So the Guardian had its ‘Cocktail of the Week’ - Lyon’s martini x2, devised by Anthony Lyon of Lyon’s Seafood and Wine Bar, London N8, and described as ‘An almost savoury, nori-infused gin martini to enjoy as an aperitif, perhaps with an oyster or two on the side.’ ‘Almost savoury’ as in almost pregnant and almost dead? i.e. not savoury? Though it sounded entirely savoury to me. And in any case the drink looked like this:
Creating the nori-infused gin is the hard part, Mr. Lyons favours Beefeater, and the drink also involved seaweed bitters which I’ve never encountered.
To make nori-infused gin, he says, “Toast the nori over a gas flame (or barbecue or with a blowtorch) until it turns brown and smells slightly nutty: be careful, though, because it can catch quickly. Crumble the toasted nori into a clean jar, add the gin, then seal and leave to infuse for 12 hours. Strain the gin through a coffee filter, then decant into a clean jar and seal; it will be good for three to six months. Then serve with a strip of nori on the rim.’
Well that sounded like a lot of fuss, and although nori is a perfectly good thing it’s always struck me as not at all fancy, just the kind of thing you can have with a beer. I felt I would make my own version of the seaweed martini.
My local, very reliable, fish man down in Manningtree market sells two different kinds of seaweed, neither of them nori, and both of them come wet and salty as the North Sea. The thing I usually do, thanks to the ingenuity of the inamorata, is soak them to get rid of the salt and then blend them into a pile of mashed potatoes.
But imagine you had a couple of small fronds of the stuff and you soaked them and dried them (using a blow torch if you insist) and then dropped them into a martini – that would be good wouldn’t it? Not a substitute for olives but part of the same food group surely. So I did it and it looked like this.
It tasted fierce, much fiercer than nori would have. It was a nice experiment and a change but I can’t see it making its way into the regular rotation.
And then I started thinking about the things people have in or with drinks, and my mind drifted back to a bar in LAX airport where I had a Bloody Mary which came with a slice of Beecher’s cheese, made in Seattle. Like this:
It seemed great at the time, although when a man’s waiting for his plane’s departure gate number to be announced, his connoisseurship may not be at its finest. But even in the cold light of day it still seemed like a pretty good idea.
And it so happens that the Manningtree market has an Italian cheese man, Solo Cheese, from whom I only ever really buy one thing and that’s pecorino with olives in it.
And I bought some at the weekend but when I tasted it I realized it wasn’t just olives in there, there was some kind of red hot pepper as well. And that worked really well with a Bloody Mary. You don’t need Tabasco in the drink when you’ve got a slice of hot cheese perched there on top. Another small but significant triumph.
