Many years ago, when I was but a girl, I learned the word hummus. I learned this word from a fellow student at my college, a young Lebanese woman, in the early days of the Lebanese Civil War. (That’s how long ago this story takes place.) She and I were both at a college party. She had brought this extremely yummy bean dip, unknown to the generality of the US population.
“This is really good,” I said. “What’s it made from?”
“Chickpeas,” she said.
“And what did you say it was called?”
“Hummus.”
“What’s that in English?”
“Chickpea,” she said.
There you have it. Folks, if it’s not made from chickpeas, it’s not hummus. It’s bean dip. This stuff that’s sold as “white bean hummus” and “soybean hummus” and so forth? It’s not hummus. That like saying “white bean chickpeas” or “soybean chickpeas”.
Guys. It’s bean dip. Stop trying to gussy it up. It’s bean dip!
Similarly, you’ve heard the expression “chai tea”? “Chai” translates as “tea”. Chai tea = tea tea. What people generally mean when they say chai tea is masala chai. Or you could just say sweet milky spiced tea. Or Indian-style spiced tea.
Before I go any further, I want to point out that I am an IT professional. Have been for forty years. I’m quite successful in my profession. You don’t succeed as an IT professional if you don’t embrace change and innovation. I’m not just a cranky old fart who is unwilling to embrace The New.
But another characteristic of the successful IT professional is a strong tendency toward literalism. It’s extremely important in IT to have a stable vocabulary. That’s how programming languages work. That’s how programs work. Once you know the rules, you can make the software dance the macarena, land a Viking Rover, distribute resources equitably, take fractions of pennies out of transactions and feed your own bank account … um, forget I said that. Anyway. You have to accept that the rules be the rules.
Now, about that martini.
I rarely drink. Only on the holidays, and maybe a beer once a month. But the dry martini is my ethnic beverage and my tipple of choice. I haven’t had one for years. Well, I hadn’t had one, not until last night.
I have noticed, with considerable irritation, this modern fashion for calling any otherwise-unnamed cocktail a martini.
They aren’t martinis. A martini is the winter wind off Casco Bay. It’s dry and bracing and clean and pure. It clears your sinuses. It’s not sweet or fruity or acidic. And the outside of the glass is frosted from the chill of the drink.
A martini is made from gin or vodka, with a breath of dry vermouth, and maybe a touch of the salty juice that comes from the olive bottle. Shane, the great bartender in San Diego, used to make me Blue Glacier martinis. The Blue Glacier, as I remember it, was Sapphire gin, Stolichnaya Blue vodka, a swirl of curacao for color, and bliss. Man, those things were good.
I went out to dinner last night. Along with the food menu, there was a drinks menu. It had a list of cocktails erroneously called “martinis”. They weren’t martinis. They had nothing in common with martinis. But they made me think I would like to have a martini. Trump still appears on track to be President (boo!), but my niece had just given birth to a new great-nephew (yeah!) and I decided I would treat myself to a martini and drink the health of the young family.
Mistake. Bad mistake. I should have realized that any restaurant that has an entire menu of non-martini-martinis is not going to know what a real martini is, let alone come up to Shane-in-San-Diego’s standard of martini.
There’s a wonderful book written by Helene Hanff, called The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. I can’t really explain it. If you haven’t read it, read it, but read 84, Charing Cross Road first, for the context. In The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Hanff is finally visiting her friends in London. They ask her what she would like to drink, and she says, “a martini”. She watches them make this beverage, with considerable horror, but chides herself, “don’t be a snobbish American, just drink it.” Then she tastes it, and concludes with, “Nobody could drink it.”
That was my reaction to this “martini” that came to my table last night. The server came back, after I had placed my order, and asked whether I wanted it dry or dirty. I said dirty. I grew up making dirty martinis for my parents. A dirty martini has a small amount of olive juice — just enough to give it a slight salty tang. You know, that winter wind off Casco Bay? There’s salt in it.
Apparently, times have changed. These days, a “dirty martini” apparently has so much olive juice in it that you can’t taste the gin, let alone the vermouth. And cold? Remember, the martini should be so cold that it frosts the glass. I have to assume this beverage had some passing acquaintance with ice, because there was a tiny sliver in the glass, but otherwise, I’d’ve described it as “tepid”.
As Helene Hanff said, nobody could drink it. At least, I couldn’t.
Damn it, I still wanted that martini. If I hadn’t been so disappointed last night, I’d’ve gone through today and the rest of the year without a martini fret. But once the appetite was aroused, I REALLY wanted that martini. So today, I stopped by my local liquor store and got a 50ml bottle of Sapphire gin, and a small bottle of dry vermouth, and a jar of olives. (I normally have olives around, but they’re the eating kind, not the martini kind.)
I made myself a lovely dry freezing cold REAL martini, and drank the health of my brand-new great-nephew and his parents and his brother. I offered libations to the gods for the future of that little family. And I closed my eyes and saw the snow on Casco Bay, and felt the salty, icy wind at the back of my throat.