Bilita Mpash

The name comes from the dictionary of dreams. In Bantu, bilita mpash is 'a wonderful dream' — the opposite of a nightmare — and in the legend a maiden brings it. My maiden is my grandmother: the one who made me wild strawberries macerated in orange juice, with a drop of vinegar and a spoon of sugar. It's the sweetest memory I have. This cocktail is that memory.

So its heart is her maceration — wild strawberry in orange juice, vinegar and sugar — turned into a cordial. It rides on agricole rum, with blood orange and lime, and a kitchen-garden base from a homemade strawberry gazpacho. The finish is the part that worked from day one: a half-rim of freeze-dried strawberry, Himalayan salt and harissa (2:1:0.5) — sweet, saline and a prick of heat that makes the strawberry jump. Serene, fresh and fruity; daring and explosive.

The concept flirted with a thousand competition fantasies — clarified tomato and kimchi waters, tomato liquor, watermelon spheres — and some were left behind: a competition cocktail has to be serveable and, above all, taste of something. We brought the fantasy down to reality without touching what matters — the memory. The dominant constraint was never flavour: it was the memory, and it had to be served intact. From that formula, with the macerated-strawberry cordial as the mother ingredient, come the five directions below.