Olives and Blue Cheese

Sometimes, the best part of a martini is the garnish. The other night, I found myself thinking that the big bottle of Gordon's London Dry Gin that J--- left here a while ago really needs to finished to clear out some room in the bar for a better gin. Of course, the best way to get rid of gin is with martinis, but we were woefully low in the garnish department. We do have some cocktail onions in the fridge, but I've really taken a shy to how blue-cheese-stuffed olives taste after a cold gin bath. And this is where improvisation can be a tricky thing.

We did have olives and blue cheese, so I figured why couldn’t I stuff my own olives. Well, they are kalamata olives, not the usual green ones used for garnish, and the cheese is a really nice and pungent Rogue Oregon Blue Vein (well worth trying outside of an olive).

The olives were already pitted, so I could skip that step, but trying to get the fairly creamy blue into the hole was a bit more challenging. I tried cutting a small stick that would fit in it, and that kind of worked, but a good bit of cheese still ended up smeared atop the olive.

Oh well, the two olives fit nicely on a toothpick and ended up accompanying the drink well enough, but I'm not sure it put the flavors of any of the individual ingredients at their best. Still, it's hard to go wrong with blue-cheese-stuffed olives in a bath of cold gin.