Cocktails with Cherry tomato
Cherry tomato is a small round tomato, used whole or halved as a savory component in a drink.
How it's used
Whole, it sits in the drink and gives a savory note without much juice. Halved or lightly crushed, it releases the green, stemmy note that is the reason to use fresh fruit instead of juice. Muddled, it gives less liquid than its size suggests and a lot of skin. If the drink is shaken, fine-strain it.
Substitutes for Cherry tomato
For a garnish, any small ripe tomato will do.
Grape tomatoes
Smaller and drier, so muddle them a little harder. Use one and a half to two per cherry tomato.
Regular ripe tomato
Cut about 17 g of flesh per cherry tomato. It has less sugar, so add a quarter barspoon of syrup for every 50 g.
Storage
Keep unripe tomatoes on the counter: cold stops the ripening they still have to do. Fridge cold sharply cuts the aroma compounds that make a tomato smell like a tomato. They recover only partly on rewarming, and the longer the chill, the less comes back. Sugar and acid are unaffected, so a chilled tomato is still sweet and sharp but smells of very little. A fully ripe tomato used within a few days survives the fridge better than its reputation suggests. Either way, pick fruit that is firm and unbroken.
