MxMo XLVIII: Pain in the Ass - Plasma Pete and Plasma Mary

I have not gotten a chance to blog much lately, as we've been traveling around a ton lately, most notably Japan and most recently New Orleans, but Mixology Monday has a deadline so I wanted to get this one in before starting on the tons of good post material I've gathered on said travels.  Mike McSorley is this month's host for Mixology Monday, and his chosen theme is "Pain in the Ass Drinks!"  Over on his blog, McSology (awesome name!) he describes the theme in his announcement post simply as "Drinks that are a total pain in the ass to make."  (UPDATE: Check out the roundup for all the drinks.)  He goes into a little more detail but you can read about it there.

I'm going to serve you up two drinks that use both an infusion (horseradish-infused gin) and an ingredient you need to prepare the night before and suspend with twine over a bowl overnight in the fridge (tomato water).  In fact one of the drinks uses both of those and a third PITA ingredient, fresh celery syrup.  To make matters worse, the syrup and especially the tomato water won't stay good for long so you can't make a shit ton in one session and expect it to last for the rest of the week.  So first, the drinks and then I'll go into the components.  First, the Plasma Pete.

Plasma Pete

• 2 oz horseradish-infused Bulldog Gin
• 4 oz tomato water
• 2 dashes The Bitter Truth Celery Bitters
• 2 dashes The Bitter Truth Lemon Bitters

Shake and strain over fresh rocks, garnish with celery stick and cherry tomato

The second drink is similar, but with the addition of celery syrup and lemon juice, and served up instead of on the rocks.  Just to make it more of a pain in the ass, I can't find where I wrote down the proportions but I know I tinkered for a while, so I'm going to have to guess; take these with a (large) grain of salt.

Plasma Mary

• 1½ oz horseradish-infused Bulldog London Dry Gin
• 2 oz tomato water
• ½ oz lemon Juice
• ¼ oz "Fresh" Celery Syrup
• 1 dash The Bitter Truth Celery Bitters
• 1 dash The Bitter Truth Lemon Bitters

Shake and strain into cocktail glass, garnish with lemon twist and cherry tomato

I think the Plasma Pete works a little better than the second drink as it better showcases the light and fresh flavor which the tomato water brings to the party, but there are things I liked about the Plasma Mary as well.  Although I think I still had not stumbled upon the perfect proportions for it and it could bear more playing with to make it even better, so my made up proportions above are simply a starting point.

The derivation of the names should be fairly obvious, as the tomato water does bare an uncanny resemblance to the plasma that remains after you filter out the red blood cells, which is akin to filtering out some of the red tomato solids in the "Bloody" part of a Bloody Mary.

The Celery Syrup is "Fresh" in the sense that is contains fresh celery and I call it that to distinguish it from a Celery Seed Syrup; I discuss both in a previous post.

For the Tomato Water, I used this basic recipe which calls for just tomatoes and salt.  Since I was planning to use the infused gin I wanted to go simple on the Tomato Water, but I've seen recipes calling for additional flavorings, for example Rick at Kaiser Penguin here uses shallots, Serrano pepper, and lemongrass (but no salt, which I highly recommend including).

For the infusion, I just took fresh horseradish root, chopped off ~4-5 inch piece, peeled it, quartered it, and sliced into ~1 inch sticks then put it and a 750 of bulldog in a jar for a while.  Maybe 24 hours works? I don't quite remember.  Taste it once in a while until it's picked up however much flavor you want, it will probably keep building for several days but you don't want to let it get too strong.  This is the easiest of the ingredients, and I think is very worthwhile.  Plus this one will keep if you stash it in the fridge.  I use it in my regular old Bloody Marys which very much pleased my friends who sampled them at a recent event, quickly going through my supply of the infusion.