San Jose Martini

Ingredients:

• 3 oz Gin
• 1/2 oz Dry Vermouth
• Teaspoon Menjure de Ancho Reyes (Ancho Chile Liqueur)
• Olive

Take a classic American martini and add a dash of ancho chile liqueur from the Pueblo de Zaragoza en Mexico and you have a drink that is quintessentially San Jose, California.

San Jose, my adopted home town, was home to Costanoan Indians when Spaniards arrived in 1776. It was part of the Mexican state of California until 1846 when settlers revolted and declared California an independent republic. Then the territory was annexed by the United States and became a U.S. state in 1850. San Jose is proud of all these heritages. They are reflected in our language(s), food, architecture and more.

The use of chiles for flavor came from Native Americans in Mexico (likely dating to before the Mayans and Aztecs.) And today my neighbors and I use salsa and chile sauces like the rest of the USA uses salt or ketchup.

Ancho Reyes does provide a kick but it isn't super hot. Instead it gives the San Jose Martini a warm, smoky aroma and roasted chile flavor.

Less Than Phenomenal. . .

The last two nights I've done things different than normal. And it did not turn out well. I did things differently so that I could record recipes and take images of the martinis. It has been a disaster.

I don't measure drinks. I pour gin into the glass until "looks right." What does that mean? I don't know. I just pour until the glass has an aesthetic amount of liquid in it with room for my mixer. In some martini glasses I think it means 2 ounces, others 4 ounces. My average is somewhere in-between. Trying to use an actual shot measure is screwing me up! So, take any of my recipes and assume that the measurement given is +/- at least a half an ounce. Really!

Two nights ago was the first debacle: I attempted one of my favorite martinis. But instead of just pouring like I usually do, I took a bartender's measure and carefully poured exactly 3 ounces of gin, 1/2 ounce of vermouth and 1/2 ounce of balsamic vinegar. Dear god it was awful. This is usually a subtle drink: you take a classic martini but to give it a savory undertone with a hint of color and a nice complexity you add a hint of balsamic vinegar, 2 to 3 drops. A half ounce of the same balsamic when combined with gin produced an ugly brown liquid that tasted like cleaning solvent.

Creating great drinks, like creating any great food, requires tasting, adjusting, trial and error.

So here's pictures of great ingredients that produced a bad drink:

It is NOT supposed to look like this.

Tonight something similar happened, this time with my very favorite martini. Since I've posted several times using Gilbey's Gin I thought I'd use something else with a fancy blue bottle and a unique flavor profile. It wasn't horrible. But it wasn't my favorite either. The gin competed with the mixer instead of complementing it. I should have stuck with Gilbey's.

On a somewhat related note, a friend posted a news report on Facebook saying that Bombay Sapphire Gin was being recalled because the alcohol content was 2 times what was claimed on the label. Ha! What a great marketing ploy. My response was, "let's hurry to buy them all up before they can be pulled from the shelves!" Sapphire is a very nice gin but I do not think it is all that special. But I seriously considered running out to buy some! Well done!

Classic Martini

Tonight's recipe is just the classic American Martini: gin & vermouth:

• 3 oz. Gilbey's Gin 
• 0.5 oz. Dolin dry vermouth 
• Lemon Twist 
• 2 Spanish Queen olives 
• Shake over ice & pour into cocktail glass

Wilson & Chloe help pick a glass.

Gin.

I buy a lot of gin. I'll try just about any gin. And I like most of them. But for a classic american martini I prefer classic gins. You won't go wrong with Tanqueray, Gilbey's, Bombay, Beafeater's or Gordon's. We want clean juniper taste and we want to be able to taste the vermouth, lemon and olive. Seagrams offers gin in a beautiful bottle at a reasonable price. And it is awful. New Amsterdam has a dramatic bottle. I tried for months to find a way to drink it. Nope. It is disgusting. Tonight we are using Gilbey's. The Gilbey's recipe dates to the 1870s. The reason it has lasted so long is that the flavor still beats many of the very best on the market. And the bonus is that Gilbey's price is reasonable.

Vermouth.

The best vermouth I've found is from Noilly Prat. . . and it is a version you can't buy it in the United States. If you can find the straw-colored dry vermouth they sell in France, it produces the finest martini I've ever had. Noilly Prat tried to sell it in the USA for a couple of years and Americans complained that their martinis were no longer pure, clear gin. Noilly Prat gave up and returned to a clear, bland formula for the USA that is no better than Gallo. So don't waste your money. The closest match I've found to the French Noilly Prat is Dolin. So tonight's martini features Dolin Dry Vermouth.

Olive or Twist?

Lemon oil from a twist makes a martini! I like a wide, irregular shred of peel. The most important part of this step is to hold the lemon rind over the glass and twist it. We want to release a spray of lemon oil into the glass for the intense flavor and aroma. Wipe the peel around the rim of the glass too. It makes a big difference.

When you order a martini, bartenders ask if you want an olive or a twist? Or?!!