Tried The Tandoori Martini Cocktail? Here’s How You Grill Your Way To A Smoky Drink
Till fairly recently, despite the staggering popularity of the cocktail, Bloody Mary was the only drink that came as close to savoury cocktails as possible.
But with the explosion of shirt-video content creators raucously experimenting with unexpected ingredient pairings, we have increasingly become more and more open to breaking culinary norms, be it bacon or parmesan cheese in your drink.
Variations From Around The Globe
For example, the Handroll cocktail from Manhattan experimental Japanese cocktail bar Shinji’s, incorporates both seaweed and wasabi in its Manhattan recipe.
Similarly, a restaurant in Nashville uses sesame oil instead of seaweed to impart a nutty flavour. Mushroom margaritas, Roasted corn sour – the list of experimental cocktails continues to grow exponentially, showcasing creativity and a thorough understanding of food science.
Desi Entrant
Enter the Tandoori Martini Cocktail, the newest kid on the block—standing shoulder to shoulder with legacy savoury cocktails. Martini cocktails, though, have provided a bigger playground for wacky flavour pairings.
Sure, they have been more divisive than your Daiquiris and Cosmopolitans, but drinks like Dry Martini Cocktail, which have a far saltier edge than traditional sweet beverages, have also consistently found takers.
What Tandoori Martini Cocktail Has To Offer
The drink has a pretty direct nomenclature, and uses both the smoky essence you get when you grill food in a tandoori oven, as well as tandoori spice mix.
By relying on different kinds of flavour contexts, you end up with a complex, layered concoction that leaves you with the characteristic charred flavour in every sip.
Getting The Charred Taste Right
In order to reinforce the charred taste, you need to first grill a few beetroot and make it into a puree. To prepare your beetroot puree, you will have to slather the vegetable in lime juice and tandoori masala marinade and set it aside for an hour.
You can either bake the tandoori in salt crust inside a tandoori oven, or by covering it in aluminium foil. Beetroot takes time to disintegrate, so be patient and wait till your beetroot no longer has structural integrity.
Once baked, you need to puree the beetroot in a blender so that there is no graininess. If you want to go the extra mile, you can also pass the puree through a fine strainer. After your puree is cold, you can mix it with gin or vodka, and a dash of vermouth. The smokiness gives a depth to the cocktail that cannot be achieved only with spices.
The Drink
Tandoori Martini Cocktail, interestingly, is not the first tandoor-inspired cocktail. Long before it came Tandoori Tequila, made with roasted curry leaves, chilli, lime, grilled pineapple, pepper and tequila.
Char-grilling the pineapple caramelises the sugar present and brings out the sweetness of the fruit, as opposed to the fresh, tart pineapple slices that you can use as garnish.
Notwithstanding the fact that Tandoori Martini Cocktail isn’t a global phenomenon, at least yet, the fact that this drink exists is proof enough the mixology is undergoing constant evolution and upturning expectations.
It highlights how our palates are ready to embrace the unconventional, even if they begin with the words ‘hot dogs’ and end with martini cocktail.
