Austin | Our Austintatious Life

What drink do you order when you want something other than a margarita and not in the mood for beer? Well, a Mexican Martini, of course. I like ordering these when we go out for Mexican food but I had never made one and really not thought much about them, other than a tequila based alternative to the traditional margarita. A few weeks ago we decided we wanted something different at the house so I looked up a recipe on-line. I wasn’t surprised to find a bunch of variations, but I was surprised to find out this is an Austin invention and there is a competing claim as to who can claim to be the inventor.

Trudy’s has been known for making good (and STRONG) Mexican Martinis for years. They were already famous for them 20 years ago when I came to Austin for college. Their rival is Cedar Door. The Tipsy-Texas wrote up a good background on this. If you’re interested in this uniquely Austin drink, take a look at this story.

The recipe we settled on is supposed to be Trudy’s Mexican Martini. It did taste great, exactly like a Mexican Martini should.

Mexican Martini and ingredients

Ingredients

2 oz of tequila
1 oz orange liqueur
1 to 2 oz of lemon-lime soda
1 oz orange juice
Juice of 1/2 lime

These martinis should be served in the tumbler in a martini glass. Rim the glass with salt and add a couple olives to top it off.

Feel free to vary these ingredients to find the mix you like. I actually added the juice of a whole lime because I like the tartness. And, I know a few people who think you need a little (or a lot) more tequila to get the ratio correct. The recipe above tastes great and won’t knock you off your feet if you feel like having a few.

We substituted San Pellegrino Aranciata for orange juice and used Agravero as our orange liqueur.

This hot sauce shows up in various forms at Mexican food restaurants all over Austin. There are as many names for this sauce as there are variations but I like Doña. The Doña sauce is the green sauce from Tacodeli, a really popular restaurant here in Austin. The Austin American Statesman posted this recipe a few weeks ago and we’ve made it three or four times since then.

For those of you unfamiliar with this sauce, it is a very creamy rich sauce. It’s obviously hot, but I don’t think it’s fire-in-your-mouth hot. If the heat bothers you, try taking out the seeds and veins from the peppers to reduce the heat or you can mix in other peppers to balance out the heat. Other peppers you could try are Hatch, poblano, and bell peppers to temper down the heat. In fact, we’ve made a great sauce just using Hatch peppers that worked really well on enchiladas.

This recipe will make about 1 liter of Doña Sauce.

For a smoked version, try our Smoked Doña Sauce.

Ingredients

12 jalapeño peppers (or serrano)
6 cloves of garlic, peeled & minced
1/2 cup olive oil
a pinch or two of salt

Directions

Begin by taking the stems and seeds out of the peppers. Then boil the peppers in a medium pot of water. Simmer them for about 12 minutes. The peppers should be soft and start to darken. Reserve some of the water and then strain the peppers in a colander.

Using a blender, process the cooked peppers, garlic and 1 to 2 tablespoons of the cooking water and salt. Once these ingredients are mixed well and come together, turn on the blender and slowly add the olive oil. The sauce should start to thicken and become creamy.

Now you can use the sauce for a dip, add it to rice to give it a kick, use it as a marinade or what ever else you might do with a hot sauce. Some of the alterations that we’ve tried and work really well are using other types of peppers and grilling the peppers instead of boiling them. During Hatch Chili Season (yes, that’s a thing here in Austin) we made this sauce using grilled hatch peppers – it was so good and creamy with just a little heat.

Here is a link to another variation that is really good: http://whatscookinerndog.blogspot.com/2011/08/green-gold-erins-wannabe-taco-delis.html
The point being, you really can’t go wrong with this sauce so give it a try!