Cocktails and Canapes For Women's World Cup 2015: China

So as the Women's World Cup tournament enters the knockout stage I am trying to scoop up a few of the countries I missed earlier, even if these games are on so late I shall not be watching them. Tonight I shall be watching Germany vs Sweden, which should be a really exciting game, but I am cooking for China who are playing much later against Cameroon.

My Chinese themed cocktail is a Lychee Martini:

The main ingredients are: sugar syrup, pureed canned lychees (drained), vodka, lemon juice and orange flavoured liqueur. I have taken the recipe from epicurious.com, an American site, so measures are in cups/oz. I scaled back a little on the vodka and upped the fruit side to make a slightly softer drink, but only a little. This just tastes so innocent but there is a lot of vodka in there!

The recipe calls for a sugar syrup but as I have been making a few cocktails in the last week I had already made up a batch of sugar syrup. You can buy 'cocktail sugar syrup' ready made and it is often sold as Gomme. My syrup was just sugar and water but a true Gomme includes gum arabic which is there to give a silkier texture to the cocktail . Here is a post on making your own from food blogger SeriousEats.

For my canape I am making 'sweet and sour' style glazed chicken; but not as I remember sweet and sour from so many chinese takeaways which always seemed to involve battered pieces of meat in sickly sweet sauce.

 This is just a chicken breast stir fry that has a lime and mango chutney dipping sauce. The recipe comes from Yan Kit So's Party Eats, also written with Paul Bloomfield. This lovely author of chinese cooking passed away in 2001 but I have learnt some of my favourite recipes from her books and hope she will be an inspiration for generations to come.

Glazed Chicken Breast with Sweet & Sour Dipping Sauce