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Sonnet makes a cranberry mousse which, she says, "is a vintage recipe from the Gourmet Cook Book, circa 1962. Stan and Silver used to serve it at their dinner parties." For Christmas Eve, this evening, she also prepares gravlox which is salmon brined in salt, sugar, dill and vodka - perfect for bagels, which has become our tradition the Night Before. Tomorrow, goose. I make Katie a proper martini which is prepared as thus: everything frozen, including glass and olives (if used). Pour a few drops of dry Vermouth into proper martini glass, swirl once, dispense. Then vodka (ideally from potatoes, like the Russians), straight from freezer, straight from bottle (the idea of shaking over ice absurd). The liquid should be nicely viscous (80-proof vodka freezes at approximately -26.95C; 100-proof vodka will freeze at approximately -40.43C). Ideally there are thin bits of ice - since water freezes at a higher temperature, the proof increases with the ice. The glass should be filled to brim for increased surface area which receives the vapors. In my drink, this a lemon peel sharply twisted then dragged along the edge. Perfecto. Olives, in my opinion, the inferior choice though Katie and many swear by them. They are a bartender's trick to displace volume. Olive brine for a "dirty" or "dusty" martini another horreur but to each his - or her - own.
I listen, as I blog here, to Diane's Christmas CD, which she produced some years ago to raise money for charity. Diane has recently moved from Albany, where she was the morning anchor for Fox News, to South Carolina where she informs a bigger audience - a Top 30 market, in fact.
"The martini: the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet."
--H. L. Mencken
