My Aching Head

This is going to come across badly to the purists, but a Martini isn’t a particularly “nice” drink, gin, vodka and especially vermouth are all, straight, generally offensive to the palate. In my time working behind a bar I’ve discovered that the drinkers of Martini’s are a not dissimilar to the drinkers of Champagne. While the drinkers may like the taste, and can definitely distinguish between the quality of the drinks, most of the drinking is about making a statement about who they are. Now, as a barman you can’t let that bother you, and one thing is for certain regarding the Martini, people that drink them love them and those same people tip well.

Tipping here in Australia and New Zealand is not an organised affair as it is in other locales, people are not required to tip and generally don’t unless there is a good reason to. This means that if someone orders a Martini your best smile, wit and banter should be on show, so as to convert this chance into some cold hard cash. If you are still with me, the purpose of this post is not to describe a recipe and process for making a Martini, that is for another time and another post. The purpose is to provide some tips for conversation with your potential tipper. Some of these are unsubstantiated, others may be wives-tales and others may be completely made up by me right here, nonetheless they should work for some good conversation.

• Martin’s aren’t supposed to be shaken, they should be stirred. This is because shaking them bruises the gin working with that, you could shake a vodka martini because you can’t bruise vodka.
• Further to the previous comment, I think it’s probably bullshit - that is the whole bruising of gin.
• There is a study that suggests shaking gin activates more antioxidants in it, and this might be a reason why James Bond is so healthy. (from Wikipedia)
• It’s unlucky to have an even number of olives in a Martini, so you should have 1 or 3. Never 2.
• James Bond likes his martinis dry, very dry, shaken not stirred.
• Hawkeye from MASH liked his martini’s about as dry, stating that the perfect recipe was to pour a glass of cold gin while looking at a picture of the inventor of vermouth. To translate, that’s a cold glass of gin with an olive or 3
• A martini with a cocktail onion is called a Gibson
• Methyphobia is the fear of alcohol

The White Russian, or better (not commonly) known as the Caucasian is a simple drink. Coffee and Milk that get’s you pissed - what’s not to like. The name Caucasian stems from the movie The Big Lebowsky. I want to believe that The Dude has a White Russian in his hand in every scene of the movie, but that just isn’t true, though he has a fair crack mixing a few up when he clearly wasn’t welcome.  Anyhow, The Big Lebowsky - great film you should get it out or download it.

Before you get your hands dirty, you should know that the White Russian has a cousin/brother, the Black Russian. We won’t talk about that right now.

The White Russian is a great drink, strong and tasty. Take a short glass, (also know as a rock) fill it up with ice, add 1 nip of Kahlua, 1 nip of vodka and top it up with milk. Stir and serve with a straw. I want to talk a little bit about some other variations of this, some places will put this all into a shaker, shake and then strain it into a glass of new ice. I don’t have a particular abjection to this being shaken, but it should be shaken gently and definitely not strained. Shaking normally breaks the ice and adds some water to the drink, normally this doesn’t hurt a shaken drink but in this case milk and water definitely do not go together.

Another version of this replaces milk with cream, I actually have a suspicion this has happened because of a problem with translation between the US and the rest of the English speaking world. Americans often refer to full cream milk as cream, and if I for example didn’t know that I would read a drink recipe containing this so called “cream” add cream to my White Russian and not get it how it’s meant to be. Anyway, aside from that cream doesn’t go badly and it doesn’t go that well in a Caucasian. I don’t recommend it, but whatever floats your boat. Just remember, this drink is pretty good as it always has been.