'Mr. Palo Alto' welcomes you to California

2 cocktails: 8 cl gin, 4 cl dry Vermouth, 3 cl Triple Sec, 1 cl olive brine, 2 very thin slices of fresh Jalapeño, 3 slices of fresh orange bell pepper, 2 olives, ice.

This is the perfect cocktail recipe for a fresh start in a new home. Mr. Palo Alto is the affectionate name that local residents bestowed on Pearce Mitchel, a former Palo Alto city council member, Stanford University registrar and Chemistry professor. There could not be a more elegant way to blend the themes of this cocktail-blog with the inspirational blessings of a new work-, study- and life-environment of the author of this thread, a Phys-Chem Professor who feels blessed to be on sabbatical in beautiful California at Stanford University.

This cocktail is a variation on the good ol’, dirty, brine-infused Martini. Some experimentation may be necessary to get the dosage, i.e. size of the Jalapeño slices right. Too much will make the cocktail unbearably hot, to little will make you miss the whole point of the exercise. But if you get it right it will be worth while your time.

Vigorously shake gin, vermouth and triple sec with one slice of orange bell pepper to transfer some of their moderately sweet taste to the cocktail. This should nicely complement the salty olive brine and olive taste. Pour over ice into glass. Add olive and a very thin and short slice of fresh Jalapeño. Stir gently. I found Jalapeño slices with only about half to one mm thickness and about 3-4 cm in length to be just right. Again, you may have to experiment with this, but hey, we wouldn’t be doing this if it was easy.

I chose Triple Sec as sweetener simply because it is the most reasonably priced liqueur I could find in our otherwise overpriced Palo Alto liquor store. A Dolin works well as aromatic Vermouth. Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire are appropriate choices of gin for this concoction. One of the upshots of living in the US is that this usually comes with ownership of an outsized fridge-freezer combination, large enough to allow pre-cooling the high vol products at minus 20 C.

Zum Wohl, cheers, enjoy.