The Bloody Mary, Four Ways

Try one of four original recipe riffs on the classic Bloody Mary, often called the World's Most Complex Cocktail. 

Photo by Brent Harrewyn for Edible Green Mountains

As a contributor to Edible Green Mountains magazine, I recently wrote an article on the Bloody Mary, often called the world's most complex cocktail.

Here's an excerpt...

I opened Pandora’s box recently by naively asking a group of friends what makes the best Bloody Mary. Their responses were as varied as those of a group of four-year-olds being asked to name the single best Christmas gift. My friends offered up renditions sweet, savory, classic, outlandish and everything in between—and each was adamant that his or hers was the best.

What I have learned is that this variety and lack of agreement applies to nearly every aspect of the Bloody Mary—not only the ingredients but also its very invention and namesake. There’s a reason that the Bloody, as its most ardent fans familiarly call it, has been dubbed the world’s most complex cocktail.

As part of the article, I included four different Bloody Mary recipes:

Easy holiday cocktail party recipes

You'll love all these quick-and-easy yet impressive recipes for cocktails, snacks and appetizers for your next holiday cocktail party.

If you want to spend more time enjoying your holiday party and less time preparing and fussing over the food and drink recipes, you'll love all my ideas for quick-and-easy yet impressive cocktails, snacks and appetizers.

Happiest holiday party wishes from The Ninj!

Southern bourbon holiday punch

Made with sweet tea, fresh lemon and good bourbon, this Southern bourbon punch is the perfect drink for a holiday party or any festive entertaining.

I bet you've been wondering why it's been a little quiet around Yankee Kitchen Ninja lately. If you subscribe to my recipe newsletter, you may have noticed that I'm not posting as much. It's time to tell you why.

Hold on to your hats: We're moving. Again. Right before Christmas.

It's turned out to be a much shorter stay here in Kentucky than we planned, as work has called us back to the East Coast. To Maryland, more precisely -- which is the first place we ever lived together as a couple, so it's a bit like going home.

But moving is damned hard work. Which is why I haven't been able to devote as much time to you as I'd like lately. And this move is happening right smack in the middle of the holiday season, leaving me no opportunity for all the holiday decorating, baking and eating that I look forward to all year long.

But I've managed to sneak in some drinking. (Heck, I'm going to need more than a little drinking to get through all this!)

So my parting recipe upon leaving Kentucky is most apropos: Southern bourbon holiday punch, an homage to my brief return to the South and the home of the best bourbon anywhere.

The perfect gimlet

Learn how to easily shake up a perfect gimlet with your choice of gin or vodka.

Are you ready for some Mad Men? And do you have your cocktail shaker locked and loaded?

I'm torn about this final season premiere. I'm excited that the show is back but I'm also sad that the whole shebang is coming to end. However, I'm a firm believer that when a show is good, it should end gracefully, on a high, rather than continuing on ad infinitum until it jumps the shark.

(Are you listening, Shonda Rhimes? Grey's Anatomy should have ended about two seasons ago. Just sayin'.)

One of my favorite things about Mad Men (me and about a gajillion other people, I know) is the authentic mid-century feel of the sets and the costumes, as well as the characters' behaviors. And while those behaviors are not all admirable (e.g., smoking like chimneys), I think they did a lot of things right in the 50s and 60s.

Like cocktails.

Ah, classic vintage cocktails. No frou frou wine spritzers or pink umbrella drinks for the Mad Men, no sirreebob. (Can you imagine Don Draper ordering a skinny margarita?) And while Roger may have a weakness for a martini (or six) and Don his Old Fashioneds or Manhattans, mine is the same as moody ice queen Betty Draper Francis': the gimlet.

Green Mountain Mule

The Green Mountain Mule pairs Kentucky bourbon with Vermont maple syrup in this refreshing riff on a cocktail classic.

Peeps: It's no secret that I like my cocktails.

Which is a good thing, given that I now live in Kentucky, the bourbon capital of the world (I think it's pretty safe to make this broad claim).

However, it's now March and I'm reading reports that the sap is running in Vermont and the sugaring season has begun. Which makes me miss Vermont and its incomparable Grade B maple syrup like crazy.

So, being The Ninj, I decided to blend the specialty of my old home state with that of my new one and turn them into one delicious cocktail: the Green Mountain Mule, a riff on the Moscow Mule that pays homage to both Vermont and Kentucky.

Tart cherry cocktail

Ready for a more modern take on the classic Cosmopolitan?

You've probably heard a lot about tart cherry juice lately. The new darling of the morning show health segment, tart cherry juice is making big headlines for its anti-inflammatory properties – all the benefits of arthritis meds but wicked tastier.

Leave it to The Ninj, then, to turn this new healthy superfood into a cocktail.

I created this tart cherry cocktail for Serious Eats and it's the perfect drink for Valentine's Day. Well, for any day, in my book, but I'm going with a theme here.

Head on over to my post at Serious Eats to learn how to shake up a tart cherry cocktail for you and your honey.

Hard cider: how to make your own

Making hard cider is one of The Ninj's favorite fall activities. Now is the perfect time to get some fresh-pressed juice and get started. The process takes some time but the payoff is delicious! If you'd like to learn how to make your own hard cider, check out my three-part tutorial.

Be sure to read through all three installments before you begin. There are many helpful links throughout to the cider-making supplies that you will need.

• MAKING HARD CIDER, PART 1 (procuring juice, beginning the fermentation process)
• MAKING HARD CIDER, PART 2 (racking for clarity)
• MAKING HARD CIDER, PART 3 (bottling)

Blueberry vinegar

More excitement around Casa de Ninj this summer: the high-bush blueberries are producing!

Regular readers will recall that last year was pretty much a crapfest in the wee orchard: no peaches, no pears, no cherries, a handful of blueberries and a few measly apples. Pffft. Hardly worth the countless hours I spent hand-picking beetles off all the trees.

Of course, all this misery was courtesy of Mother Nature, who is a fickle broad indeed, giving us a killing late spring frost in 2012 -- as if we hadn't gone through enough cold all winter. Similarly, this summer she has given us unseasonably cold temperatures alternating with blistering heat and seemingly endless rain. For cripes' sake, it's mid-August and I'm still waiting on the tomato harvest; if we don't scoot this along, my unripe tomatoes will be touched with frost before I can eat them.

But it turns out there's a silver lining to all this craptacular weather: the blueberries are thriving.

I'm done complaining. We only have four blueberry bushes and I have already harvested at least six quarts, with many more out there just waiting for me. We have oodles, even with my sharing them with the birds this year (we're all peacefully co-existing now that I've started feeding them and gave them some bitchin' bird baths).

So I was delighted when the week's "assignment" from Sherri Brooks Vinton's Put 'Em Up Fruit for the From Scratch Club's virtual book club turned out to include blueberries.

Booyah.

I already put up some of what I'm calling Black and Blue Jam this year, using the aforementioned blueberries and a boatload of wild black raspberries foraged from the edges of our woods, so I wanted to try something other than jam. Behold: Sherri's book offered up blueberry vinegar!

Detox January Mocktails: The Bul

Cuban bul mocktail

Yes, it's Detox January, but that doesn't mean we have forsaken Cocktail Hour in the casa de Ninj.

We've just turned it into Mocktail Hour.

The first week, we drank these spicy, amazing virgin Bloody Marys (hey, if I can increase my veggie intake by drinking them, sign me up).

This week, I remembered a refreshing drink made with beer and ginger ale that we used to drink during the summer when we lived in California. And that made me remember my Detox January secret weapon from years past.

Near beer.

CSA Share Ninja Rescue: rhubarb and broccoli rabe

Rhubarb, in my garden right now

This year, I'm really enjoying the differences in requests for CSA Share Ninja Rescue help that are coming in based on a reader's geographic location. For example, this week we'll be tackling not only rhubarb, which is in season (albeit a short one) in the northeast, but also  broccoli rabe, which is plentiful for a reader in Colorado but generally more of a fall offering here in Vermont.

So keep those requests coming, no matter where you live.

As always, if you need help with a veggie, leave a comment below or send me an email before this coming Friday. Recipes suggestions are posted on Mondays.

On to this week's recipes...

Rhubarb

My sister calls it "that stuff that looks like red celery" in the store. Yep, that's it. If you buy it from a store, farm stand or farmers market, you will get stalks only; if you pick your own, be sure to remove the leaves as they are extremely toxic.

Scourtins: a recipe

Scourtins

I've gotten hooked on the savory cocktail cookie this year. It's my hors d'oeuver of choice because, frankly, who doesn't like cookies?

And apparently I'm not only not alone in my new love but also late in coming to this particular party. Of course the French have been loving the savory-sweet combination for years. No where is this more evident than in scourtins, the traditional olive shortbread cookies from Northern France.

Yes, olives. In cookies. You have to trust me here.

I was first introduced to scourtins by my friend Cynthia, who thought that my wildly insane love of the salty-sweet flavor of salted oatmeal cookies (Best. Cookies. Ever.) might make me more than a little predisposed to enjoying the olivey-sugary scourtin goodness.

By golly, that Cynthia is a genius.

Apricot-tarragon cocktail cookies: a recipe

Apricot-tarragon cocktail cookies

I love a nice cocktail, don't you?

We are famous (notorious?) for our evening cocktail hour, a la 1954, here at Chez Ninj. Corny, but it's a very relaxing way to end the day, like setting an appointment to sit down together and talk. But with cocktails, so it's extra festive and not at all therapy-ish.

I'm currently a ridiculously huge fan of the simple, perfect vodka gimlet, probably as much for it's beautiful celery color as anything. (I swear, one of these days I'm going to carry one, in a martini glass, into the Benjamin Moore paint store and see if they can color match it.)

So, given Cocktail Hour, I'm always looking for good recipes for accompanying nibbles. Nothing sweet, just a little salty-cheesy somethin'-somethin' -- you know what I mean.

Therefore, you probably heard me screaming in delight recently when I opened the November issue of Food and Wine and saw that the incomparable Dorie Greenspan (insert reverential bow) had seemingly answered my prayers.

Move over, crackers and cheese ...

Get out of town, spicy nut mix ....

Cocktail cookies have arrived.