Blech, Ehhh, and Icky

December 6, 2009
Imperial Martini

December 6, 2009
Jamie’s Martini

December 5, 2009
Hasty Martini

Still trying to catch up on the backlog here.  Good grief.  I need to get through writing about these before I inadvertently end up drinking some of them twice!  (Usually not necessarily a bad thing, but …). 

As you might have guessed by the title, I was less than enamored with all three of these.  The Imperial was 6 parts gin, 2 parts dry vermouth (FAIL right there, too much vermouth), 1/2 tsp maraschino liqueur, and 3 to 5 dashes of Angostura bitters.  I did cut back the vermouth by about 20% or so when I measured it, and I only used the minimum dashery (my new word du jour) of bitters.  Still not a big draw for me.  It wasn’t a bad drink, it just also wasn’t a very good drink.  I’ll give this one the “Blech” rating of 3.25 stars.  Lower the vermouth and maybe just one dash of bitters, it would be decent, I think.

Jamie’s Martini was basically yet another Screwdriver by another name.  And you know how I get about those.  So this rates an  “Ehhh”.  6 parts vodka, 1 part triple sec, 2 parts fresh orange juice, 1/4 teaspoon bar sugar.  I mean, as far as Screwdrivers go, this wasn’t a bad one, so I’ll give it a 3.75 rating.  I admit that I do tend to use the cheaper vodka when I’m mixing a lot of stuff into it like orange juice and such that is really going to mask any taste and quality differences – I don’t know if that would have helped this drink any.  I used the Kirkland vodka from Costco.  Which still isn’t exactly rotgut vodka, it’s actually pretty good.  But Ketel One it isn’t.  And my biggest beef with it is that the bottle it comes in is HUGE – I think the size is 1.75 liters, which isn’t a bad thing, especially since my boyfriend bought it for me while we were at Costco and I didn’t have to pay for it!  But the bottle is literally so tall that it doesn’t fit in the freezer.  And I don’t have room in there to lay it on its side, so it is the only vodka bottle I have (and I think there are 12 total) that sits on the counter.  Even sitting on the counter is a problem because again, it is so tall – any cupboard door that I open bangs into it unless I leave it sitting on my kitchen island, where there are no overhanging cupboards.  Perhaps I should make a centerpiece out of it?  I could get one of those holly and berry candle rings and pop that around the base, after all, it ’tis the season.  Or I could just motivate myself to drink it faster.  Yeah, that’s the ticket. 

Last up is the Hasty Martini, 6 parts gin, 1 part dry vermouth, 3 to 5 dashes of Pernod, and 1 teaspoon grenadine.  That damn Pernod again.  I only used 3 dashes – I would have cut back more, but I wanted to do justice to the recipe.  But you have probably figured out from reading my posts by now that Pernod is NOT one of my favorite additions.  To anything.  Well, maybe the toilet.  And yes, this is the “Icky” rating, I’ll give this one 2.5 stars.  I’d rate it lower but I’m sure there is something worse out there, probably one of the ones Sue and I have decided to skip for this blog (that will be a separate post, coming up soon).

Harry! Don't Make Me Drink the Pernod!

There is actually a drink coming up, Sue may have already blogged about it, called the New Orleans martini, that when I saw the recipe for that one included 1 PART Pernod (as opposed to a few DASHES), I knew that either Sue had to take that one or we had to leave it off the list altogether.  The prospect of adding that much Pernod to a martini and then drinking it made me feel like Dumbledore must have felt in the cave of the Inferi, having to swill all that nasty potion to get to (what proved to be fake) the Horcrux.  Given that I don’t have Harry here to persuade me to consume it, nor do I even have Daniel Radcliffe here to offer to serve it up to me (well, wait, let me rethink this … I suppose I could find SOME way to suddenly pretend I like Pernod, and … isn’t he old enough for a 46-year-old woman by now that I wouldn’t get charged with anything like statuatory rape?  Hmmm.  Okay, you’re right.  I’m old enough to be not only his mother but probably his grandmother if I were really pushing the reproductive barriers.  Thanks for rubbing that in.  😦

Cheers,
Cathy

~ by rachelroust on December 15, 2009.