The Improved Dirty Martini

I love olives. Put pretty much any kind of olive in front of me and I'll eat it. I also love martinis, and I'll put as many olives in the glass as it will hold. So I'm very excited to try the Olives 7 Ways, as described in this New York Times article, "The Dirty Martini Cleans Up Well."

Fortunately, to tide me over until I have time to get to the East Village, the article included a home version of the recipe, "The Improved Dirty Martini," and I made my first one tonight.

I couldn't find Perry's Tot (I didn't look very hard) so I used Dorothy Parker, for the very scientific reason that it's made by the same distiller and has the same label design. I did get Noilly Prat and the Cerignola olives. In lieu of an eye dropper, I dipped a chopstick into a small dish of olive oil and kind of flung the drops onto the drink. The drops are smaller than in the Times photo, but it worked.

Instead of a dish of olives on the side, I put a single Sicilian olive in the glass.

You guys, this thing is amazing. It's incredibly smooth, and you can taste the olive and the salt without it being olivey or salty, if that makes sense. It has a slight bitterness and tang that I really like. It really is a far cry from the "slop of random brine" of the classic dirty martini. The olive oil adds a scent more than anything. I was worried about the drink being oily but it's really just a garnish. Even on the last sip I never felt like I was drinking oil.

With the 1:1 ratio of gin to vermouth, I can see why a stronger gin was recommended, and I'm looking forward to trying different ones and playing around with the proportions.