3 minutes · no cook
Pickled Mushroom Martini
A savoury martini with crimini and a brine kiss.
- Time
- 3 minutes
- Serves
- 1
- The jar
- Pickled Crimini
- Ferment
- 21 days
Ingredients
- 60ml premium gin or vodka
- 10ml dry vermouth
- 1 tsp Crimini brine
- 2 pickled crimini
- Lemon twist
Method
- Chill a coupe with ice and water while you mix.
- Combine gin, vermouth, and brine in a mixing glass with ice.
- Stir 30 turns, cold and silky, not bruised.
- Strain into the chilled coupe.
- Spear two crimini on a pick and twist lemon over the surface.
Why this jar
Crimini, and specifically the brine it has been sitting in. A martini this dry has nowhere to hide a flavour, so the mushroom has to be one that tastes of mushroom rather than of pickle — which is exactly why our crimini is built on the mildest vinegar we use, white wine, with thyme and mustard seed and nothing louder.
The teaspoon of brine is doing the job olive juice does in a dirty martini, and doing it with more depth. Twenty-one days of cold ferment puts savoury weight into that liquid that a quick vinegar pickle never develops. Use a jar that has been open a week or two if you have one — the brine keeps working, and by then it has more to say.
Swapping the jar
King oyster works if you want it richer — the coins sit flat on a pick and the truffle oil carries into the glass, though it will dominate a delicate gin. Shiitake makes something closer to a savoury Gibson; its tamari brine is the strongest we make and a teaspoon is plenty.
What will not work is white shimeji. The clusters are too delicate to spear and too light to taste through 60ml of spirit.
If you are making more than one
Stir them individually. A batch stirred in a jug and poured out dilutes unevenly, and the mushroom garnish makes the difference obvious — a martini that has sat gets cloudy around the pick. Chill the coupes together, mix one at a time.
What to do with the rest of the jar
A martini uses two mushrooms and a teaspoon of brine. The other jar-and-a-bit of crimini is the most versatile thing we make — halve them into a green salad where they behave like an olive, chop them through a potato or egg salad in place of the caper you would otherwise reach for, or put them whole on a board, where they tend to be the first thing gone.
Keep the brine even after the mushrooms are finished. It is a working ingredient, not packing liquid.