When wandering through the produce section, admiring the bounty of lovely, red tomatoes, many would see the makings of a healthy salad, or even a hearty marinara. We see homemade Bloody Mary mix. It’s part of our charm. After the irrefutable success of the Bloody Mary Shakshuka, giving a traditional Middle Eastern dish the “cocktail” treatment, the urge to turn the tables became too strong to resist. Along those lines, what better way to give a traditional Bloody Mary a distinctively Middle Eastern flair than to call on our new favorite spice blend, za’atar? Of course, in order to experiment properly and specialize our own mix, we needed a really great “blank canvas” recipe as a jumping of point. Enter Epicurious, with a recipe featured in Gourmet (two top notch sources, so we knew we couldn’t go wrong) for a basic mix that featured fresh tomatoes, celery, seasonings, Tabasco, and lemon juice. The really great thing about that recipe was that it offered a range of measurements for the hot sauce and the horseradish, leaving room to customize the spiciness of the mix according to your own taste and tolerance levels. We have what can best be described as “four alarm” sensibilities when it comes to spice preferences. “No sweat” is a lovely sentiment when it comes to making a dish or a cocktail, but you can leave that off when consuming them. Burn, baby, burn.
The original article adds fresh pepper to the salted rim “that adds a slight tingle to each sip.” That’s cute. For purposes of being more tolerable, we did control ourselves a bit. The amount of hot sauce in our mix is the same as the original, but the horseradish is doubled, and there is some fresh cracked pepper added to the purée.
One thing that we left out from the Epicurious version was the fresh parsley. It’s a wonderful addition and flavor note to a traditional mix, but we didn’t want anything to detract from the za’atar. Adding the seasoning blend to both the purée and the salt and pepper rim gave a wonderful, complex and really interesting flavor to the cocktail with a spice forward note to each sip. Perfection.
While the original technique called for the purée to be put through a fine mesh sieve for a smoother texture, in the interest of efficiency, an extra minute in the blender does essentially the same thing with less clean up. You’re welcome.
While this particular blend falls a little on the mild side for us, there are a few ways to bump up the heat if you are so inclined. Perhaps the simplest and most obvious suggestion is to increase the amount of hot sauce—or the level of hotness of the sauce itself—but there are some other, equally effective and simple options. You can add a little cayenne or some crushed red pepper flakes to the mix, or throw in a hot pepper with the tomatoes and celery when puréeing. There’s also the option of using a paper infused vodka, but for the purpose of keeping the cocktail gluten free, we opted for our old standby Tito’s. (Editor’s Note: the Tito’s website does offer some wonderful tutorials for infusing their vodka that are absolutely worth exploring. We’re looking at you, Lemon and Jalapeño Infusion.) Another, more subtle approach would be to forego the fresh celery garnish and opt for a few of our Spicy Pickled Green Beans instead.
However you decide to amp up the heat, enjoy, and remember that a little goes a long way. This is a really fantastic mix, and it would be a shame to overpower the other flavors, particularly the za’atar. Our fondness for it is clear, as is evidenced in some of our recent posts (Roasted Beet Purée and Lamb Chops with Green Tahini Sauce), so we can hardly be objective. That being said, if you incorporate more than one of these suggestion at a time, you’re our hero. Cheers!
Fresh Bloody Mary Mix adapted from Gourmet via Epicurious.
- 2 pounds ripe tomatoes, sliced in half
- 2 celery ribs, coarsely chopped
- 2 teaspoons sea salt, divided
- 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon za’atar, divided
- 1 ½ teaspoons ground black pepper, divided
- 2 tablespoons bottled horseradish
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- Lemon wedges for rims of glasses
- 1 cup ice-cold vodka
- Garnish: celery stalks
- Make tomato juice: Purée tomatoes, celery, 1 teaspoon sea salt, 2 tablespoons za’atar, 1 teaspoon black pepper, horseradish, hot sauce and lemon juice in blender until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and chill at least 1 hour.
- Assemble drinks: Mix remaining sea salt, za’atar, and ground pepper on a small plate. Moisten outside of rim of each glass with lemon wedge, then dip rim in salt and pepper. Fill each glass with ice and 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) vodka, then top with about ⅔ cup juice.
Leave a Reply