Last update - 00:00 06/07/2007
My private chef / Bottoms up!
By Miri Hanoch & Eyal Shani
I had waited years for that moment: to stand alone, in a foreign land, before a bartender and to say quietly, with self-assurance, "Bloody Mary." It was my female version of James Bond and his dry martini, shaken not stirred. At age 20, on the way back to Tel Aviv from London, after a surreal week of seeing lots of ducks in lakes, visiting famous cemeteries and drinking lots of beer, I ended up back at the airport with a single pound sterling in my pocket, waving good-bye to some guy, with a heart that was not intact.
Up until that moment, I'd fought it. Up to the last pound sterling. But with the return ticket in hand, there were no more doubts, and the depleted money supply, together with my natural airport/mall/parking lot feeling of emptiness and anxiety, sparked an intense urge to get wasted - as quickly and efficiently as possible. I didn't have a suitcase to check, just a backpack. I went over to the bar near my gate with the aim of converting my sole pound sterling into a Bloody Mary. A wise investment.
Weighing all of 50 kilos at the time, I heard myself blurt my order to the bartender as if it were a curse: Bloody Mary. What a whole bloody world it was. And I immediately thought of the tragic Irish character of Mary Boyle, the daughter in "Juno and the Paycock," the role I'd played before the Beit Zvi acting school's management abruptly sent me packing, a week before the trip to London. Apparently I wasn't convincing enough. At least that's how it must have seemed to the woman who played my mother in the play, and who cried out with emotion, "Johnny, Johnny!" The only Johnny I ever felt like crying out for from the depths of my heart, during an end-of-the year play, was Johnny Walker.
Since then, a lot of time and alcohol have passed through my veins, but cocktails were never my forte, though I am the first to admit that there's nothing like a frozen Margarita with hot pepper to liven up a scorching summer night, and nothing like Kir Royale to settle imagined arguments with true friends.
But at home it's simple: Anyone who mumbles the words "Bloody Mary" on Friday night will be drinking from Saturday afternoon on champagne and peaches, arak or pastis with lemon, whiskey with ice, or vodka in every sugared flavor, which the cocktail world is so fond of inventing under the "fantasy" label.
The chef took my alcoholic ambitions seriously and went out on a shopping trip accordingly. When he came back with two boxes from the wine shop, I knew we were already deep into the project of how to get through the summer with minimum consciousness, and all that was left for me to do was to shut up and drink.
Since the plans for Saturday weren't too complex and consisted mostly of endless viewings of "Madagascar," alcohol seemed like a good way to bypass all those depressing thoughts about the "security sleeve" at the Erez checkpoint.
I went out for a walk with the little one and a friend on Rothschild Boulevard. The guard at the entrance to the construction site next to Sheinkin was sleeping and snoring; his "security guard" tag was caught between his drooping chin and his neck. The radio by his side was playing a song in Russian, and someone got out of a cab and said over the phone, "I closed the kiosk and opened a bar." The champagne must have gone to my head already because the boulevard looked almost chilly and even the swings down on Bar-Ilan Street gave the impression that this was a quiet city, at an hour when there were few people around. No matter how I looked at it, trying to stabilize my pupils and acknowledging a sense of responsibility for the fact that I'd brought a friend along to keep an eye on my daughter, I still noticed two things, which even in my inebriated state seemed significant: The line for the swing was relatively short this time, and it always ends with someone up and someone down.
"Juno and the Paycock" was written by the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey at the height of the civil war in the Irish Republic in the 1920s. At the end of the play, Joxer, well-soused, says: "The whole world's in a terrible state of chaos. It needs to find its balance." Because alcohol has a liberating quality, sometimes only through it, and through a temporary loss of consciousness, are we prepared to recognize the truth - even when it's clear that there's not much to be done about it.
When I returned home, I found a cool Bloody Mary waiting, made from real tomatoes, the kind of drink you can take off with without going through a security check first, because this summer, too, we're staying in Israel, with plenty of ice and a good amount of alcohol.
120 ml. tomato juice + 60 ml. vodka = 1 Bloody Mary
The magic power of the red color that conceals a serious dose of vodka makes us think of this stiff alcoholic drink as a practically healthy morning cocktail, which is why dozens of containers of tomato juice are routinely loaded onto planes slated for early morning flights.
Ever since the first Bloody Mary was born somewhere back in the past century, dozens of variations have been created, adding unnecessary ingredients to the simple and divine combination of vodka and tomato juice. All of these attempts to surprise and invent new flavors that will blend with the tomato juice miss the point that the power of the Bloody Mary lies in the quality of the tomato juice it contains. And the perfect Bloody Mary begins with the perfect tomato soup. The following will make 6 drinks.
50 ml. premium quality olive oil
8 large garlic cloves, peeled and sliced into rings
1 10-cm. stalk of young celery
2 dry shata peppers
2 kilos cherry tomatoes
15 black peppercorns
sea salt
Cut all the tomatoes in half, leaving the green barbs - the only part of the tomato that contains its entire range of flavors. Place all the sliced tomatoes and their juice in a bowl.
Pour the oil into a heavy, 26-cm. pot, and slice the celery and peppers into rings; add to the oil. Place the pot over the largest burner, turn on the flame to medium high. Saute until the color of the celery and peppers is intensified. Add the garlic and stir until it becomes translucent.
Add the tomatoes and their juice all at once, and then a pinch of salt and the peppercorns. Turn up the flame to high, stir and bring to a boil. Continue simmering over a high flame, stirring from time to time with a wooden spoon.
About 7 minutes after boiling, there is still something a little raw about the tomatoes, and the sauce is at its peak. Turn off the heat.
Now, take:
a sieve with fine mesh
1 garlic clove
2 sage leaves
Place the strainer over the bowl, and use a ladle to transfer the soup from the pot into it. Crush the sage leaves into the strainer and rub the garlic clove over the ladle. The wild flavors of the garlic and the sage will liven up the tomatoes. Crush the tomatoes, pressing them into the sieve with the ladle, using a circular motion. Don't let up until all that's left of the tomatoes is the peel. The amount of liquid in the bowl will suffice for 6 Bloody Marys. Let cool at room temperature, cover with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator.
For one drink.
120 ml. cherry-tomato soup
60 ml. vodka from the freezer
2 ice cubes
1 fresh yellow lemon
10 large grains of sea salt
5 drops Tabasco
5 drops Worcestershire
Place a tall glass in the freezer for 10 minutes. In the meantime, remove the bowl of soup from the refrigerator and strain into a pitcher. The texture is now silky, and the color and flavor are enhanced.
Remove the glass from the freezer. Add the ice, grate a little lemon peel over it and add the drops of Tabasco and Worcestershire. Using a long spoon, stir the mixture vigorously for 5 seconds. Pour the tomato soup over, and then the vodka. Stir for another 5 seconds.
Now, take:
1 round slice of goat cheese, 8-mm. thick (Saint Maure or Saint Marceline)
1 sprig fresh basil
a pinch of fresh, coarsely ground black pepper
Place the cheese on a baking pan and put in a toaster oven set to 180 degrees Celsius, as close as possible to the grill element. When the cheese is lightly singed and just begins to liquefy, take it out, so it doesn't melt.
Drop the cheese into the glass and push down, using the basil. Sprinkle the black pepper over it and stir once. Remove the basil sprig, take one leaf and rub it around the rim of the glass. Serve.
A hint of peach flavor attests to a good champagne. A deep peach flavor in a champagne turns it into the perfect pleasure for that moment when the house starts to take on a golden glow from the sun's last rays of the day. Makes four servings.
The champagne:
White wine that was fermented outside the Champagne district in France may not be called champagne, even if it was made according to la methode champagnoise. Even so, the Blanc de Blanc of the Golan Heights winery - a sparkling white wine made from white Chardonnay grapes (unlike most champagnes, which are made from black, pinot noir grapes whose peels are strained right away at the start of fermentation) - is a great champagne even by French standards. And if you don't have Golan Heights Blanc de Blanc, Italian Prosecco and Spanish Cava are also of high quality.
Place the wine bottle in a champagne bucket filled with ice and a handful of salt for about 30 minutes, which will lower the temperature of the wine toward the freezing point.
The peach cream:
1 red-cheeked white peach, ripe and soft; chilled in ice water
1 heaping tbsp. white sugar
grated peel of 1 fresh yellow lemon
juice of 1/2 a lemon
Using a fine grater like you would use for Parmesan cheese, grate the lemon peel over a cutting board. Take the grated peel in your hands and rub it between your palms for about a minute. Now hold your hands over the sink and rub off the grated peel, but without wiping your hands, which are now infused with the lemony fragrance. Squeeze the half-lemon into a small bowl, and dip your hands in it. Later, this will help keep the peach from turning brown.
Remove the peach from the ice water and tear it in half. Remove the pit and dip immediately in the dish of lemon juice. Add the sugar and begin kneading and crushing the peach between the palms of your hands. The red peel separates from the rest and floats above the flesh of the white peach, which has become a smooth cream.
Rinse and dry your hands.
Pouring:
You'll need:
1 tall champagne glass that has spent at least 10 minutes in the freezer
chilled champagne
the peach mash
Remove the glass from the freezer. Fill it one-third of the way up with the peach cream. Then pour the champagne over the peach cream until the foam shrinks to about 2-cm. and reaches the rim of the glass. At the last second, add one of the peach peels, which will make the cocktail even more enticing.
For one drink:
40 gr. sugar
finely grated peel of 1 fresh yellow lemon
1/4 dry, hot shata pepper, finely chopped
Place the sugar and the lemon peel in a small bowl, take the mixture in your hands and rub together. In three minutes the sugar has dissolved and turned yellow. Use a spatula to transfer the mixture to a shaker.
Add the chopped pepper to the sugar-lemon paste in the shaker. This will enhance the anise flavor of the Pernod.
40 ml. Pernod from a bottle that has been in the freezer for about 1 hour
40 ml. lemon juice
4 ice cubes
1/2 kilo sour cherries
1/2 kilo sugar
champagne (or Cava)