
To make the oleo-saccharum, peel 8 lemons, being careful to stop short of peeling the white pith. Set the peeled lemons aside to juice later. Place the peels in a medium bowl along with demerara sugar. Grind the cinnamon, star anise, cloves and coriander in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle and add to the bowl. Mix well and muddle to release the oils from the peels. Cover the bowl with a towel or plate and let sit at room temperature overnight. In the meantime, juice the peeled lemons (though you may need a few more to reach 1½ cups), and refrigerate the juice in an airtight container.
The next day, use a silicone spatula to scrape the oleo-saccharum into a medium saucepan along with the lemon juice and gently heat until all the sugar dissolves. Pass through a fine mesh strainer into a large bowl — this strained liquid is called a “sherbet.” Make sure to squeeze as much liquid from the peels as possible, it should yield about 2¼ cups. Discard the solids after straining. Next, add the apple cider, Laird’s and rum to the sherbet and stir well to combine.
Congratulations, you’ve successfully made your punch! Transfer to airtight bottles or containers and refrigerate. It will keep in the refrigerator for at least a few months, but there’s no chance it won’t get consumed before then.
To serve the punch to a crowd, pour into a punch bowl over a large block of ice and add 750ml of wild-fermented cider or a commercial alternative. Garnish with grated nutmeg and lemon slices.
For an individual serving, pour 3½ ounces in a rocks glass with a large ice cube and top with 1 ounce of Wild Fermented Crabapple Cider. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.
Excerpted and lightly edited with permission from Slow Drinks by Danny Childs, published by Hardie Grant Publishing, October 2023.
