Cinco de Tomato and Celery
Posted by Donavan on The Spirit World.
In New York there’s a five cent deposit on all beer bottles so once a month or so, I load the car up and take all my empties back to the beer store. Last Saturday was the time for cleaning of my basement brewery, so the bottles had to go.
When I got to the beer store I wasn’t surprised to see the Corona representative at the store giving away swag for Cinco de Mayo. (For some reason, the people of Mexico refuse to admit that the 5th of May is really their Independence Day. Cinco de Mayo just sounds so much better than Dieciséis de Septiembre.) But we have it right here in the US and we celebrate Mexican Independence on the Fifth of May even if the people of Mexico don’t. What better way to commemorate this occasion than by picking up a six pack of Mexican beer? Try this: mix tomato sauce, salsa, and lime juice with your Mexican beer and garnish it with a celery stalk. Think spicy tomato shandy. It’s not that bad. Trust me. Jury duty isn’t that bad either.
The Corona representative was a little disappointed that I only bought a single bottle. I wanted to try some of the other Mexican, Central, and South American beers as well, so I picked up an assorted six pack. My plan was to make cerveza preparada or prepared beer or Mexican beer cocktails.
Since I’ll be doing a series on Mexican beer cocktails this month, I spent most of the afternoon last Sunday mixing up several different Mexican beer cocktails: a Mexican Iced Tea, a Chevala, and a Michelada (the last two I made both with and without tomato juice).
My plan was to pick one of these and tell you all about how wonderful these drinks are, but I’m afraid that it’s too soon to inflict these concoctions on anyone at this point. The Michelada ended up with so much hot sauce in it that my lips went numb. The Mexican Iced Tea was blah until I doctored it with Margarita mix. And the Chevala wasn’t all that interesting until I gave it a dose of clam juice and started dunking cocktail shrimp in it.
I’m going to keep experimenting with various recipes this week and hopefully next week I’ll be able to tell you how to make the best Michelada.
