The Pomegranate Martini, Part 2

So, this week it's the vodka martini version of the pomegranate martini. In the hope that I could make one drink and call it a day, I started with the recipe from last week, and simply swapped out the gin for vodka. Hey, maybe I get lucky and we all go home early!

Yeah, not so much. As expected, when you're trying to be noticed over the top of gin, you have to be much more shouty with your flavors. With vodka, there's a whole midrange of flavors that disappear, and suddenly you're shouting in an empty room with no good effect. For the vodka version, we need to tone down the flavors to a more subtle level to be appreciated.

There's a variety of recipes on the Internet, and all of them have the basic three ingredients: vodka, pomegranate juice, and orange of some kind. We fiddled a bit with options, but settled with Patrón Citrónge as a starting orange flavor source, and my faithful standby of Watershed Distillery for the vodka (though any good, neutral vodka would work). Our first step was to determine where the ratio of Citrónge to vodka would give us a subtle layer of orange without being too sweet. Two parts vodka to 1 part triple sec worked to give a balance between the two I liked. (Note that Citrónge is 80 proof, so simply swapping in triple sec for it is going to change things radically. Ditto for Grand Marnier, as the base alcohol is so different. Cointreau is probably a reasonable swap, but keep reading.)

This Wave Polka Dot Martini

glass (7.5oz), is available on the 

Contemporary Complements

website.

Next was ratio of alcohol to pomegranate juice; recipes ranged from 2 parts vodka, 3 parts pomegranate juice all the way up to 3:1. The vodka/Citrónge mix to pomegranate juice at 1:1 tasted good, and with a splash of lemon from a wedge, it gave the drink a nice, balanced taste that everyone involved liked.

But, I wasn't quite convinced we were there. One of the liqueur options we have here at Chez Yeager is Pama pomegranate liqueur, and I wondered whether the clear, concentrated flavor of the Pama might give a cleaner taste to the drink than the juice. So, we went back to the drawing board for a balance of vodka to Pama. The Pama website starts with 2 parts Pama to 1 part vodka; this might help them sell more Pama, but it was not a ration I could live with. Splitting the difference between the folks involved with the tasting, we came up with a 2:3 ration of Pama to vodka. With two alcohols already going in, I wondered if I could get rid of the third, so we bid a reluctant farewell to the Citrónge (actually, the Citrónge flat-out overpowered the drink in testing) and went to the fresh orange juice of last week's drink. A squeeze of lemon later, and we were at a happy place for all involved. Preferred above the pomegranate juice version, the Pama version allows a clear, clean pomegranate note to sing through, with the citrus gently singing harmony underneath.

Pomegranate Martini (vodka version)

1.5 oz. vodka (Watershed, or any other neutral vodka)
1 oz. Pama pomegranate liqueur
.5 oz. orange juice (fresh, unsweetened)
Juice from a small wedge of lemon

Combine ingredients. Shake briefly with ice and strain into a martini glass.

Pomegranate Martinis, Take One

So, my wife has been encouraging me to take on the pomegranate martini. I can't say as I've been necessarily resistant, but there's been one roadblock to this process: gin.

If you say "martini" to me, I will automatically start at the traditional gin-and-vermouth cocktail. Vodka martinis are excellent at best, but a cocktail that, however good it may be, is not part of the storied tradition of a martini. I don't want to come across as a martini snob: I've ordered very good vodka martinis, and don't even twitch if Julie wants to order a "chocotini" or whatever we're calling a vodka milkshake nowadays. Okay, maybe a bit of a snob, but I like words and terms to have definition, as well as definitions.

So, before I get to her martini next week, I'm doing one this week with gin. The usual bit of research came up with a wide variety of vodka recipes, but one basic recipe with gin, from Bobby Flay via the Food Network. It was as good a starting point as any, so we started by using his recipe and determined that it was tasty (more in a bit). The recipe calls for Tanqueray No. Ten, so the first step was to check the gin choice against a few of the usual suspects. None made for a bad drink; Beefeater was my least favorite of my tested options (slightly jarring in the mix). New Amsterdam, a popular and inexpensive gin option getting traction for a variety of uses, made for a very mellow blend of flavors, and I decided to use it for the balance of the testing. I also used my 6-year oude genever, because I had it and I could; it was very good, but impractical for recipes outside the Netherlands, so we set it aside reluctantly and pressed on.

As I said, the drink is tasty; to use the music metaphor I so enjoy, this recipe is a jazz trio - gin providing our percussive and bass notes as usual; the orange and lemon juice the hot saxophone line across the top of the piece, and the pomegranate syrup acting as a centering piano line. The problem to my palate with the drink as written is that the drink is one long saxophone solo. Consider: the basic recipe as given by Mr. Flay is 1.5 oz. of gin, 2 oz. of lemon/orange juice (and that's skimping the orange down a bit), and a half-ounce of pomegranate syrup (years of tiki drinks requires me to keep Monin pomegranate syrup handy).The drink ends up being something very vodka martini-ish, with the forward citrus flavors stomping around, barely letting the pomegranate - the namesake of the drink, you'll recall - any kind of space to be heard.

This Polka Dot Mini Z-Stem Martini
glass (5oz), is available on the 

Contemporary Complements

website.

So, our first task was to cut the citrus. Orange is a common ingredient in the variety of vodka martini recipes you will encounter, and for good reason. Orange juice adds sweetness and a familiar citrus buzz to the midrange wall of sound that pomegranate represents. So, we cut the orange juice back to a half-ounce, and dropped the lemon entirely. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered why the lemon is there: to mask the alcohol heat from the gin and add the high notes that orange just can't reach. But, a hit from a lemon wedge provides just enough flavor to take the edge off the gin, brighten the sound and let the pomegranate shine. Shaking it with ice cools it down (a good thing) and adds a little bit of water to activate the flavors (also a good thing). I knew I got it right when Julie tried it and said, "I'd drink that." From someone who does not like gin, I considered it high praise indeed.

Finally, to complete the circle, I used my recipe with the Tanqueray No. Ten from the original recipe, and I have to admit that I prefer it to the New Amsterdam in the drink. If you keep No. Ten around, I'd recommend it, but otherwise I'm very happy with the results that New Amsterdam will give you in this drink. Either way, the pomegranate gets a chance to shine at the front of the drink.

Pomegranate Martini (gin version)
1.5 oz. gin (New Amsterdam, or Tanqueray No. Ten)
.5 oz. orange juice (fresh, unsweetened)
.5 oz. pomegranate syrup
Juice from a small wedge of lemon

Combine ingredients (pomegranate last). Shake briefly with ice and strain into a martini glass.

Postscript: this subject may be the tipping point I needed to make my own pomegranate syrup and grenadine (trust me, Rose's is not used in my bar). I'm collecting recipes now, but if you'd like to weigh in (especially on hot-process vs. cold-process), I'd be eager to hear about it!

Taking the Pisco

Sabor Latino is a Latin restaurant in Ann Arbor that's successfully served food for over a decade, but I hadn't stopped in for a few years. I had great experiences with the restaurant early on, but Julie has the occasional allergic reaction to one or more ingredients in Mexican/Latin cooking, so we don't often stay from the proven restaurants (avocado was recently outed as one of the culprits). However, I was recently on a fish taco bender, and it brought me back to Sabor, where I was pleased enough with the results that I dragged Julie along one evening (with the promise of a quick trip home and Benadryl if things went south).

The star of the evening was their Media Noche. It's not the Cuban sandwich that the name is most associated with, but a drink featuring three ingredients per the menu: pineapple juice, pomegranate-blueberry juice and pisco (garnished with blueberries). It's a surprisingly smooth grape brandy in the same neck of the woods as slivovitz–an understated, distinct flavor riding the alcohol burn (pisco can range from 60-100 proof).

I don't have a lot of experience with pisco (certainly not enough to have a set opinion on the Peru vs. Chile battle for the appellation), but for this recipe, I put two different piscos head-to-head: Capel vs Pisco Patron. Tasting each separately, my clear choice was the Patron from Peru; the flavor was somewhat deeper and more forward than the Capel.

Recreating the drink (or at least getting in the neighborhood of the drink) was a straightforward process. The drink is summery–goes down easy, a touch sweet but not overtly so, and served over lots of ice to mask the alcohol. The pineapple juice is the source of whatever sweet there is and since it's not lemonade-sweet, it's going to be the short stack in our recipe. So, the only real experiment is how much pomegranate-blueberry is necessary to fill out the middle of the flavor profile, cut both the alcohol and the sweetness, and produce the correct color in the glass over ice. A few steps later, I had a basic 2-3-1 ratio set that seems to work well. be careful on the pineapple juice–an extra splash will add noticeable sweetness to the recipe (and you might even want to knock a tiny bit off the pineapple juice if you want to tweak the sweet down a notch.

I used both piscos in the recipe, and the clear winner was...Capel. The Patron did nothing for this drink; the flavors were subsumed by the juice without masking the alcohol one bit. The Capel produced a much smoother, balanced taste, and is the clear favorite for this drink (I'll have no problem drinking the Patron straight, and I'm saving a bit for a future pisco sour episode.)

Media Noche (Evening Alchemist version, after Sabor Latino)

1 oz. pisco
1.5 oz. pomegranate-blueberry juice (100% juice)
.5 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice

Shake with ice and serve over ice; garnish with blueberries.

Under Yeager's Law (ingredients I have trump ingredients I don't), I did try the drink first with a cranberry-blueberry juice blend I had laying about. It worked well–you might want to edge down the pineapple juice a bit to compensate for the apple/etc. in the juice cocktail, but it's not unacceptable.

A Tale of Two Tikis (and My Dad)

In Phoenix AZ there's a place called Hula's Modern Tiki. It's a big contemporary building, with a full menu. The seafood (ceviche to fish tacos) is great, and the bar offers a wonderful set of tiki drinks. Their Mai Tai is somewhat non-traditional, but it's a wonderful swirl of citrus and orgeat, happily strong and delicious. The Dr. Funk could have been a sweet mess, but lets the sweetness shine lightly through a coconut-banana base that's terrific. And, if there's a sauce offered with your appetizer or entree, accept it without question.



In Las Vegas NV there's a place called Frankie's Tiki Room. It's a little hole in the wall, well off the Strip, built by a Vegas bar developer who wanted a "locals" place modeled after the tiki bars of the past. It has that slightly-sordid exotic edge you want in a bar, there's no food (check the food cart out front), and some of the best tiki drinks you will ever encounter. Their Mai Tai is the Mai Tai (lucky) people have been drinking for decades; their drink feature homemade mixers (get anything with falernum), original tiki mugs to take home, and a bartender (we've had the same one every year for the past four years) who makes everything perfectly and with a smile.

My father, who passed this week, was a schoolteacher for 26 years, mostly in middle school social studies. He used a grading scale I've never seen before or since:
70-79 = D
80-89 = C
90-99 = B
100+ = A

If you did everything, perfectly, that you were asked to do, you'd squeak by with a A. Miss one question anywhere, and you would need to do extra credit in order to get your A. And, my dad would accept almost anything as extra credit: reports, field trips with parents, anything remotely relevant to social studies. The meta-lesson: if you want to to get top marks, you have to do something extra–you have to find something special to earn your A.

I have no recipe this week; I'm not home to finalize one, and we're letting others do the heavy lifting this week. That said, I hold up these restaurants as two very different examples of the same concept, one that my father passed on to me as part of his legacy many years ago: if you want to be the best, you must go beyond what is expected and provide something extra–even if it is completely different from someone else's attempt to be the best. Hula's and Frankie's are both places that do very different things under the tiki umbrella, but end up being shining examples of exceeding the goals set out by their respective visions. It's a reminder that I do this not to simply drink great drinks (a happy coincidence, to be sure), but to seek out experiences that are beyond the ordinary, and strive for greatness in my own quiet little way.