Holiday Vanilla Martini: Art of the Drink 49

Anthony Caporale: Welcome to the Art of The Drink. My name is Anthony Caporale and we are working again with Carlyn.

Carlyn: Hi everyone.

Anthony Caporale: We’re here at the Green Room at the The John W. Engeman Theater in Northport, New York. One of our bartenders is a classically trained pastry chef, studied in France and she brought over some fresh vanilla beans and then we got this whole thing started and we went to town. So I'm going to go ahead and make you the Greenroom Vanilla Martini.

First thing, set our glassware as always and in our tin big scoop of ice. We’re going to do one ounce of vanilla vodka. This next ingredient is a liqueur and it’s called Licor 43 in English. Cuarenta Y Tres or some such pronunciation but better than that is the true name of the liqueur. The predominant flavor is vanilla, but the reason it’s called Licor 43 is there’s actually 43 original spices in this and it is the number one selling liqueur in Spain. The other reason that I’m doing this drink as this is the favorite liqueur of my cameraman and editor Dave who is sitting over there. Dave how old were you the first time you had this?

Dave: No comments.

Anthony Caporale: In Spain, right?

Dave: Yes.

Anthony Caporale: Yeah, so this is his favorite liqueur, so this one is for Dave. I’m going to go ahead and put a half ounce of Licor 43 in there and now, the ingredient got to have started is the fresh vanilla beans and if you haven't seen vanilla bean before, most of us have, but -- this is actually a dried seed part from the vanilla plant which is a member of the orchid family and it’s full of seeds and if you split it in half, you can actually see that there is all little seeds in there.

So what we’re going to do is go ahead and just slice it in half, which we’ve already done, and then take the back of your knife and scrape those seeds off and you’re going to get little black flecks allover the back of your knife. You’re going to get some raisin and all kinds of good flavor and this is where the vanilla flavor lives. It’s in this part of vanilla bean. It’s something I'm going to scrape that down real good and then when I have that I'm going to just put this in my drink. That’s where all the fresh vanilla flavor is going to come from.

Now, before I go ahead and set this seed part aside, I’m going to take it and turn it over so that the outside of it is spacing up and I’m going to split it and make a nice thin strip, all the way down. 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-and-half, viewers know that when I use half-and-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 and dense, okay. So I'm going to shake it now until it froths.

Good, right, and about an-ounce-and-a-half of half-and-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-and-half, trust me. Little swirl to mix it and chill it down a bit and then this whole thing gets strained into my martini glass. 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 any of the viewers remember but Breyers Ice cream used to have specks of vanilla bean all through and that’s what made it Breyers Ice cream. That’s what I want this drink end up looking like, so you have got flecks of vanilla all in there. Now, I go back to my split piece of vanilla bean that I made and I go ahead and put that in as a garnish and there you have the Engeman Vanilla Martini from the Green Room Lounge.

Carlyn: That is so good.

Anthony Caporale: You like that?

Dave: I'm enjoying it.

Carlyn: No, it’s like, so good.

Speaker: And you look cute and look cute again. Thank you third time.

Anthony Caporale: Good job. Thank you.

Speaker: Fantastic!

Carlyn: Cool