Lime Leaves

Most citrus leaves are edible. In fact, they are downright addictive. Particularly when steeped and added to a martini.

(However, that's not this article.)

Somebody smart at my local farmers' market figured out that they could market lime leaves. As many of you might know, winter is the time for citrus fruits. Ergo lime leaves.

While they are not a perfect substitute for kaffir lime leaves in Thai cooking, they work perfectly excellently in the soups. Most importantly, they work really well as substitutes for curry leaves in Indian cooking particularly when you slice them into pieces. They are hardier so they will not be edible and you will have to fish them out but they lend exactly the correct aroma.

Your rasams and your chitraanam can now be "locavore".

The CC is just thrilled.

On Martinis

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most,
After three, I'm under the table,
After four, I'm under my host.
Who else but the inimitable Dorothy Parker?

Special-ized Equipment

A martini maker.

Now the CC has seen everything.

It's "special" alright, just like the Special Olympics!

A martini is not exactly hard to make as the recipe here points out. Of course, we've seen our share of silly ideas like here.

Buñuel's Martini

Anyone who knows the CC knows that he loves his martinis, and anybody who knows the CC knows that the CC loves the movies of the surrealist, Buñuel.

This then is Luis Buñuel's martini. The CC is convinced that Buñuel wasn't just a perfectionist in his movies.

To provoke, or sustain, a reverie in a bar, you have to drink English gin, especially in the form of the dry martini. To be frank, given the primordial role in my life played by the dry martini, I think I really ought to give it at least a page. Like all cocktails, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. At a certain period in America it was said that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative power of the Holy Ghost pierced the Virgin's hymen "like a ray of sunlight through a window-leaving it unbroken."

Another crucial recommendation is that the ice be so cold and hard that it won't melt, since nothing's worse than a watery martini. For those who are still with me, let me give you my personal recipe, the fruit of long experimentation and guaranteed to produce perfect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients -- glasses, gin, and shaker -- in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don't take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Stir it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, stir it again, and serve.