Pumpkins, and The World's Best Lemon Drop Martini

So this past weekend, Moon and I grabbed the fam and headed out with some friends of ours to Berry Patch Farms in Woodstock, GA for a bit of pumpkiny fall fun. Berry Patch is a great, family-friendly place with a playground area, hay rides, a pumpkin patch sized perfectly for little guys, and--my son's favorite--an old tractor for kids to climb on. And did I mention its FREE? Oh, yeah.

Here's a few snaps of the fun:

So what with hayrides and tractors and pumpkins and a picnic under a huge old oak tree, we were full up on autumn cheer, and I got so reckless as to volunteer to make s'mores out on our patio one night--the fire from the grill being as close as I could manage to a bonfire in our drought-stricken suburban neighborhood without the cops crashing our party.

But I digress...

On the way home, I was full of pumpkin-flavored good cheer, humming along with the new James Blunt CD (which is better than the critics say it is--not perfect, by any means, but quite listenable) when suddenly I was craving martinis. Not just any martinis, but the perfect Lemon Drop martini I'd had at Canoe on my anniversary. At first, I thought this was quite problematic, since dinner at Canoe costs about the same as a couple month's of my son's preschool tuition--worth every penny, believe me, but still not the sort of place you drop in on every time you get a martini craving unless your last name is Trump.

But fall is my favorite season, for many reasons, so I was full of the dreams of possibilities that come to me in autumn. Maybe there was even a little hubris left over from my rash s'mores-making promises. Either way, I thought to myself I will create that martini myself. I shared my idea with Moon. He agreed, as long as I figured out how to make a decent vodka martini in the process.

"Very dry, and not a dirty martini--the olive juice is just too much," he said.

So when we got home, I hit the Internet and started researching Lemon Drops and martinis in general. The martini has a dubious past, with everyone and no one taking credit for the drink, and its origins were quite different than its current incarnation. One of the earliest drinks claiming paternity of the martini is the Martinez, created in the 1800s, and swirling together the slightly odd mixture of bitters, maraschino juice, sweet vermouth and gin, and garnished with a slice of lemon. My 1950s-vintage Joy of Cooking calls for gin, a mix of sweet and dry vermouth, bitters and olives. Moon hates gin, so I was looking for vodka. One of my favorite recipes I'd ever heard for a dry vodka martini was vodka with a whisper of vermouth--you whisper the word "vermouth" over the drink just before you serve what is, essentially a martini glass of vodka. I decided to work with that, and indulge my husband's martini-drinking, James Bond fantasy. Shaken, not stirred.

After a trip to the mega-huge liquor store near me, I came home with a bottle of Cirac vodka (Moon's choice--a French vodka made from grapes and distilled from ice chipped from an iceberg), a bottle of Three Olives Citron and a bottle of limoncello, an Italian lemon cordial that has the color and scent reminiscent of extremely happy daisies. I already had dry vermouth at home. I mixed, measured, shook and poured, and the results were spectacular. Here's the recipes:

Moon's 007 Fantasy

5 parts VERY GOOD vodka to 1 part dry vermouth. Pour over crushed ice and shake the heck out it. Pour into a martini glass and admire the teeny ice slivers floating around for a moment. Stick three olives on a cocktail toothpick (I used martini olives marinated in vermouth) and serve.

The World's Best Lemon Drop Martini

First, make some sweet and sour mix. Make it, don't buy it. The beauty of a great LD martini if the fresh taste of the lemon, so everything needs to be, well, fresh. So, mix 8 ounces of fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about 8 lemons) with 2 Tbs. superfine sugar. Stir to dissolve sugar. Juice one more lemon just for fun, and hold onto that juice in a separate cup.

Then, fill a cocktail shaker with crushed ice and pour over the ice:

1 oz. citron vodka
1 oz. limoncello
2 oz. sweet and sour mix
1 ounce lemon juice
1 tsp. superfine sugar

Shake the heck out it, and pour the resulting ambrosia into a martini glass you have rimmed with lemon juice and turbinado sugar. Grab your microplane zester and grate a bit of very fine zest over the top of the drink.

Oh, yum.

You will have enough sweet and sour mix to make about 4 drinks, which is a nice bonus for hand-squeezing a bunch of lemons. It keeps nicely in the fridge for a day or two.

There. A perfect Lemon Drop Martini, in the privacy of your own home. Enjoy responsibly. :-)