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| The
Perfect Martini |
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From Louise Ripley (lripley@yorku.ca )
The three keys to the perfect martini are excellent gin (my personal favourite
is Beefeaters), ice cold ingredients and receptacles, and panache in preparing
and serving, including glasses (and pitcher if you use one) of the finest
crystal (my preference is Waterford). On a boat on the Nile River in Egypt,
with my good friend Ellen Rubert, I once ordered a martini. The waiters were
confused, partly because martini overseas means the brand name of vermouth, so
I finally asked them to just bring me a glass of gin. Soon there arrived at my
table a small clear glass jelly jar with an ounce of warm gin in the bottom!
This is NOT how to serve a martini (although all the rest of the trip was
great!).
Keep the gin bottle and the Waterford crystal glasses always in the freezer
(you never know when you will have the kind of day that will require a martini
and you want to be prepared). Keep the olives in the refrigerator; I prefer as
large an olive as possible, one or two – the Queen-size are nice, or even
better is one called the Elephant, and while the traditional pimento adds a
nice colour, an interesting and different stuffing can add extra panache. Also
in the refrigerator, always keep a pristine Waterford perfume atomizer, never
having been used for perfume, filled with Martini and Rossi white vermouth.
When the need for a martini arises, remove the Waterford crystal glasses from
the freezer onto an elegant sterling silver serving tray, and, working quickly,
pour the almost texturized gin from the bottle into each glass. Drop in the olive and spray just a spritz of vermouth over the top of each glass (do
this with just the right twist of the wrist). Serve immediately with a
flourish. Do not use a toothpick for the olive as it disturbs the tranquility
and unbroken one-ness of the surface where the vermouth settles into the gin.
This, to me, is what the martini is all about: grace, style, panache,
simplicity, elegance – leading to a relaxation that comes not only from the
powerful wallop rendered by the undiluted alcoholic content, but also from the
feeling of being worthy of being treated with such care and tenderness as it
takes to present this drink in the proper manner, whether one is serving it to
a lone drinker in a bar, to a party of twenty in one’s home, or just to oneself
after a hard day at work.
Then there is the recipe of Liam O'Dell's uncle, who loved trout fishing as well as martinis.
First thing in the morning, leave your trailer (with hydro)
parked beside a clear, fresh mountain stream full of trout. Pour four ounces of
excellent vermouth into the water, walk a kilometer downstream, gather water
from the stream and make ice cubes with it. Return to your campsite and spend
the day trout fishing. When the cocktail hour comes, put some of the ice cubes
you made earlier in the day into a glass, fill the glass with gin, and enjoy.
However you make your martini, good gin, ice cold ingredients, and some panache
in the serving are imperative. I was aghast, nay, horrified, no, there is not a
word strong enough to convey how I felt when restaurants and bars began a while
ago to list on their menus so-called “martinis” with ingredients like
chocolate, blueberry, cream, and liqueurs. I had my first martini at the age of
two, grew up sipping them from my grandfather’s glass, and have made them often
during my many years. There is a proper way to fix a martini.
Collected by Bert Christensen
Toronto, Ontario
web site: http://bertc.com
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