By now, you know that I've got a thing for martinis and a fetish for prepared rims that use salt or sugar or chile or anything else. And now I come across the Salt and Pepper Martini. Martini purists insist that it isn't a martini, but that doesn't matter to me; only taste matters to me, so you can call it whatever you want. This drink is good.
It combines
- 1.5 oz. gin
- 0.75 oz. lemon juice
- 0.75 oz. grapefruit juice
- 0.75 oz. simple syrup
and it pours it into a salted glass. That's where you rub a lime around the glass and then dip the glass into salt. And you do this with a martini glass, so that alone makes it double awesome. It isn't often that you prepare a martini rim, so dipping a martini glass into a plate of salt excites me. It makes me linger and relish the fact that it isn't a margarita glass or a highball glass. Nope, it's a martini glass, and that's something else entirely.
About the taste: unlike anything else. This is a cocktail that I will make again and again. It's like a Salty Dog yet it's more complex. The grapefruit adds a sour punch that the salt controls nicely, and the syrup and gin go perfectly with whatever citrus you throw at them. But the combination of grapefruit and lemon make this drink stand apart. It may not be a martini, but once you try one, you will have tasted the pinnacle of the cocktail. Fruity, sour, sweet, salty, and altogether delicious.
In fact, the night I tried it, I had two. And then I took the ingredients over to a friend's house as we prepared to watch the Aggies in the Cotton Bowl. A hit, a lover, fighter, and I don't care what happens in the game. Just keep making these.
