QUARANTINI TIME #13 – The Rock Hudson and Liz Taylor Giant Martini

This is the penultimate Quaranatini Time!  Pubs are set to re-open here in the UK TODAY so there’s only one more movie star tipple demo video to go.  The last time me & Mr R exchanged money for cold beverages in a pub was on our wedding day – 20th March 2020 – which was the very night pubs closed their doors because of Covid-19. It has been a dry old 15 weeks.

Will we be excitedly queuing up for pints of beer for hours and hours on end tonight?  Hell no! It’s going to be mayhem this weekend I reckon.  Until the dust settles, we will be continuing to booze it up at home by making the final Quarantini Time – a Gloria Swanson Champagne Cocktail. Until then, here’s last week’s tipple. A gloriously chocolatey-mocha-in-a-glass-pudding-in-boozy-form “Giant” Martini!

Here’s how to make this spectacular tipple – invented by Rock Hudson and Liz Taylor whilst filming Giant because it was so HOT in Marfa, Texas where this epic was filmed. 

I heartily recommend having Liz Taylor’s Chicken Steamed in Wine and settling down to Giant with a few of these as pudding.

There’s a little epilogue to this demo film as I forgot to toast key workers for all they are doing to keep the country and the world going as we do each week.  I also forgot to give credit to Greg Swenson of Recipes for Rebels as this fab drink appears in his fab book of the same title.

Greg writes:

Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson devised this concoction to combat the heat and boredom of 5 weeks shooting on location in Marfa, TX in June and July 1955.

“Rock and I hit it off right away and acted like a pair of kids. The heat, humidity, and dust were thoroughly oppressive, we had to bolster our spirits any way we could. So we stayed out drinking all night and luckily were young enough and resilient enough to go straight to the set in the morning with fresh complexions and never even bags under our eyes. During our toots, we concocted the best drink I ever tasted—a chocolate martini, made with vodka, Hershey’s Syrup, and Kuhlua. How we survived I’ll never know.”ELIZABETH TAYLOR, ABOUT FILMING IN MARFA

It is a COLD Saturday here in London and I am daydreaming about watching Giant again over the weekend. Can I find it? It’s in my flat on DVD somewhere!

Cheers folks and a special cheers to Greg in Indiana!