A rhubarb and ginger cocktail to kick your Easter weekend off in style

Planter’s punch is my favourite warm-weather drink to make for parties.

It involves rum (my favourite liquor), pineapple juice (my favourite mixer), lime juice (my favourite citrus), and, traditionally, grenadine syrup, which I always nix and instead use as an opportunity to insert some seasonal fruit syrup into the drink. For this cocktail, I made a tangy, bright syrup using fresh ginger and rhubarb from my garden. The syrup is super-easy to make – you pretty much just simmer all the ingredients together for a bit and then strain them – and the punch just involves dumping everything into a pitcher and stirring it for a few seconds. It’s a great go-to cocktail that you can always change up simply by subbing in different fruits for the syrup. I’ve also made this with a strawberry-balsamic syrup and a blueberry-mint one, and I highly recommend trying out both!

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the Rhubarb-Ginger Syrup
3 rhubarb stalks, cut into 12mm-thick slices
1 5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and cut into 4 slices
150g sugar

For the Planter’s Punch
480ml pineapple juice
360ml golden rum
60ml fresh lime juice
1 15cm piece rhubarb, cut into slices 12mm thick

Method
For the rhubarb-ginger syrup, in a small saucepan, combine the rhubarb, ginger, sugar, and 180ml water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the rhubarb has nearly disintegrated and the ginger has softened, 10-15 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Strain the syrup into a bowl and discard the solids.

For the planter’s punch, in a large pitcher, stir together the pineapple juice, rum, lime juice, 60ml of the rhubarb-ginger syrup, and the rhubarb slices. Distribute among four ice-filled glasses and serve.

Extracted from First We Eat: A Year of Seasonal Cooking from My Kitchen to Yours by Eva Kosmas Flores (Abrams, approx €31). Images © 2018 Eva Kosmas Flores.