Last night I made the green tea martini. The recipe calls for a tsp of Cointreau, an ounce of chilled green tea and two ounces of orange flavored vodka with a drop of simple syrup. I omitted the simple syrup because of the sugar in the Cointreau – I’m more of a savory person than sweet – and added chopped fresh ginger to the green tea.
I then recalled the scene from The Thin Man when Nick Charles, played by William Powell, explains proper technique:
The important thing is the rhythm! Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time.
So I shook the green tea martini at a waltz time and then poured it into a chilled martini glass. The color was reminiscent of chardonnay. The orange and ginger dominated the taste of the green tea, leaving a fresh zing on the palette.
Unlike the classic martini or even the vodka martini, this cocktail is featherweight. It’s one of the best drinks to try when you want something that doesn’t rest too heavy on your stomach. With that being said, you can’t beat having a classic or vodka martini from time to time as a treat. When you were younger, you no doubt dreamt about using the best fake ids to go out into a bar and order this amazing beverage whilst hitting the town with your friends; pretending that you were old enough to do such things. Now that you are, you may sometimes take it for granted, so trying something new definitely doesn’t go amiss because it makes you appreciate the great taste of it even more.
But when you just want something that is light and flavorsome, the Green Tea Martini should definitely be your go-to choice. You even start to feel unconditional love for all of humankind at about three-quarters of the way through the drink, so why wouldn’t you want to give it a try?