How To Make A Thanksgiving Vanilla Martini
For Thanksgiving, Anthony and Carlyn show you the perfect dessert drink for your Turkey Day feast!
Step 1: Welcome to Art of the drink:
Welcome to Art of the drink, my name is Anthony Caporale. We're working again with Carolyn. How're you doing? Hi every one. And we're here at the green room, at the John W. Theatre in North Port, New York. One of our bartenders is a classically trained pastry chef, studied in France & she brought over some fresh vanilla beans, and that's what got this whole thing started, then we went to town. So I want to go ahead and make you the green room vanilla martini.
Step 2: Liqueur 43:
First thing, set our glassware as always. And in our tin, pieces of ice. And we do 1oz. of vanilla vodka. And this next ingredient is liqueur - liqueur 43 in English. Cuarenta y tres, or some such pronunciation, but better than that, is the true name of the liqueur. The predominant flavour is vanilla, but the reason it's called liquor 43 is there's actually 43 herbs & spices in this. And this is the number one selling liquor in Spain. The other reason that I'm doing this drink is, this is the favourite liqueur of my camera man & editor, Dave, who's sitting over there. Dave, how old were you the first time you had this? No comment. In Spain, right? Yes.
Step 3: Making the drink:
So this is his favourite liqueur, so this one's to Dave. I'm going to go ahead and put a half oz of liqueur 43 in there. And now, the ingredient that got us started, is the fresh vanilla beans. And if you haven't seen a vanilla bean before, most of us have... this is actually a dried seed pod of the vanilla plant, which is a member of the orchid family, and it's full of seed. Split it in half and you can actually see that there's all little seeds in there. So what you want to do is go ahead and just slice it in half, which we have already done, and then take the back of your knife, and scrape those seeds off. And you're going to get little black flecks all over the back of your knife and you're also going to get some resin and all kinds of good flavour. And this is where the vanilla flavour lives, this part of the vanilla bean. So I'm Going to scrape that down really good, and when I have that,I'm just going to put this in my drink. That's where all the fresh vanilla flavour is going to come from. Now, before I go ahead and set this seed pod aside, I'm going to take it and turn it over so that the outside of it is facing up, and I'm going to split it and make a nice thin strip all the way down, right, I'm going to set that aside as well. And now I'm going to shake this drink. One more ingredient is going in here and it's half-&-half Viewers know that when I use half-&-half in a drink, I always add it after I shake the drink. Because if you add it before you shake the drink, it foams up. and I like these drinks to be nice & dense, okay. So I'm going to shake it now until it frosts. Good. And about an ounce & a half of half-&-half goes in here. Now again, if you want to lighten it up a little, you can use milk, you can use 2%, 1%, no, use half-&-half, trust me. A little swirl to mix and chill it down a bit, and then this whole thing gets strained into my Martini glass. And what you're looking for is, you can actually see the specks of vanilla floating in that glass and it looks like, I don't know if the viewers remember but, Bryer's ice cream used to have specks of vanilla bean all through out. That's what made it Bryer's ice cream and that's what I want this drink to end up looking like. So you got specks of vanilla all over in there. And now I go back to my split piece of vanilla bean that I made, and go ahead and put that in as a garnish. And there you have the vanilla Martini from green room lounge. Want to give it a try? Absolutely. All right!
Step 4: Try it yourself:
Okay, first thing? Set the glass! You got it! Awesome. Okay, ice? Yes. Great. Awesome. Then we do 1oz. of vanilla vodka to start us off. Right. Perfect. And then half an ounce of liqueur 43. This one. Cuarenta y tres or something. Beautiful. And now we're going to do our vanilla bean. And again you want to use the back of the knife so you're not cutting the vanilla bean, you're just scraping it. Yeah, that's all the good stuff. So the idea is to just get the seeds and the resin that's inside without actually getting the fibrous part of the hull of the pod, because it is a seed pod, and that's not particularly tasty, okay. So scoop that up, and you can use the front of the knife to scrape that all off the cutting board. that will help you up. So these goes in here? Yes, all that goes in there. Nice. And now go ahead and give yourself a nice split of the vanilla bean. And the easiest way to do it is to turn it upside down so that the inside is on the bottom, right. And that will keep it flat. And you want to use the tip of the knife and just draw it along, and you give yourself a nice, thin strip of vanilla bean...watch those fingers. Perfect.
Step 5: Shaking and frosting:
So go ahead and shake that to frost. Okay, let's see... Nice work! Yeah! Good job! Okay, I'm going to get this right this time. Feel your hand and just pull it 90 degrees. There you go, good job! That is an art! Good. And about an ounce & a half of half-&-half go in there. And now we just want to swirl it, that's just going to chill the half-&-half a little bit and mix those ingredients up- and then we strain it into our glass, perfect! Oh, yeah, look at that! That's fantastic! Bryer's has competition. Exactly! Add our garnish...and we are done! We have to go drink these. You bet! Nice work! Salut!
