Dry Gin Martini

Order a cocktail by name and most times you know what you're going to get. That's not necessarily the case with the martini. Sure, it's one of the most popular cocktails, and it's considered one of the most refined. But it's also one subject to heated debate over what is and isn't a martini, leading to potential customer confusion and disappointment for those who do not (or don't know they need to) be specific in what they're ordering.

Gin vs. Vodka

A key question in the martini debate is whether you can make a martini with vodka. Traditionally, martinis are made with gin and vermouth (and a garnish, often an olive or lemon twist), and purists will vehemently insist that a martini is not made with vodka. However, in the mid 20th Century, it became popular to make martinis with vodka, while the amount of vermouth gradually reduced and sometimes vanished (I seem to recall a joke about a guy making a martini, and when it came time to add the vermouth, he uncorked it and waved the bottle over the drink, so that only its "fumes" were mixed in).

The most famous vodka martini drinker was, naturally, James Bond, who, in most of his films ordered a "vodka martini, shaken, not stirred." The vodka question aside, bartenders will tell you that's a terrible order, although not necessarily because of the vodka. Drinks like martinis that are all liquors really should be stirred not shaken, but who's to argue when your patron has a license to kill?

"Martini" Beyond Martini

My own first attempt at ordering a martini was a disaster. I was 21 years old and floating down the River Thames in London at a boat party for my just-concluded study-abroad program. Since I'd turned 21 while in London, the entirety of my experience ordering drinks up that point had been in Britain (and a little bit in Europe). I'd started with hard cider (just "cider" over there) and progressed to beer, but hadn't really tackled cocktails in a meaningful way. So I decided I wanted something special to mark to occasion and ordered what I viewed as very grown-up drink, a martini.

It was terrible. Little did I know that when ordering a martini, I really should have remembered that James Bond always ordered a "vodka martini" never just a "martini." Although I think even in Britain a "martini" is expected to gin and vermouth, there are some bartenders who will take you literally and pour you just a glass of Martini & Rossi vermouth. Dry vermouth adds a nice element to a martini, but by itself, I don't really care for it.

So, having established that you can get a martini with gin, vodka or (unfortunately) neither, what else does the term "martini" encompass? There are the basic variations: dirty (includes olive brine), dry (very little vermouth), Gibson (garnished with a pickled pearl onion). There's The Vesper, which was invented by author Ian Fleming for his first James Bond book Casino Royale and contains both gin and vodka (but note, the Vesper is not what Bond usually orders, and if you recall what happened to Ms. Vesper Lind, then it's pretty obvious why he never drinks it). Then there's the flavored martinis, the most popular of which is probably the apple (sometimes called "appletini"), but I've seen pear, pomegranate, sake and melon. The term is even sometimes loosely used to apply to any type of higher-alcohol-content cocktail served up in a martini glass, like a cosmopolitan. That all sounds like fun, but when I think of a martini, I envision the classic gin version, and I want vermouth in it too.

Ordering a Martini

So what do you need to know when ordering a martini? First, decide if you want gin or vodka and say so, then specify if you want it dry, shaken or stirred (resist the temptation to be cool like Bond and get it stirred the way it should be), and finally whether you want it up (without ice) or on-the-rocks, but know that if you choose on-the-rocks, it won't come in the cool martini glass, so order it up.

The popular ratio of gin to vermouth in a martini has changed over time. At first it was 1:1, but steadily more gin and less vermouth became popular, with an off balance ratio as much as 100:1 (at which point, why even bother with the vermouth, just admit that you want a glass of gin). More recently, with the resurgence of classic cocktails, vermouth is returning to the martini. Jim Meehan's The PDT Cocktail Book suggests 3:1; Jeffrey Morgenthaler's The Bar Book favors 4:1. Because I want mine a little dryer, I'm going with 6:1. And nodding to the original late 19th Century martinis--a subject I hope to cover in more depth later--I'm also including a dash of orange bitters.

Dry Gin Martini

3 oz. Plymouth gin
1/2 oz. Dolin dry vermouth
1 dash of orange bitters
Lemon twist

Combine gin, vermouth and bitters in a cocktail mixing glass, Fill with ice and stir until very cold. Strain into a a chilled martini glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

Fajitas: From Steak to Everything

Although I haven't studied this enough to know if it's absolutely true, it seems to me that there's a greater tendency for food words of foreign origin to be misused, and thus more likely to evolve in meaning than words that have been in English a long time.

Take the French word "pommes" for example. Americans who do not speak French (me included) may be most familiar with this word from "pommes frites," which means fried potatoes. Because "frites" is obviously the fried part, they may logically assume "pommes" means potato, and thus apply it to other uses. However "Pommes" is actually the French word for "apples." "Pommes de terre" is the French term for potatoes, which literally means "apples of the earth." In the construction "pommes frites," the "de terre" has just been dropped, but without a working knowledge of French, you might not know that it needs to be put back if you want to talk about a potato and not an apple.

There are several Spanish food terms that I've noticed get appropriated for other uses. One is "queso," the Spanish word for "cheese," but which has come to mean "spicy cheese sauce" in American Tex-Mex restaurants, opening the door for potential confusion if one asks for "queso" expecting to get perhaps shredded cheese (which is, actually, what they asked for). Maybe in the not-too-distant future, "queso" could signify any type of spicy appetizer dip, including one without cheese? Vegans are already at work on this.

A Spanish term that has evolved further is "Fajita." Fajitas are one of those Tex-Mex dishes that isn't really Mexican. In The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Robb Walsh writes about the dish's Texas origins. It was originally a dish made by ranch hands from unwanted beef cuts. Restaurants began serving the dish in the 1960s, and the term "fajitas" was popularized in the 1970s.

Skirt steak, the original fajitas ingredient.

But the fajitas of the 1970s were different from those we know today. Originally, the term referred only to beef, specifically grilled skirt steak. "Faja" is the Spanish word for "skirt," and thus "fajita" means literally a "little skirt," referring to skirt steak. As a food then, the term referred specifically marinated and grilled skirt steak, generally sliced and served with tortillas and other garnishes.

In Monday's article on Dan Jurafsky's book, The Language of Food, I mentioned how our language around food evolves just as our food evolves. Fajitas are an excellent example of this.

Fajitas today may contain a variety of vegetables and meats.

Fajitas became a major food fad in the mid 1980s. Still popular today, they were everywhere at one point. I remember my introduction to the dish being a "fajita kit" you could buy at the grocery store with raw meat and vegetables to be grilled on the stove and stuffed in tortillas. Every Mexican restaurant had a version of fajitas. Even McDonald's, which obviously isn't a Mexican restaurant, began selling chicken and sometimes steak fajitas.

But wait...when did chicken enter the picture? Just as I wrote Tuesday about how "bruschetta" evolved from meaning garlic toast that might have a topping to mean garlic toast with topping, the term "fajita" evolved to mean not just the steak in the tortilla but the steak and the tortilla and garnishes, usually grilled onions and bell peppers, but also possibly salsa, cheese, beans and guacamole. Consequently, with the dish "fajita" established as meat + tortilla + garnishes, other meats could be substituted for the skirt steak and the dish was still called fajita. In fact, the meat could be dropped all together, the dish known as "vegetable fajitas." Today there are all sorts of variations on fajitas, including the original steak, but also chicken, shrimp, barbecue ribs, vegetable and combinations.

Grilled onions and bell peppers are a common fajita garnish. In some uses, they are even considered "fajitas."

There's an even newer use of the term I've observed, possibly a further evolution, entirely divorced from meat and tortillas.

In recent years, Chipotle Mexican Grill has emerged as America's leading fast-casual restaurant, sparking a revolution in the concept, quality and expectation of what fast food means. Although the menu is different now, when I first became a Chipotle customer in the early 2000s, the menu included "burritos" and "fajita burritos," the former included beans, while the latter came with grilled onions and bell peppers. Eventually, Chipotle dropped the "fajita burrito" from the menu, but kept the vegetables, the idea being that you can order just a "burrito" and get it with beans or vegetables (or both). But guess what people starting calling the grilled onions and vegetables? Fajitas.

We go to Chipotle a lot, and I hear it all the time. A customer orders a bowl with rice, chicken, black beans and, oh, "could I have some fajitas too?" indicating the grilled vegetables. Is it possible this use will grow beyond Chipotle? Perhaps, especially given that's Chipotle's influence on our food has grown with the chain, which has 1,600 (and growing) locations, plus imitators and restaurants applying a similar concept to salad, pizza, Mediterranean, Indian and Southeast Asian cuisines.


Steak Fajitas
Marinade adapted from Marinated and Grilled or Broiled Flank Steak recipe by Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything

Marinade:
2 tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. minced garlic
1/2 tsp. sugar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 lb. skirt or flank steak
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 sweet onion, sliced
1 green bell pepper, seeded, cored and sliced
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. ground cumin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Homemade flour tortillas (see recipe below)
Fresh guacamole (see recipe below)
Fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped

1. Combine the marinade ingredients in a shallow bowl. Add the steak, turning to coat in the marinade. Marinate for about 30 minutes, up to 1 hour.

2. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the onions and bell pepper. Season with oregano, cumin, salt and pepper, to taste. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until softened and browned in places, about 10 minutes.

3. Heat oven broiler. Place steak on a baking sheet or broiler pan and broil 4 to 5 minutes per side, turning once (alternatively, if you have a grill, grill the steak over hot coals). Set aside to cool a couple minutes, then slice against the grain into strips. Serve steak and vegetables with homemade flour tortillas, fresh guacamole and a sprinkle of cilantro.

Homemade Flour Tortillas
Adapted from a recipe by How to Baker

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3-5 tbsp. vegetable shortening
1 1/4 cups warm water

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking powder. Add the vegetable shortening and use a pastry blender or your fingers to combine. Add the water, a little bit at a time, mixing in each addition to form the dough until it is soft and no longer sticky. Transfer dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for 2-3 minutes. Add additional flour if necessary to keep dough from being sticky. Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

2. Break off pieces of dough and roll into golf ball-size pieces. Cover with a wet towel and let the dough rest for another 10 minutes.

3. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat. Working with one piece of dough at a time, dust the dough with flour and gently press it into a small disc. Flatten the dough in a tortilla press, then

4. Heat griddle pan over medium heat. Working with one piece of dough at a time, dust the dough with flour and gently press it into a small disc, then flatten in a tortilla press. Cook the tortilla on each side for about 10 to 20 seconds. Transfer to a plate and cover with paper towels to keep warm. You should be able to cook them in batches of four.

Fresh guacamole

2 ripe hass avocados

Juice from 1 lime

2 tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

Kosher salt, to taste

Pinch of chipotle chili powder

2 tbsp. minced sweet onion

Combine avocado and lime juice in a medium bowl. Mash with a fork or pastry blender until creamy but still a bit chunky. Add the cilantro, salt, chili powder and onion and stir to combine.

On Food and Language: Evolution of 'Bruschetta'

Let's try a quick exercise. I'm going to toss out a word and I want you to close your eyes and envision what it represents. Here's the word: "bruschetta."

What did you see? A piece of grilled toast rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil? Said toast topped with chopped tomatoes and basil? Or perhaps just the tomato topping and no bread at all?

That all of these answers are possible aren't just examples of variation. It's a specific linguistic phenomenon called semantic change, the change over time in the meaning of a word. In the case of bruschetta, what was once a word to describe a piece of garlic-rubbed and olive-oil-drizzled toast has since come to mean several different things, including seasoned chopped tomatoes and basil--referring to a popular bruschetta topping (sans the toast)--as well as some other meanings. An unscientific poll of my Twitter and Facebook followers revealed this variation: when I asked them what came to mind when they saw the word "bruschetta," I received replies that included garlic toast with something fresh (like tomatoes), a snack of seasoned grilled bread with tomatoes and olive oil and, lastly, just tomatoes.

Traditionally, "bruschetta" referred to a piece of toasted bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil.

More recently, the term "bruschetta" has come to sometimes refer to a mixture of tomatoes and herbs,  a popular topping for the garlic toast.

According to the Food Lover's Companion, "bruschetta" comes from the Italian word bruscare, which means to "roast over coals." The book goes on to define bruschetta as a traditional garlic bread made by rubbing slices of toasted bread with garlic cloves, drizzling the bread with extra-virgin olive oil and seasoning it with salt and pepper. Tomatoes and basil are not mentioned.

The book's definition appears to align with the traditional Italian definition. In Marcella Hazan's The Classic Italian Cookbook from 1973, she includes a recipe for bruschetta exactly as described in the Food Lover's Companion: toasted bread rubbed with crushed garlic, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Again, no tomatoes. However, her more recent 1992 cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cookbook, includes a separate recipe for a "tomato version," identical but with the addition of a topping of diced tomatoes with a sprinkle of basil or oregano.

Published around that same time in 1989, Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins' The New Basics Cookbook describes bruschetta as garlic-rubbed and olive oil-drizzed toast but then goes on to say it can be embellished with various toppings, including tomatoes, which are found in all three of their bruschetta recipes, even their "basic" one. It's still clear though that they consider the toasted bread to be the bruschetta. Introducing "our basic bruschetta" recipe they write, "when we make bruschetta, we top it with a heady tomato mixture..." "It" is the toast; the tomato is the topping.

More recently, however, there has been a shift towards using "bruschetta" to mean not the toast, but the toast plus its topping. This is a subtle, but I think very important distinction. When a dish consists of a primary ingredient plus secondary elements, you would not remove that primary ingredient and then use the term to describe only the secondary elements. Tomato sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni could not be called "pizza" unless it is sitting upon a baked bread crust. However, when a dish consists of multiple primary elements, it is possible to remove one (or more) and still refer to the dish with that name. It is not uncommon to see Caesar Salads missing their croutons or anchovies, for examine. And lots of people run around drinking "martinis" that contain neither gin nor vermouth.

In the case of bruschetta, I became aware of its drifting definition earlier this year while tweeting with another food blogger.

She had posted a tweet about a recipe she described as a "fun twist on bruschetta," the Bruschetta Quinoa Casserole from the blog The Iron You. In this recipe, the writer made a quinoa casserole with tomatoes, onion, garlic, cheese, herbs and seasonings. In describing the dish, the writer says, "this casserole tastes like bruschetta, exit the bread, enters the quinoa." Implicit in his statement is that bruschetta is toast and tomato-herb topping, not toast which may have a tomato-herb topping. In such an equation, you could conceivably remove the bread as an element in the dish and still have the dish. Thus, we come to the next evolution: calling a tomato-topping "bruschetta."

Another blogger friend of mine did just that when he posted about bruschetta he had made. The photo accompanying his post had no bread; it was a (rather delicious looking) bowl of seasoned chopped tomatoes with basil. He told me he was serving it with bread, but clearly he considered "bruschetta" to be the topping, with the bread as an important but secondary component. And he's not alone in this thinking. This Kraft salad recipe refers to "bruschetta on French bread," clearly implying that bruschetta is a topping. This Tyson recipe for Better Bruschetta Chicken Salad contains tomatoes, olives and other bruschetta toppings, but doesn't make any reference to bread. The popular restaurant chain Applebees used to have a dish called Bruschetta Chicken, described as "Grilled chicken seasoned with bruschetta, parsley and a blend of Italian cheeses." Although I'm still having trouble understanding how chicken can be "seasoned" with tomatoes and garlic, I'll acknowledge the even greater difficulty of performing that maneuver with toast.

With these and other similar recipes, bread has clearly, if not fully divorced, certainly separated from bruschetta--even though originally that's all bruschetta was. Not surprisingly, at the grocery store I found jars of various toppings that market themselves as "bruschetta," not bruschetta toppings.

Jars of "bruschetta" at the grocery store.

That corporations have had a hand in the changing definition of "bruschetta" should not come as a surprise. Marketing has long played a role in how we think and talk about food. In The Language of Food, linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky details the evolution of ketchup. Today, we think of ketchup as a sweet and sour pureed tomato sauce, but initially, the term referred to a type of Chinese fish sauce. Jurafsky details how the sauce transformed from its fishy roots to its modern day incarnation as an essential American hamburgers and fries condiment. When it comes to ketchup, Heinz is king. Although it's inconceivable today to use the word "ketchup" to refer to a sauce made from anything but tomatoes, Heinz own use of "tomato ketchup" on its label is a nod to the possibility of there being ketchups that aren't tomato-based. The term "ketchup" feels pretty stable at the moment, but Heinz was responsible for settling one of the word's last divisions, whether it should be spelled "catsup" or "ketchup." They chose the latter, and now hardly anyone uses the other spelling (the Merriam-Webster dictionary refers to "catsup" as a variant of "ketchup").

All this is to say that the words that we use to describe what we eat can and do change. As our tastes and culture evolve, so too does our language. "Tweeting" is something that only birds used to do, yet today it means something altogether different, a definition that has become (possibly the more common) only within the last 5-6 years. You can be a linguist and view this as a good thing, or a language "maven" and view it as sacrilege, but once a word develops a new common usage, there's no turning back. Given the current craze for all things gluten-free, perhaps it is conceivable that someday I'll walk into a restaurant, order a pizza and receive a dish that includes no bread.

Related:
Tomato Bruschetta

Book: The Language of Food

Book: The Language of Food

Have you ever wondered why "entree," a word that sounds like "enter," means a main course rather than a first?

Or why India Pale Ale is so-named, given that it is neither produced in India nor contains ingredients from India (as far as I know)?

These are but a few of the questions answered in The Language of Food, the new book by Stanford University linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky.

Books about language are often a great read. Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves is an engaging and witty treatise on the importance of punctuation. And Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue, about the history of the English language, is a must-read for those who marvel at the complex and often confounding ways that we speak and write. Fans of those books who also love to eat will enjoy Jurafsky's work, which seeks to explain the history and evolution of some of the common terms we use for food, providing insights into their relationship with Western and other cultures.

Each of the book's chapters focus on a different subject or set of related subjects, which include examining specific food terms like "toast," "macaroni" and "ketchup." Fans of Jurafsky's blog will recognize some of the chapters as expanded versions of articles he's previously posted online. Although each chapter is rooted in language, but this is sometimes to lens to examine other questions of history and the evolution of food culture. The chapter on "why the Chinese don't have dessert," for example, moves far afield from language to examine the origin of the notion that meals should end with something sweet in Western but not Eastern culture (and how the fortune cookie, an American invention, is a nice bridge between the two).

One of my favorite chapters comes early in the book where Jurafsky and colleagues examined a dataset of 6,500 restaurant menus to learn what the language of menus reveals about the food restaurants serve. Some of his observations may seem counterintuitive on their face, but reveal a lot about what we expect at restaurants of different price points.

For example, lower-price restaurants' menus tend to use more "filler" words, i.e. empty words that don't really mean anything like "flavorful" and "delicious." Certainly, no one is hoping to choose a dish that isn't those things. In contrast, higher-price restaurants tend to not use as many adjectives (there's no need to point out the bacon is "real," since, at such establishments, it is expected) or if they do, they use longer words ("decaffeinated" and not "decaf") or terms that point to the food's provenance. His conclusion on this subject makes a lot of sense: "we suspect that empty words are linked with lower prices because they are in fact fillers; stuff you put in the description of the dish when you don't have something really valuable like crab or porterhouse to talk about instead."

You can see this for yourself. Compare, for example the description of a burger from Red Robin, a national chain, to that of Bourbon Steak, a high-end D.C. steakhouse:

• Red Robin: Red's Tavern Double - You’ll be tasting double with two classic-sized patties, melted American cheese, tomato, lettuce and Red’s Secret Tavern Sauce.™ $6.99
• Bourbon Steak: Oak-Fired Prime Steak Burger - sour pickles, Cabot clothbound cheddar, secret sauce. 19.

Red Robin's adjectives tell us about the burger pattie's size ("classic-sized"), whereas Bourbon Steak tells us about how it is cooked ("oak-fired"). Bourbon steak tells us its cheese is "Cabot clothbound," an expensive type of cheddar, while Red Robin just tells us the cheese is "melted," since what other descriptive adjectives would you say about American cheese? Notice the difference in how the price is expressed: Red Robin uses a dollar sign and includes 99 cents, that old trick to make you think the burger is $6 when it's really $7. Bourbon steak does neither, a newer trick restaurants are employing to disassociate your menu selection from the impact on your wallet. Lastly, notice they both use the term "secret sauce," a tradition born in fast-food burger restaurants.

A key theme in the book is the idea of how words and word use change. Certainly, our food is an ever-changing thing, subject to the increasing availability of foods from other places, diet fads (gluten free, paleo), trends (kale, quinoa, bacon) and our understanding of nutrition (bye-bye margarine). Similarly, the language we use to discuss what we eat evolves as well, although not everyone likes that it does.

Writes Jurafsky: "We are carefully taught to clamp down on changes in language as if new ways of speaking are unnatural, adopted by ignorant speakers out of stupidity or even malice. Yet linguistic research demonstrates that the gradual changes in language over time often lead to significant improvements in the language's clarity or efficiency..." He's talking specifically about the aforementioned evolution of the term "entree" from meaning an early course to a main course, but this statement applies broadly to language about food and really language in general.

That brings me to this week's theme on my blog. This week I'll be sharing recipes that have a connection to language, specifically how food terms can evolve to mean different things. I've got three delicious examples that I hope will stir debate and whet your appetites.