As promised, my summer drink of '08 has been perfected and properly named. I had been fooling around with muddling lemon thyme and sugar, etc. but hadn't been happy with the results (not thymey enough). Then I thought it was time to experiment with making a lemon thyme infused simple syrup. Home run on the first try!
The simple syrup recipe is...well...simple: 2 cups of sugar, one and a half cups of water. Heat until sugar is dissolved and bring to a simmer/ barely boil. Then remove it from the heat and stick in an entire bunch of lemon thyme and swaths of lemon peel cut from one lemon with a vegetable peeler. Let everything steep until cool and then strain and chill. The drink itself is a pint glass of ice, lemon wedges, one ounce of lemon juice, one ounce of lemon thyme simple syrup, two ounces of gin and then the whole thing is topped off with club soda. (Decorative sprig of lemon thyme optional.)This is tasty and refreshing, and would be equally good (I'm theorizing here) as a non-alcoholic herbal lemonade concoction.
