Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • A35

Going on holiday? Keep reading the Standard Get your FREE iPad app at standard.co.uk/apps evening tandard Thursd 15 2013 35 DOWN THE CAKEHOLE reac or oo TO celebrate the Chinese mid-autumn harvest festival, two New Moon cake flavours launch today in London. The one we tried, a classic green-tea cake that looks like a pie and is stodgy and sweet, is available in the Yauatcha shop (£4) or as part of 15-course evening tasting menu. An ice cream-filled version is also on sale. hkklondon.com/yauatcha.com ictoria tewart OF all the bottles in the cocktail cabinet by far the most useful is the smallest. If all you possess besides a bottle of gin is a tiny one of bitters, then I want to come to your party.

However, until Alessandro, the head barman at the Connaught, showed me how to make them, I had no idea quite how easy it is. All you need is neutral grain alcohol, a few herbs and spices and the foresight to have left them macerating for a month. Occasionally, bitters are described as the and of the bar but really they perform a function a little like spices and a little goes a long way. Like many cocktail ingredients, they were originally used as medicine. The famous Angostura bitters were developed in 1824 as a cure for seasickness, while all manner of 19th-century mountebanks would clip-clop from town to town, claiming that their concoction would cure all ills.

History does not recall who first had the idea of drinking them for fun, but whoever did effectively invented the cocktail. Technically, a cocktail is liquor mixed with sugar, water and bitters. And all else flowed from there. Nowadays, most bars make do with the justly prized Angostura. Orange bitters and bright red (which lend an anise flavour to New Orleans-style cocktails such as the Sazerac) are useful upgrades.

However, recently, there has been a minor boom in craft products. I wandered into the other week and found the salesman in raptures about Bitters amazingly potent single-ingredient tinctures that range from chocolate to lavender flavour. A more affordable place to start is the Bitter Truth Travel Set, which includes five small bottles in one handy case. Still, given the ease of making bitters, it is surprising more barmen offer their own. Macerating stuff in alcohol is a bit like cooking, Alessandro explained you need to vary the temperature and the cooking time depending on the dish.

For deeper-lying flavours in barks and seeds going to need a longer cook and higher-proof alcohol. For a delicate ingredient, such as a fresh green herb, you can go easy. You can make a passable de menthe by leaving a few fresh mint leaves in vodka for 48 hours or so and sweetening with sugar. Alessandro and I began with 300ml ordinary vodka and added artemisia, juniper, coriander seeds, black cardamom, lemon peel, orange flowers and a massive hunk of cinnamon bark that he had lugged back from a recent trip to South America. We decided on the name Jungle Bitters and left the mixture for four weeks, before Alessandro filtered and bottled it.

The resultant liquid is deep red with an incredible depth of flavour. I mixed it up with a measure of Martin cognac, some brown sugar, ice and lemon peel to make an update on the very first cocktail. A few drops in some frozen gin were similarly delicious and reviving. Those old quacks might have had a point. The Spirits Richard cocktail adventures The bitter truth about mixing it You can make a passable de menthe by leaving a few mint leaves in vodka for 48 hours PIZZA PILGRIMS 11 Dean Street, W1 (pizzapilgrims.

co.uk). About £45 for two with a drink and dessert. JASMINE GARDNER A new pizza pilgrimage Slice of life: serving up the pizzas The Pilgrim brothers surely knew before moving into Soho that the faithful would receive their manna with open arms IF IT for the fact that the two Pizza Pilgrims brothers gained a stone each during their pizza discovery tour of Italy, their business would be what is known as a lean start-up. They began as a van with a small menu. With minimal overheads the brothers sold their pizzas direct to hungry patrons at food markets able to test their product and find out if and which people wanted to buy and eat it.

Want it and eat it they did. Now, following a long list of street foodies including Lucky Chip and Pitt Cue Co, Pizza Pilgrims has set up shop. On the first night the Dean Street green-themed to match their van, was packed. Fantastically friendly staff were welcoming in group after group of diners, greeting them like old friends probably because they were. My guest and I decided to go halvsies on a salsiccia friarelli and a Portabello mushroom and truffle (£10 each).

They came Neopolitan style, which means a thicker base than the thin Roman pizza I would usually opt for. I would have preferred my toppings spread out further to the pizza edges with the balance of cheese to vegetable readjusted in favour of the vegetable. We each washed our pizzas down with one of the cocktails an Aperol spritz (prosecco and orange aperitif) and a Campari con bianco. We did not finish up with the Nutella pizza ring described as on the website (with which inclined, without trying it, to agree). Instead we chose the Gelupo ice creams on offer a lemon sorbet and a vanilla with sea salt and extra virgin olive oil.

Both were delicious as I expect from best ice cream parlour, a Soho neighbour and salt and oil on ice cream has gone down in my this at notes. The fact that the pizza here did not cater precisely to my tastes is of little consequence. With a well-tried and well-tested formula the Pilgrim brothers surely knew before moving into Soho that the faithful would receive their manna with open arms. So it matters not that I believe in a different cookbook. A pilgrimage to Dean Street has begun.

TT TT London Life.