AI Recipes: Scottish Bramble with Late-Summer Blackberries, Gin and Fresh Lemon

Make the bramble syrup: put 1 1/2 cups of the blackberries in a small pan with the sugar, water and the strip of lemon peel.

Serves 4

Ingredients

Make the bramble syrup: put 1 1/2 cups of the blackberries in a small pan with the sugar, water and the strip of lemon peel.
Warm over low heat for 8 minutes, crushing the berries against the side of the pan with a spoon as they release their juice. Do not let it boil, which dulls the fresh berry flavor into jam.
Strain through a fine sieve into a jug, pressing the pulp firmly, then discard the seeds and peel. Chill the syrup completely, about 30 minutes.
Combine the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup in a shaker with ice and shake hard for 12 seconds until the outside frosts.
Pack four short tumblers to the rim with crushed ice, then strain the gin mixture over the top.
Now drizzle the cold bramble syrup slowly over the surface of each glass, about a tablespoon and a half apiece, letting it bleed down through the ice in dark ribbons rather than stirring it in.
Garnish each with two whole blackberries and a lemon twist expressed over the glass, and serve with a short straw so the drinker pulls the syrup up as they go.
The Bramble was invented in 1984 by Dick Bradsell at Fred's Club in London, but he built it as a deliberate homage to picking wild brambles on the Isle of Wight, and it has been thoroughly adopted north of the border where hedgerow berries ripen through late August. The technique is the whole trick: the syrup is poured, never mixed, so the drink starts bright and citrus-led at the first sip and deepens into fruit as the ice melts through it.

📷 Photos are for inspiration and may not exactly represent the finished dish.