Oh, martini, martini, martini. If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right. The quintissential cocktail is in the midst of a revival, and I say good on ya, mate.
THE MARTINI
Recipe source: Williams-Sonoma THE BAR GUIDE (Can I just say this book makes VERY strong cocktails?!?
Ingredients and amounts: 3 fl. oz. Boodles Gin, 1/2 fl. oz Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth, 3 Miss Scarlett's Drunken (Garlic) Stuffed Olives.
Shake gin and vermouth together over ice in a shaker. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add olives (preferably on an elegant silver pick) for garnish.
First impression: Hard to say. I'm sure my very first impression of a martini was YUCK because they are an acquired taste. Suffice it to say tonight was not my first taste of a martini, so my impression was more like "aaahhhh".
Notes: Of course, I have a lot to say about the martini. There is a joke that says: If you are ever stranded on a desert island, and you want to be rescued, simply start mixing a martini. At least three people will appear out of nowhere to tell you you are doing it wrong.
For starters, a true martini is made with gin. The vodka martini came into popularity in the 1950s, and has since surpassed gin to such a degree that the standard martini in most bars will automatically be made with vodka (which is the most popular liquor in America at this time). Don't get me wrong. I love vodka. My favorite vodka is Belvedere. Tonight's cocktail was going to be a vodka martini, due to the fact that I had some lovely smoked salmon that was nearing its expiration date, and I had to eat it tonight. What better accompaniment to smoked salmon that a nice chilled vodka martini? But I ran into a problem. You see, Belvedere vodka has a cork stopper. I usually keep my vodka in the freezer, and a cork stopper is easily removed even if the bottle is well frozen. But currently I have a bottle of Skyy Vodka. Skyy has a screw top, and when I went to fetch it I couldn't open the damn bottle!!! So it was to be a gin martini after all. Boodles to the rescue. Boodles was recommended to me by Robert Hess of DrinkBoy.com. I had tried Bombay Sapphire Gin before, and found it undrinkable. It tasted like medicine to me. Robert recommended a few gins that had a somewhat less juniper-y taste that I might find palatable.
So, that said, tonight's martini was a new experience for me, because it was a true gin martini and I was able to taste the flavors of the gin. Mild herbal notes, which were truly pleasant and not overpowering.
Oh, one more important thing. A longstanding trend with martinis, to the point of becoming a joke, is to see how little vermouth you can put in them. A mere drop, in some cases. Rinse the glass with vermouth and dump the excess out in others. There are even little mister bottles which will spray a fine bit of vermouth in your martini. Drinkboy.com and other sites have suggested that this is a rather silly fad that has gotten out of hand. Without the vermouth, you're pretty much ordering a glass of very cold gin (or vodka). I did the "rinse and dump" routing with the vermouth for quite some time (as I thought it was how you did it) but I have since tried adding more vermouth to my martinis and have found it a positive experience. Adding more vermouth smooths out the drink, and brings it back to the realm of a true cocktail. (Which I will write more about later. Suffice it to say I think of a true cocktail as a synergistic alchemy...the sum of the ingredients being better than its parts). Here's a fun experiment. Get a botttle of good gin (or vodka) and some dry vermouth and figure out just how much vermouth you like in your martini.
Don't attempt to operate heavy machinery after this test.
Would I order this drink in a bar? Pffsh. WOULDN'T I?
The following is a cross-post from my cooking blog: Joy or Death 
