Umami Martini
MSG gets a bad rap, but don’t let it scare you from making this 🍸
MSG or Mono-sodium Glutamate has been widely used in cooking for centuries, but did you know it can be naturally derived as well? This compound is found in every day food such as mushrooms, tomatoes, meat and many other vegetables. There’s nothing scary or dangerous about this ingredient, just like anything else… when used in moderation. MSG is important in cooking since it provides that ‘5th’ flavor profile - UMAMI.
“What does umami taste like?” - you (probably)
Umami is the savory or meaty taste of foods. It comes from three compounds that are naturally found in plants and meat: glutamate, inosinate, and guanylate.
ingredients:
2½ oz | 75 ml Gin
½ oz | 15 ml Wine
½ oz | 15 ml Olive Brine
3 Dashes Orange Bitters
1 Caper Berry(Garnish)
instructions:
Combine all ingredients except garnish in a shaking tin with ice. Shake, strain and pour the cocktail into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a caper berry, serve and enjoy!
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Style is personal. So why should your cocktail try to copy somebody else’s?
I teamed up with my friends at Ralph Lauren Fragrances to build a cocktail around their Ralph’s Club New York Parfum, and the fragrance did most of the talking. Black currant, cognac, oud wood. That’s basically a drink order.
So we built a Manhattan style sipper with cognac as the base, swapped the sweet vermouth for creme de cassis and a touch of dry vermouth, added a barspoon of absinthe and a few dashes of bitters, then finished it with an expressed lemon twist for brightness. Given the NY roots on this bottle, I’m calling it The State of Mind.
Cheers, y’all!