Fresh kiwi and simple syrup are muddled, vodka and ice are added, everything is shaken together and poured into a glass. Kiwi martini is good!
Kiwi is short for kiwifruit. This luscious fruit with light green flesh wasn’t always known by that name. It had many names in different countries (it still does, actually). It became “kiwifuit” in a branding attempt by New Zealand commercial exporters. You know, to associate the fruit with the country where kiwi, a bird, is the national symbol. Apparently, the marketing technique worked.
Kiwi is not all that popular in the Philippines. Although it is now widely available, it is still more expensive than most locally grown fruits. Not surprising because, after all, it is imported. Although it is not something that we can enjoy everyday (we wish we could!) because of its price, when we do buy kiwi now and then. Speedy is especially fond of kiwi and he experiments with it to find out what it will go with well.
He has discovered that it goes well with other fruits to make Filipino-style fruit salad.
He also discovered that kiwi is great for making vegetable salad.
And Speedy’s most recent kiwi experiment — kiwi martini.
Kiwi martini
Ingredients
- 3 oz vodka
- 1 kiwi peeled
- 1/2 tablespoon simple syrup
- 1 slice kiwi to garnish
Instructions
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Muddle the kiwi with the simple syrup in a cocktail shaker (see how to muddle).
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Add ice.
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Pour in the vodka.
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Shake.
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Pour into a martini glass.
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Garnish with the kiwi slice.
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Serve.
We put kiwi mostly in our vegetable salads, sliced thinly with the peeling. … Yum!
Maybe I’ll be brave and try eating the peel too next time hehehe
We did it gradually–reason behind the thinly sliced kiwi (we don’t put dressing in our veggie salad too, so the kiwi tastes great amongst the raw greens) … Now we all love it, I can eat the whole fruit!
There’s a really yummy kiwi/passion fruit cheesecake at Buffet 101. You might wanna try making one. Hehehe.
Ang sarap-sarap! Two layers tapos yung color nung top layer is mint green/aqua green and the bottom layer is parang very pale yellow. Looked and tasted yummy.
As an immigrant to Kiwiland, I mistakenly shortened kiwifruit to “kiwi” in my early days here to the amusement of the citizens of New Zealand. To just say slice a “kiwi” and add it to your salad, is to slice a man, woman or child born in New Zealand or the flightless bird endemic only to NZ and add them to your salad. That would make a bloody mess, wouldn’t it, and slicing the bird mean imprisonment and a huge fine, too. ;)
Kiwis call kiwifruit “kiwifruit” and to just say “kiwi” refer to the people or to the bird.
Incidentally, there are a lot of uses for the kiwifruit that I find useful — salads, pork-tenderiser, slushies, smoothies (very good for movement, I might add) and toppings for pavlovas and cheesecakes. I personally like the golden variety which you can eat skin and all, but the green variety has this gorgeous colour that brightens up dishes and desserts.
And yes, they are quite expensive in the PI, aren’t they — I had the shock of my life when I saw the price there last year. A kg of kiwifruit in winter can be as low as .60 cents here. How to make sure your kiwifruit comes from Kiwiland? Choose the brand “Zespri” and you’re assured thats grown in North Island.
Well, I may have my kiwifruit but you have the delicious golden Mangoes of Cebu within your reach there. I really can’t have everything, can I? :(
Cheers, Connie — your site has comforted me a lot in those days when I crave something from home. Your recipes and ideas are really helpful!
I’m imagining the sliced “kiwi” from their perspective and I get flashes of CSI episodes in my head hahahaha
I want to try the kind with the edible skin too. Still have to find it here though.
The skin of both gold and green kiwifruits can be eaten except that the “furry” skin of the green variety has the potential to be a throat irritant. The gold variety though has a smooth skin (similar to big brown yellow chiccos — sorry, I do not know the tagalog term) and is generally sweeter and softer than the tarty and firmer green variety.
I choose not to eat the skin though (it doesn’t have taste and I worry about pesticides) but rather slice open the kiwifruit with the edge of my spoon and scoop out the fleshy bits as Kiwis often do. :)