A Classic Martini

Vodka. Shaken. Not stirred.  Aficiandos say a martini should never be shaken.  Something with the shaking of ice makes the drink cloudy and weakens it.  I’m all for the shaken variety though, like James Bond of course.  It makes the drink colder, faster.  Who wants slightly chilled vodka?  Or to take the time to stir gently.  I mean the Russians taught us that vodka should be at freezing temperatures.  Not that vodka actually freezes.  Just ask my godson.  Who is a teenager.  He snuck his mom’s vodka and refilled the bottle with water and put it back in the freezer.  Oops.  He got into a little bit of trouble for that.  So anyway, I don’t actually drink vodka or gin martini’s.  But, I’ve been told that I make a really mean one.  One of the key things I do is to put ice and water in the martini glass while I mix up the drink.  It keeps the glass nice and chilled.

I made 2 varieties of the vodka martini.  One “dirty” martini with regular green olives and one regular martini with feta stuffed olives.  Other garnishments for a martini are cocktail onions or a lemon peel.  I read somewhere that the garnishments should always be an odd number, for luck.  Apparently since we feng shui our furniture we should do it for our cocktails too.  So either 1 or 3 olives/onions would do nicely.

Classic vodka martini

3 oz vodka

1 oz white vermouth

green olives

Add vodka and vermouth to a shaker with ice. Shake and pour into martini glass and add olives.  To make the martini “dirty” add some of the olive juice. I usually start with a 1/2 oz – 1oz depending on how “dirty” someone likes their martini.