It’s cocktail week here at the Culinary Cartel, and we are continuing our Christmas collab with my friends Leonista and Happy Culture Kombucha. These two local and lekka companies are showing us just how good our home grown brands can be, and deserve your love this festive season.

“What’s kombucha?” I hear you saying. You can find the answers to all your questions here, as well as a short look into kombucha’s amazing health benefits.

As some might remember from previous posts, my vision for this season was to showcase a Christmas spread that would appeal to everyone. It’s the time of year for family and togetherness after all. So get ready for a seasonal, earth friendly, sometimes vegan, feast of simple, time savvy recipes for the whole family to gather around.

Of all the booze likely to make it into your Christmas drinks table, agave derived spirits are some of the purest, and give you a natural energy boost. The perfect tipple of choice to keep you going from the mezze platter, through lunch and into the evening. The purer the spirit the less likely you are to spend boxing day in a horrible hung over funk, which is why Leonista is leading the charge this festive season with their #drinkwithrespect campaign. This campaign calls you to not let lasts night joy steal tomorrows happiness, to be present, to ride that wave and climb that mountain and have a joyous and full festive season.

Leonistas Reposado is the ideal partner to showcase Happy Culture’s new Pineapple Lime flavour and I couldn’t be more excited to share this recipe. The Reposado’s smokey undertones pairs really well with the sour notes in the kombucha, with the candied chilli coming in hot to round off the flavour notes nicely.

You can make your chilli simple syrup up to a week in advance but it will get more potent with age so use it to taste! I call for 1 birds eye chilli in the recipe, which can vary in intensity, so feel free to adjust this to your heat preference.

If you try this recipe, let us know how it goes! Leave a comment, rate it, and don’t forget to tag your photo #theculinarycartel on Instagram so we can see what you come up with. Happy cooking!