Cucumber Martinis

These cocktails would feature well in a mystery story, as—to quote Captain Hook—they are a “tempting green,” which color would nicely mask any variety of poisons!

And they taste great, too. Very...well...cucumbery.

This recipe will yield 4-6 martinis, depending on how large you like them. Cut one large cucumber up into spears.

I have a marvelous juicer (see here for post about that), which makes it easy for me to get the cucumber juice required for the martinis:

But you could also put the cuke spears into a blender, and them press the mush through a sieve or some cheesecloth to get the juice. One large cucumber yielded about a cup of juice for me. (Using a blender may not result in as much juice, though.)

The next step is to add simple syrup to the juice. This is a combination of equal parts sugar and water; you can just muddle them together with a spoon until the sugar is dissolved. For my martinis I used about a half a cup of simple syrup (i.e., 2 parts cucumber juice to 1 part sugar water). This mixture can be chilled until it’s time to make the cocktails.

Now for the fun part. Add ½ cup of gin (or vodka, if you prefer) to the juice/sugar mixture. (In other words, the drink will be 2:1:1, juice, sugar water, booze. You can add more, of course, if you like them stronger.)

Pour the liquid into a cocktail shaker filled with ice:

Shake it well, and pour into chilled martini glasses. Garnish with a basil leaf.

(If adding poison, slip it into the drink when the person to be poisoned isn’t watching. And make sure you don’t confuse the glasses!)