My sister, Roberta, created a fun family cookbook of recipes and stories a decade ago. She recently resent her “intro” to me and I love it. She talks of how our five senses link us to those wonderful memories from our past. I urge you to give this a read and I guarantee it will make you smile.
The words are strictly Roberta’s. I’m just sharing them.
Continue reading “Finding Happiness”
I was a cookbook junkie for a couple of decades. The last few years, I’ve kept my addiction in check. I try and take it one meal at a time, which has worked … so far. Of course, I continue collecting online recipes and recipes from friends like a fiend.
Continue reading “A Cookbook Junkie”
After three days in Lisbon, we were driving north to Nazaré. Big waves were coming, and by luck, we were going to be there to see them. On the way, we detoured for lunch at the restaurant O Forno in the town of Almeirim. O Forno is famous for their Sopa da Pedra (Stone Soup).
Continue reading “Sopa da Pedra”
In America, we often ignore cuts of meat used to make excellent dishes elsewhere – beef cheeks and pork jowl are two examples. Oxtail is another. When we lived in Germany, Ochsenschwanzsuppe (Oxtail soup) was a classic you rarely see here. It’s an OMG wonderful dish I’ve made a couple of times now.
Of course, many hear the word Schwanz, and immediately think of the Mel Brooks film, Young Frankenstein and the scene with Inga (the great Terry Garr) using the pseudo-German word schwanzstucker*. I can assure you, there is no schwanzstucker in this Ochsenschwanzsuppe. 😉
In today’s world, what we are really talking about is beef tail, but I’m going to stick with Ochsenschwanz, or oxtail, which is what it was called when we originally learned about it in Germany. Plus, it sounds cooler.
Oxtail is high in protein, has abundant collagen and is a source of healthy fats. With the high collagen and connective tissue content, oxtail was made for long, slow cooking in dishes such as this soup. It’s a great winter dish. I’ve learned from friends who also cook that it is core to many other ethnic dishes as well. As an example, my friend Antoine Freche says, “Oxtail is the preferred bone source when creating a “silky-smooth” broth for Vietnamese Pho. Oxtails are best since they contain more collagen than a regular beef bone. The collagen is what makes the broth silky-smooth.”
I have to agree with Antoine. The broth in this soup is wonderful. It is a different flavor than a typical beef stew and packed with umami**. Silky and smooth are both great descriptors, but so are tasty, delicious and “OMG this is so f’in good!” I’m already thinking of ways to use this broth for other dishes – it really is that outstanding.
This recipe combines a rich beef and vegetable broth with paprika and pepper to add some bite, along with sherry and cream to round it out. It’s finished with a roux. It takes a while to make but is sooooo good. If you don’t have quite enough Oxtail, add some chuck steak, or some other roast to make up the difference.
Traditionally, Oxtail soup is served as a first course in Germany at restaurants or special events. They have two main versions of Oxtail Soup there – one is a clear broth with beef bits, the other is a “gebundene” (bound) version and is a little heartier. This recipe is a gebundene soup.
While the original version of this recipe was for a first course, Cath and I have it as a meal. With some bread and a small salad, it’s hard to beat. If you want to add a little to it for a main course, cut up a carrot or two and simmer with the sauce in the final 1/2 hour. As with most soups and stews, it’s better the day after you first cook the broth. The meal is certainly guest worthy, but I won’t judge if just you and your partner eat it by yourselves over two or three days. By the third day, it will be mostly just broth left, but that doesn’t matter. You’ll still be marveling at how tasty it is.
Addendum:
Thanksgiving, that truly American holiday, is approaching and started me to thinking about Dad and his Cranberry Sauce. It’s a great recipe filled with bourbon, cranberries, shallots, orange zest and memories. I love the fact that I get to spend a little time with Dad whenever I make it.
Growing up in the Hall house in Ottawa, Illinois, Thanksgiving and Christmas were nearly identical meals – turkey, dressing, oyster dressing, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, corn and green bean casserole. The desserts – pumpkin pie, mincemeat pie and if we were lucky, strawberry-rhubarb pie, were all made by my Aunt Marge, a wonderful baker. Sometimes we would have a cherry pie from Aunt Diane – the cherries were from a tree in her yard. For snacks ahead of time, there were black olives and pickles (when young, my sisters put the olives on the ends of their fingers and then ate them off). There was cranberry sauce served as well – sliced out of the can.
I remember both meals as large loud affairs – Grandma, uncle Don and aunt Diane and their kids would be there. Various uncles or aunts stopping by for a slice of pie and cup of coffee after their own meals. Roberta and Tanya’s friend Marsali would inevitably stop over. Later when we were older my buddies Howard and Tim stopped in for a drink (to settle the stomach) after their own dinners.
Both meals were delicious and mostly made by mom. The kitchen was her domain. She often joked she actually spent more money on the oysters for the oyster dressing than she did on the turkey, and that’s saying something. I never thought to ask why we had exactly the same meal for both occasions and was somewhat shocked when I later learned other families served steaks or some other non-turkey meal for Christmas.
Everything for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner was homemade – except for the cranberry sauce. Growing up in the midwest, I think that was fairly typical – canned cranberry sauce, sliced into equal, perfectly round slices.
That changed one year, probably around 1984 or so when Dad retired from work. After he retired from the railroad, mom continued to work another seven years until she reached retirement age. As a result, Dad took over much of the cooking at home.
Cath and I were home for Christmas that year and dad had a surprise for us – homemade cranberry sauce! We all oohed and ahhhed over those cranberries and how good they were. Now mind you, mom was still making the entire rest of the meal (with help from my sisters by this point in time), but Dad now had his contribution as well. I think it came from a Bon Appétit recipe he tweaked slightly.
And so, Cranberries à la Dad became a part of the tradition for both Christmas and Thanksgiving.
It’s carried on at Cath’s and my home for Thanksgiving as well, although these days, we are having Thanksgiving with friends at their homes as often as not. The recipe is easy to follow, and cooks quickly. Still, I enjoy the few minutes it allows me to spend with Dad. As I smell the bourbon reducing and hear the snapping and popping sound of the cranberries opening, I reminisce and think about the good times we enjoyed with Dad over the years. It’s not a bad way to spend a half hour or 45 minutes.
Here’s the recipe. You have plenty of time before the big day to buy the ingredients. I usually make it the day before Thanksgiving while sipping on a small glass of bourbon, but the morning of works as well, if there’s room for you in the kitchen. For a chunkier look, don’t let all of the cranberries burst. Cranberries, bourbon, shallots, orange zest and memories – it’s a recipe that works.
Addendum:
It’s not like we were Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves, eating the raw liver from a freshly killed buffalo with our hands. No, we used forks and knives to sample the beef heart tartar we’d just made in the Offal Cookery class at The Whole Ox Butcher Shop. It was delicious and opened me to new ideas.
The Whole Ox here in Marshall is one of our local treasures. It’s a wonderful butcher shop with a great selection. Their offerings are ethically sourced, organic, and generally local. One of their mantras is “Eat better. Eat less”. When they offered a series of cooking classes this spring, I was immediately interested. The one that particularly caught my eye was “Offal Cookery”.
Offal is “the inside organs of, and parts trimmed from, an animal killed and prepared for food”. Innards is another good descriptor, though perhaps less delicate. Most of us are familiar with beef liver and chicken liver, but there’s quite a bit more. Around the world, there are multiple dishes that use offal. As examples, English Steak and Kidney Pie, Scottish Haagis (offal and vegetables stuffed in a sheep or cow’s stomach) and Mexican Menudo (made with tripe [stomach]) are three dishes many of us have tried or heard of. Intestines are of course often used for sausage casings. Liver pâté is something most have tried. Sautéed sweetbreads (thymus gland or pancreas) make an occasional appearance on a restaurant menu, and if I see them, I almost always order the dish.
While I’ve eaten offal in restaurants, I’d never cooked anything other than liver, chicken liver or beef tongue at home. For this particular class, beef liver, tongue, heart and sweetbreads were all on the menu. I was excited.
Eight of us arrived at The Whole Ox on a Wednesday evening. Amanda and Derek, the owners, greeted us and poured glasses of wine as we gathered at the prep station. Derek, who was previously a vegetarian for ten years, talked with us about what was planned for the night, and gave us background on offal in general. We learned that historically, offal was usually eaten first by our ancestors – it is the most nutrient dense part of the animal and was prized above other cuts of meat. Organ meat is high in vitamins, and has shown the ability to help with some diseases such as MS. We also learned that like wine, terroir effects beef and how it tastes.
After the brief introduction, we were divided into pairs and assigned the courses we would assist on: a classic liver and onions dish, tongue tacos, beef heart tartar and deep fried sweetbreads.
My partner and I were assigned the sweetbreads, and we started peeling the thin membrane from the outside. As with many deep-fried foods, the pieces went into seasoned flour, then buttermilk, then more flour. We turned them over to Derek for the actual deep frying. As the evening progressed, we were all watching each other. A few things stood out: cutting the liver a bit thicker than you normally think of, so it stays more tender and doesn’t dry out; splitting open the cooked tongue and removing the external casing to get to the tender meat; and with the heart, doing a fine dice for the tartar – if not fine, it would be too chewy, and if ground, the consistency would be too soft (not unlike Goldilocks and the three bears – the first bed was too hard, and the second bed was too soft, while the third bed was just right).
The recipes were coming together and as our wine glasses were refilled, we started receiving samples of each dish. There were a few nice surprises along the way, including bacon added to the liver, and salsa verde and finely sliced radishes added to the tongue tacos. The deep-fried sweetbreads were simple and excellent, with a consistency similar to fried oysters. And the heart tartar? I enjoy beef tartar, so I was looking forward to it. Simply prepared, there was salt and pepper, a little seasoning, parsley and a little lemon juice. It was delicious.
The evening wasn’t over, as Derek started cooking a surprise fifth dish. “Big Macs” that were fifty percent ground heart and fifty percent ground beef. We had eaten a fair amount by then, but smelling the burgers on the grill got the juices flowing again. After adding cheese to the grilling burgers, he placed them on the buns, then added lettuce, a bit of onion, pickles and their own Whole Ox “special sauce”. Watching him assemble the Big Mac sliders just about drove me mad with anticipation. I’m not sure, but I may have started drooling. Finally they arrived on our plates. WOW! Among the best burgers I’ve ever eaten. I practically inhaled mine.
The class wound down and folks started leaving. A few of us stayed a bit longer talking – about the shop and cooking, about Marshall, about innards. Derek revealed that one of his secrets to get people to try food out of their comfort zone is to mix it in with a familiar dish, hence the 50/50 Big Macs. It’s a brilliant idea. Eventually we finished our drinks and I drove home, already planning future meals.
As a final note, the next time you are at the farm and we are serving burgers, you may, or may not want to ask what’s in them. 😉
Addendum:
If you live in the area, or even the near-in Virginia ‘burbs, I highly recommend their classes. Out of the eight people there for our class, four were local and four were from DC suburbs about half an hour or forty minutes away.
Marshall is a great little village with several good stores, diners and coffee shops. There are three local gems among the offerings. In addition to The Whole Ox, we also have the nationally renowned Red Truck Bakery, and the excellent Field and Main Restaurant. If you are in the area, all three are worth a visit.
I see that look you are giving me. A slight sneer? A touch of disappointment? Or maybe from a few of you, with a knowing smile, “Ah yes, you too.” OK. I admit it. There is almost always a block of Velveeta Cheese in our fridge and it’s the secret ingredient for a couple of Cathy’s key recipes.
I love cheese. And there are so many good ones available. As a kid, we were a bit limited, but I remember eating Swiss, cheddar and of course American. My sisters and I agreed a block of Velveeta was kept around the house – possibly for mac ‘n cheese, or the occasional grilled cheese sandwich. Memories are a bit fuzzy on the subject.
When Cath and I moved to Germany, my cheese world expanded. Brie. Camembert. Quark. Limburger. Obazda. Roquefort. Stilton. Gorgonzola. Pecorino Romano. Asiago. Gruyère and Raclette. Mascarpone and Tiramisu. And many, many more. It was seventh heaven for me. I literally didn’t know such a world existed.
Eventually we moved back to the States, and I learned that across the US, not just in the state of Wisconsin, wonderful cheeses were being made. Maytag Blue from Iowa. Humboldt Fog from Cypress Grove in California. Grayson from Meadow Creek Dairy here in Virginia. And maybe my favorite, Mount Tam from Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes, California. Oh. My. God. It doesn’t get any better.
But … Sometimes, you crave comfort. Sometimes, you want a gooey, melty cheese that makes everything around it better. Sometimes, a cheese that isn’t technically a cheese, is exactly what you need. Enter Velveeta.
Velveeta actually started in the 1920s. You may be surprised to learn in the 1930s, Velveeta became the first cheese product to gain the American Medical Association’s seal of approval. Since then, Velveeta continued to evolve and at various times was called a cheese, a cheese spread, a pasturized processed cheese spread, and since 2002, a “pasteurized prepared cheese product”, a term for which the FDA does not maintain a standard of identity. It is currently sold only in the United States, Canada, Panama, Hong Kong, the Philippines and South Korea.
If it’s not really cheese, why use it at all? The answer is simple – it’s ability to melt and almost become “velvety” (hence the name). It’s consistency when melted is better than most real cheeses. The reason? It contains the emulsifiers, sodium citrate and sodium alginate, which allow the cheese to melt without becoming greasy by stopping the fats from separating. Those emulsifiers provide the magic that is Velveeta.
I doubt there is anyone in America who hasn’t eaten chili con queso, or queso dip made with Velveeta. It’s been a staple at Super Bowl (and other) parties and gatherings for decades. At its most basic, you combine a slab of Velveeta and a can of Rotel tomatoes in a crock pot. You can jazz it up with other tomatoes, real hot peppers, ground sausage and any number of other items, but the base remains Velveeta. And of course, Mac ‘n cheese with Velveeta has made an appearance in many a household here in the US. It became so popular, they started selling it as a combined product – “Velveeta Shells and Cheese” so you didn’t have to buy the macaroni and cheese separate.
We don’t have children, so never went down the Velveeta Mac n’ cheese route. We also haven’t made chili con queso in years, so why is the box of Velveeta in our fridge? Two dishes. First, there’s Cathy’s meatloaf. She dots the inside of the entire meatloaf with little pieces of Velveeta. It is delicious.
The second dish? The best scalloped potatoes in the world. Yep, Cathy’s “secret ingredient” is Velveeta. Over the years, she, and we, have made several versions of au gratin potatoes, hasselback potatoes, scalloped potatoes and cheesy potatoes. The one that’s the best? The one people always ask for the recipe? Her scalloped potatoes with Velveeta. When she tells people what’s in it, or perhaps it’s just people not from the midwest, they are always a bit shocked. Some then decide they don’t really want the recipe. Go figure.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve needed to reduce the amount of dairy in my diet. That means cheese is not around the house as much as it was previously. We still buy some, and if having guests over for dinner, will often offer cheese as an appetizer, or as a separate cheese course later in the meal. I think my life would be pretty meager with no cheese at all. I also know my life would be poor indeed if I could never have Cath’s scalloped potatoes with Velveeta again.
Addendum:
– There will be no scalloped potatoes recipe published with the blog. It is secreted away in Cathy’s head, and as with her Lasagna recipe, will not be publicly published. ;-).
It was strange. It was simple. It was visceral. One moment I was taking a bite of a tuna salad sandwich made with Julia Child’s recipe. The next instant I was a little boy sitting with Grandma Grubaugh at her kitchen table having lunch. It hit me like a bolt out of the blue.
A couple of my favorite benefits of our New York Times subscription are the food and cooking articles. The columns tell great stories, and the recipes are usually pretty manageable. A while back, chef, James Beard Award winning author and former New York Times food columnist Dorie Greenspan wrote a great column “This Tuna-Salad Sandwich Is Julia Child-Approved Lunch”. She was working with Julia at the time on an upcoming book and recounted a day spent in her kitchen. Here’s a partial extract:
“We were working around the kitchen table when Julia declared, “Dorie, let’s make lunch.” I saw Stephanie smile — clearly, she knew what was coming — and then I was at the counter with Julia, doing as I was told, which was cutting celery. While it might not seem like much of a job, I was cutting celery for Julia Child, and I was going to do it right: I trimmed the celery, I peeled it (because I learned to do that in Paris, I thought it was important to do it for the woman who wrote “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”) and I cut the celery into minuscule cubes that were all the same size. I’m only exaggerating a smidge when I say it took me so long that when I put down my knife, Julia had finished everything else, and we were ready to sit down to one of her favorite lunches: tuna salad on an English muffin.”
The article was about nothing and about everything. I love writing like that. I mean, how can you possibly write an entire article about a tuna salad sandwich? And yet Greenspan wrote a great one and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The list of ingredients in the actual sandwich intrigued me. We’ve all made tuna salad – tuna, mayo, celery and maybe onion and a boiled egg, but this one was a bit different. Yea, there was tuna (packed in oil), mayo (always Hellman’s), celery and onion, but it also included capers, cornichons (small French pickles) and lemon juice. Hmmmm. I was going to have to try this. Some of you know of my aversion to pickles in potato salad, but with tuna salad, why not give it a shot?
I had everything on hand, with the exception of the Cornichons. After doing a little online research, I figured the baby dills in our fridge were a suitable substitute.
I dutifully chopped the celery (sorry, no peeling), onion, capers and pickles. After emptying the tuna in a bowl, I added all of the chopped ingredients. In went the mayo, and the parsley and I combined everything. Finally, I squeezed the lemon juice in, added salt and pepper, and combined it all again. I did a small taste, and of course because of who I am, added a bit more mayo. Another small taste, and then I put the bowl in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours.
At last it was lunch time and I made my sandwich. More mayo on the bread, the tuna salad itself, some lettuce, tomato and a small slice of onion. Another slice of bread, and then I cut the whole thing in half.
I took the first bite, waiting to be transformed in my mind to Julia Child’s kitchen, and … wait! What!? Was that Grandma Grubaugh sitting next to me? Where in the hell did that come from?! It was a visceral reaction – I was a young boy back in Ottawa, sitting at the kitchen table at Grandma’s house having a tuna sandwich with her.
After rejoining the present, I sat there eating my sandwich trying to figure out what brought on those feelings. Grandma, to my knowledge, never cooked anything from Julia Child. Besides, my flashback would have been some time in the ‘60s, well before Julia became popular in America.
I thought through the ingredients. I don’t really remember grandma keeping fresh lemons, or capers around the house, although I suppose she might have. Grandma putting either in tuna salad seemed a pure fantasy. It had to be the pickles, although I didn’t remember mom putting pickles in tuna at our house.
At this point in time, mom had already passed away. Uncle Don, her younger brother was still alive, and I gave him a call. After catching up for a few minutes, I explained why I was calling, asked about grandma’s tuna salad, and whether she put pickles in it. He immediately answered “No, there were no pickles”, and my heart sank. Then he quickly added – “No, no pickles. She used a couple big spoonfuls of pickle relish.” And it all connected.
We talked a bit more and I eventually hung up. As I thought about Grandma and her pickle relish, it made sense. The relish certainly would account for the pickle flavor and maybe some of the brightness. In a subsequent conversation with my cousin Dawn, she reminded me that while Grandma didn’t really keep fresh lemons around the house (who did in midwest America in the ‘60s?), there was always a bottle of Real Lemon Juice in the fridge – for lemon cake, lemon pie, maybe a spoonful in cobblers. Who’s to say she didn’t add a spoonful to her tuna salad? While it doesn’t all add up perfectly, it made sense to me.
Since then, I’ve continued to make my tuna salad with pickles, capers and lemon juice. I have to admit Julia’s is better than what I’d made before. It’s also a nice lunchtime bonus – remembering Grandma Grubaugh on a day when you are “only” having tuna salad is pretty special.
Addendum:
• Thanks to my sister Roberta, and cousin Dawn (one of Uncle Don’s Daughters – also a flower girl at our wedding) for their contributions to this blog – both had distinct memories of Grandma’s tuna salad and some of grandma’s habits at the time. Dawn was also quite emphatic Grandma used sweet pickle relish in her Tuna salad. We also had a great conversation about foods triggering happy family memories – Thanksgiving at mom and dad’s house (Uncle Don, Aunt Diane and family were almost always in attendance as well), potato salad, Aunt Diane’s cherry pies and cobblers, watermelon outside on the picnic table, and Grandma Grubaugh expertly spitting her seeds across the yard, to the delight of her grandchildren.
• Here’s another blog about Grandma Grubaugh and her delicious date nut bread: https://mnhallblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/04/grandmas-date-nut-bread/
• Here’s a link to the column that inspired me to try Julia Child’s Tuna salad. It’s a quick read – https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/magazine/this-tuna-salad-sandwich-is-julia-child-approved-lunch.html?unlocked_article_code=a2vDZUZ1eo1yVrKAfuZxMgmll7EsQe8k7K-jTFFMqtFBjYV_jUe1I577EkeqZQNBGpaScBbP2xFhlRgEXk0W3tuhHedthiZqjAOIlq7mFMVFRXTSWUW-mugkmUlR6AtNmjBpqnBC45Dacm7NKVcjag8DPq4nW_Mk-gleZC2NfUBimTJW8wqPnaCRsC9BXBDeHOI6FVeL60bLuggz3IU80r0Op815enYRuh9uZRbZwfNBd33TI6IJNJk_1qSRqnFXzpHmKs4RRpwBBMsGROoFMHGYZ-jWFgxYd51U2M-oYm9mLIFmxsE2twHD2-Qtkx8ZSmRV-W7eCe36dnvravfZOe3UkdJOwFAHYcitmVZSPDenybPsa9HK0r6y4Pgo9YUyIA&smid=share-url
• Here’s a link to the recipe from the NYT: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021561-tuna-salad-sandwich-julia-child-style?smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share
• And here’s the exact same recipe if the NYT won’t let you open their recipe without a subscription: https://bwtribble.com/recipe/1071
It was a bit sad, to be honest. When the frost came in mid-October, Cathy picked the last three tomatoes from the garden and brought them in to ripen. One week, ten days, fifteen days went by, and then, voila’, they were ready! But what to do with them? You know the answer.
We decided to end the tomato season as it began – BLTs of course. It did take time for the tomatoes to ripen, but finally, they were ready. A day later, and we had the ingredients – a head of romaine, a half pound of bacon, and a loaf of fresh wheat bread from Red Truck Bakery.
That Saturday we both arrived home a bit late after canvassing. Cath was there first, and when I finally arrived, she’d just finished making a dozen pepper poppers with the last jalapeños and poblanos from the garden. A manhattan later, and the poppers were baked and nicely browned. They were damned tasty, with about every fourth one having a bit of heat.
Cathy finished frying the bacon and we were ready. Slice the tomatoes, slice the bread, slather the mayo on the bread (a bit heavy for me, thank you), then pile on the bacon lettuce and tomato. It was looking good.
We popped a bottle of J sparkling wine, because, why not? It was Saturday, we were having BLTs, and why the hell not? It tasted wonderful and life was wonderful, at least for the night.
It wasn’t summer, and we’d been so busy lately we didn’t have time to make side dishes, but Nick’s Market in Marshall solved the problem. Some of their potato salad and a half dozen deviled eggs rounded out the meal. We were ready.
You know, it may not have been quite as good as the first sandwich of the summer. I mean, in July, to borrow from DR Frankenfurter in Rocky Horror, you “shiver with antici…..pation” waiting for the first bite of that first BLT. How do you top that? Still, this one was pretty good. Considering it was November 5th, it was d@mned good.
We finished dinner and were still sipping on the J, when Cath said she hadn’t been quite truthful with me. “What? What are you talking about?” She pulled out a basket and there were seven, count them seven, green tomatoes she’d gathered from the garden that very day. BLTs in December? Will they ripen, or stay green? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Addendum:
Things that belong in martinis: Gin (or vodka), vermouth, maybe a dash of orange bitters or splash of olive juice, and either a lemon peel or olives. Things that don’t belong in martinis: MSG, pasta water, garlic powder, fish sauce or “Filipino sugar cane vinegar.” Yes, this blog is an Old Man Rant.
Dave, a friend of mine, recently gave me the October ‘22 issue of Food & Wine magazine. I was flipping pages when I came upon an article on the “Drink of the Year”. The lead in was pretty good – “The martini is America’s most iconic cocktail, and it’s undeniably the “it” drink of 2022.” This looked interesting at first; however, the article went downhill from there. They gave recipes for seven “signature martinis” from around the country. A couple were twists on a standard martini. The others? While they may be good or interesting drinks, they are definitely not martinis, or at least not in my book.
Among the highlights, there’s the Salmon Martini, with “smoked salmon-infused gin” with a caper berry garnish. Next is a Datu Datu Martini with “Filipino sugar cane vinegar”, garlic powder and fish sauce. Then we have the MSG Martini with MSG and Shaoxing wine. And finally, (and I’m not making this up), the Dirty Pasta Water Martini which uses starchy pasta water in the mix.
Now these may be fine drinks, but do we really need to call them martinis? Doesn’t it show just a little lack of imagination on the originator’s part? It takes me back to the bad old days of the Chocotini and Appletini… ughhhhhh.
Ian Fleming and James Bond stirred up quite the controversy decades ago with his shaken, not stirred, Vodka Martini. I’ll grant you the Vodka Martini is OK, but not really my cup of tea, thank you very much. By the way, it’s called a Vodka Martini, not a Martini. And yes, a martini should be stirred, but I won’t throw it away if it’s shaken.
Baltimore-born satirist H.L. Mencken famously said the martini is “The only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.” I always thought ol’ HL was a pretty smart and witty guy. And of course when he said “martini”, he really meant a gin martini.
My Martini? Beefeater gin, a little vermouth, and a small splash of olive juice, stirred or shaken depending on the day, and served up with a couple of olives. Simple, smooth and straightforward. Pretty tasty as well.
Rant over. 😉
Addendum:
Live Life Exuberantly 