Garden Martini

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Is there anything better than growing the food you eat (or, in our case drink)? We were not born with a green thumb, but when we know the result will be able to be consumed, we become master gardener extraordinaire, which means we run to a real Master Gardener begging for help anytime our plants look unhappy. This year has been great for our garden, and our peppers have really popped in the late summer months. We decided to pickle our most recent haul with one goal in mind: it must make the perfect garnish for a martini. The pickle recipe was simple, something to note is that there is no garlic because it just doesn’t play well in many drinks.

cups fresh garden peppers, cut into strips

1 large sweet onion, cut into strips

For the brine:

4 cups water

2 cups apple cider vinegar

2 cups sherry vinegar

½ cup sugar

5 tbsp kosher salt

5 tbsp whole black peppercorns

1 tbsp juniper berries

1 tbsp coriander seeds

1 tsp fennel seed

4 bay leaves

  1. Slice the peppers and onions into strips and put into four sterilized quart-sized mason jars.

  2. Combine all the brine ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.

  3. Pour the hot brine into the jars with the vegetables, stopping ½ inch from the top. Press the peppers and onions down and screw the lids on.

  4. Store in the fridge for up to a month. These pickles are good for so many things: sandwiches, charcuterie boards, snacks, but most importantly DRINKS. Wait at least 2 days before opening that sucker up. We know it’s hard.

We have really been craving a martini, and we don’t mean some Winston Churchill wink-at-a-bottle-of-vermouth martini. We mean a proper, perfectly constructed, smooth as hell, fortified wine forward martini. We don’t often make ourselves a martini because we truly love the taste and one is never enough (but three is way too many at 3pm). Anyway, after 2 days of waiting for our pickles we just couldn’t wait any longer, so we decided to treat ourselves and we could not have been happier.

Garden Martini

2 oz herbal gin

1 oz dry vermouth

1 oz Manzanilla Sherry

½ tsp pepper pickling liquid

Pour all ingredients over ice in a mixing glass and stir until ice-cold. Strain into a chilled glass, or over a large ice cube (we might be in the minority, but we love our martinis on the rocks). Garnish with a pickled pepper and a twist of expressed lemon peel. Expressing the oils of the lemon peel over the martini is an important step, as it brightens the cocktail and ties the whole drink together.

One of my favorite martini-related poetry that probably was never written by Dorothy Parker

“I like to have a martini,

Two at the very most.

After three I'm under the table,

After four I'm under my host."