Lemon-Yuzu Martini with Strawberry-Mint "Ice Cubes"

If you have been into a bar during the last five years, you have no doubt noticed that bartenders have finally gotten their mojo back. They lost it sometime around the invention of the Harvey Wallbanger. Bartenders didn’t invent new drinks then—no one was really interested. Bar owners only wanted to know two things. How fast are you? How many drinks do you know?

We shouldn’t laugh. Chefs lost it, too, for a time. After Escoffier, gastronomy was reduced to “haute cuisine” and its evil spawn, “continental.” Like bartenders, we weren’t measured by the flavor of what we created, only by how many variations of Dover Sole we had memorized from “Le Répertoire de la Cuisine.” Codification brings order, but too much of it leads to an unhealthy orthodoxy. Dem days is gone.

Today’s bartenders have joined chefs as full partners in culinary creativity. They are going far afield and deep into the kitchen to find ingredients and techniques that set their drinks apart—infusing, macerating, squeezing, marinating, muddling, straining and blending their way into customer’s hearts. Inevitably, this creativity works its way from the top bars into the mass market, where culinologists get a chance to create convenience products that improve consistency, reduce labor costs and make the creative spark a little easier to sustain.

I created this recipe for the California Strawberry Commission, Watsonville, to introduce at this year’s Culinology Expo in Seattle. Agar-agar gels the liquid that becomes the “ice cube” in the formula. A little Culinology® ensures the cube chills the drink, but never melts.

The lemon-yuzu simple syrup adds sweetness and boosts the citrus vodka’s flavor. The industrial version of the syrup is all natural (no preservatives; shelf stable for 1 year at room temperature) and made with liquid sucrose (medium invert sugar would also work), flavor and citric acid for shelf stability.

The “ice cubes” were not without their challenges. I was up into the wee hours of the morning before the Seattle conference trying to get them to gel properly. I cooked up the “ice cube” mixture over and over again. Each time I made it, I got a different degree of gelling from the agar-agar—a “dessert” blend of about a 10:1 ratio of sugar to agar-agar, mixed with cold water so the agar-agar goes into suspension. At first I thought it was a quality-control issue with another product made in China, but I slowly realized it had to be something else. I remembered that pineapple has an enzyme, bromelain, that hydrolyzes the proteins in gelatin, inhibiting their gelling capacity. I reasoned the strawberries could be having a similar impact on the agar-agar. The variation from batch to batch was much greater than it should have been if it was simply a quality-control issue. I reasoned it might be caused by the strength of the enzymatic activity in each batch. At 3 A.M., I finally tried cooking the strawberries to leech the flavor and color into the liquid, but didn’t blend and strain them into the mixture after cooking and—voilà—the mixture set up perfectly. I suspect the problem was related to the fruit’s enzyme activity and lower pH interfering with the agar-agar’s gelling power.

I tried several gums and pectin to replace the agar-agar in the industrial version, but none created the pleasant “snap” the agar-agar provided to the “ice cubes.” Also, instead of using individually quick-frozen (IQF) strawberries, strawberry juice would also work, as long as it doesn’t add a price premium. The mint added to the mixture after cooking is very heat-sensitive. In the recipe, I found it necessary to add the fresh mint just before the agar-agar mixture set to maintain its fresh, green color. But individually quick-frozen (IQF) mint is much easier to handle in the industrial version.

While water is not normally added to a martini (except for the water from melting ice), this recipe was overly alcoholic without it. The addition of the water smoothed and rounded the flavors, making it easy to drink far too many of these pleasant, little concoctions.

Recipe:
Ingredients

Lemon-Yuzu Syrup
625 grams sugar, superfine
470 grams water
38 grams lemon zest, julienned
55 grams yuzu juice

Strawberry-Mint “Ice Cubes”
170 grams “dessert” agar-agar (agar-agar, sugar)
1.42 kg water
250 grams sugar
400 grams strawberries, unsweetened, frozen
7 grams mint, chopped

Procedure: For the lemon-yuzu syrup, bring sugar and water to a simmer. Add lemon zest; simmer briefly and remove from heat and let cool. Add yuzu juice; strain. For the strawberry-mint “ice cubes,” simmer agar-agar, water, frozen strawberries and sugar over low heat, covered, for about 5 minutes. Strain into a half sheet pan. Stir in mint when the agar just starts to set (85ºF). Cool at room temperature or in the refrigerator until set. Cut into cubes and freeze. When frozen, unmold and break apart cubes. Yields 1 liter of lemon-yuzu syrup and 200 ¾-in. strawberry “ice cubes.” Assembly: Place five “ice cubes” in martini glass. Add ¾ oz. lemon-yuzu syrup, ¼ oz. vermouth, 1 oz. citrus vodka, 1 oz. water and ice to a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously. Pour over “ice cubes” and garnish with a strawberry cut into eight segments and a mint leaf.

Formula:

Lemon-Yuzu Syrup

Strawberry “Ice Cubes”

Procedure: For the lemon-yuzu syrup, add all ingredients to mixer, combine and pasteurize (either in the mixer, if so equipped, or pump to a heat exchanger) at 190°F for about 1 minute. Fill 750-ml glass bottles at 160°F. Place bottles in cases and flip to pasteurize caps. The target pH range is 3.5 to 4.5 at 63 °Brix. For the strawberry “ice cubes,” add all ingredients to a kettle with scraped-surface agitator. Mix and bring to 200°F for 5 minutes. Strain or filter particulates out. Fill plastic sheet pans ¾-in. deep with mixture and place on rolling racks. When cooled to 85°F, sprinkle with mint and freeze. When frozen, turn out contains, cut into ¾-in. cubes (about ¼ oz. each) and package; keep frozen through supply chain and store frozen. End-user assembly does not differ from recipe instructions.