Cocktail of the Day: The Lucky Jim

Sort of in the spirit (so to speak) of my goal of making one new recipe from every cookbook, I also like to try new cocktail recipes.

Kingsley Amis offered several choices in Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, but the one that appealed to me the most was for a cocktail of his own invention that he called the Lucky Jim after his most famous character.

Essentially, the Lucky Jim is a vodka martini with a splash of cucumber juice. Amis provided proportions for making a pitcher of the drink, but who makes an entire pitcher of martinis these days? To make just a single drink, make a dry vodka martini, adding approximately twice as much cucumber juice as vermouth. We are only talking about a very small amount of cucumber juice.

But where to get cucumber juice? Amis suggests peeling a cucumber, chopping it in approximately two-inch lengths, and squeezing it in a lemon juicer. I think he meant an old-fashioned lemon reamer, but I put it in my modern squeezer kind and it worked fine. Then strain the juice to remove the seeds. I forgot this step and the sticky seeds stuck to the side of my martini glass in an unappealingly gooey way.

Garnish with a thin slice of cucumber with the peel on.

The drink is a little bit cloudy, with an almost imperceptible green ting and a refreshing hint of cucumber. Definitely worth a second round.

Cheers!