Читать книгу Make Mine a Martini - Kay Plunkett-Hogge - Страница 7

Bar Style

There’s no excuse for not having a stylish bar. It’s the perfect place to reflect your taste. Scour the internet, charity shops and flea markets to find quirky glasses, plates, napkins and cocktail forks to customize yours.

Size DOES Matter…

…when it comes to glasses. I am a little obsessed with collecting small Martini glasses which hold, traditionally, a gulp or three, so you can drink that chilly charmer while it is still suitably cold. (If you see any, do get in touch…)

Make sure that you have the right glass for the right drink, size-wise at least. This is not Big Gulp time at the drive through. It’s the cocktail hour… At all costs avoid those ridiculous bucket-like glasses that should really only be sold at novelty stores for keeping marbles, goldfish or small coins in. Anything but a cocktail.

Shaken vs. Stirred

This is really about ice. Ice and dilution. When you shake a cocktail, you break the ice cubes, leaving tiny shards of ice in the drink. These shards dilute the drink, balancing the flavours in a shaken cocktail. When you stir, this dilution is commensurately less.

Since ice both chills and weakens a cocktail (chilling is good, weakening less so…), there are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you get the best from it.

1.The more ice you put in the shaker, the faster it will chill a drink, shaken or stirred, with less dilution. With a shaker, more ice is better.

2.The size of an ice cube matters: the smaller the ice cubes, the more surface area there is to melt into the drink. Which is why many bartenders will serve drinks like an Old Fashioned with a single large ice cube to minimize the dilution.

3.Over time, ice picks up the flavours of other things in your freezer. You should always make sure you have fresh ice when you make cocktails – there’s nothing worse than a hint of old dinners in your Gimlet.

Shaking and stirring give you control over the sharpness of the alcohol in a cocktail. When it comes to a drink like a Martini, it is as ever a question of preference. So try it both ways and find out which you prefer. So long as your cocktail’s cold!

Bar Snacks

Every good drink, and indeed every good drinks party, needs a toothsome accompaniment. Snacks, canapés, eats: call them what you will. So on pages 144–219 are some of my favourites, things I find my guests love and that do not take me away from them for too long.

To be honest, you could totally ignore the recipe section and just trot along to your nearest deli to buy a gorgeous selection of cheese, charcuterie and olives. Maybe even a paté or a pie. Or throw out some nuts; I wouldn’t hold it against you. Some of my favourite bar snacks of all time are the monkey nuts in their shells at Chez Jay in Santa Monica. They arrive in a red plastic basket, you just pop them open and discard the shells on the floor. Chez Jay’s owner, Jay Fiondella famously persuaded Alan Shepard to take one of them to the moon and back – the very first astro-nut! (If you’re out that way, pop in for a visit and one of their fine Margaritas.)