A perfectly lovely and lazy Saturday morning. The rain had stopped by the time we got up and Cindy went running while I coached her and read signs in Cyrillic. We stopped at the grocery store to get a few things for breakfast and some veggies for dishes I’m making for a Turkish party in our building this evening. We had big plans for a long walk this afternoon to purchase a music stand for Cindy but the rains came and dashed those hopes, so Cindy went to play music with her piano-playing friend in the complex while I started working on the dishes for tonight.
After I got home yesterday I started planning dinner since I knew I had to have everything ready before cocktails. We were scheduled to have vodka martinis with a twist - shaken, not stirred. Since this was to be my first martini, I didn’t want to chance knife work and timing after a drink. I tried to recreate a wonderful meal we had when we were visiting Bari, Italy. It involved orecchiette pasta, which is a little pasta shaped like an ear, thus orecchiette. This dish included broccoli rabe, hot chili flakes, cheeses and herbs all in a casserole topped with herbed bread crumbs and more cheese and baked until the top was very crisp and crunchy. It turned out very nicely but it wasn’t the same as we remembered, but then again, I didn’t have all the lovely fresh ingredients they have in Bari.
While the pasta dish was baking, I set the table and started to build the martinis. We are using a nice bottle of Stoli, which I’m told is much better in Russia than it is in the USA. I had it in the freezer along with two martini glasses I purchased for the occasion. I used a commuter coffee mug as the shaker since we don’t have a real one here. I added some ice to the mug, not that it was needed, but tradition is tradition. In went the vodka, a wee dram of dry vermouth, a tiny bit of lemon and I shook the begeebers out of it and poured it into the two glasses and garnished it with a twist. I must say, it took me longer to drink that drink than any other I’ve ever had, and I really did enjoy it. I couldn’t do one of those every day, but on the weekend or when we are in some place in Russia that doesn’t have anything we like, we know they’ll always have vodka. In celebration of my first Vodka Martini, I leave you with this:
From CC: This is killing me … I have some rules about martinis, the first of which is, if it has an adjective it is NOT a martini, e.g., apple martini, chocolate martini, and all those other variations that have become so popular but when it comes down to it are served in a martini glass and are not martinis. While by definition a martini is made with gin, a vodka martini can still count (the exception to my adjective rule – although watching the James Bond clips I had to think that he should have stayed true to gin martinis). Personally I’ve always preferred them stirred not shaken – we all know you shouldn’t bruise the gin! And here I go, agreeing with Wm that a shaken vodka martini with a twist (not an olive) is a very good drink.
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