Xmas Gifts Parade 2020 : The London N°1

One of the bottles I received for this “Xmas Gifts Parade” was The London N°1. A nice bottle of gin I’ve tasted before and which is in my personal opinion really good. But what could I do with it, what could make it stand out a bit in this series?

Suddenly I was thinking of a fancy style of Bloody Mary. Can you make a Bloody Mary with Gin instead of vodka? Of course you can. Actually vodka might be the worst choice of spirit for this kind of drink because compared to other spirits like Gin or Tequila, it lacks flavour. A Gin Bloody Mary is called a Red Snapper and is a slightly bolder style of Bloody Mary, packed with flavour. 

Why don’t we make Bloody Mary’s more often? You need to run around between the kitchen and the bar to collect all the ingredients… and you also need a piece of celery for decoration. Yes, mainly for decoration because it hardly adds to the drink and you certainly won’t eat it. We almost never have fresh celery, when we need it we have chopped celery in the freezer. 

Let’s go for a smoother and more elegant Aperitif-style Red Snapper, served in a balloon glass that’s normally used for a gin & tonic. Instead of average tomato juice or Clamato we are using Mary V, the spiced tomato juice created by The Jane’s Chef, Nick Bril.  

Fancy Red Snapper

Ingredients
50 ml Gin
1 small bottle of Mary V spiced tomato
10 ml lemon juice
10 ml Worcestershire sauce
2 dashes Tabasco (or more, adjust to your taste)
A good pinch of black pepper
A good pinch of celery salt

Method
The traditional way to prepare this cocktail is by adding everything to one half of a Boston shaker and then throw it a couple of times between both halves of the shaker. One of the halves filled with ice and covered by a strainer. 

If that sound too much circus for you, just use your shaker, but don’t shake it too hard, you really need to get some oxygen in your drink. Strain in your balloon glass (filled with ice cubes) and just add a twist of lemon, after you gave the border of the glass a quick rinse with a part of lemon. 

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