Drinking tomatoes

The hubby and I went out for a dinner date on Friday at a semi-fancy place we like quite a bit called Range. We had all sorts of delicious food but the stand out was actually a cocktail called the Sungold Zinger. Made with 209 gin, sungold tomatoes, agave, and lemon, I knew we could recreate this amazing taste of summer at home:

The first “sample” batch (shown above) was pretty damn close to the original with just a bit too much gin. Not too much for me, of course, but one of the beauties of this beverage is that even non martini style drinkers, and I dare say non gin drinkers, will have a hard time not slurping this puppy down so fast you’ll wonder how you ended up asleep on the couch at 9pm on a Saturday.

The perfected Tomato Martini recipe:

• 1 1/2 oz gin (not a London dry style – I used Hendricks; I also think that Old World Spirits, Q, or, of course, 209 would work well)
• 1 oz pureed and strained sungold tomatoes
• just shy of 1/2 oz light agave syrup
• juice from 1/2 a lemon

I will be drinking lots of these.

To make the strained tomato puree, btw, I blendered the crap out of a couple clamshells worth of sungold tomatoes (and a few regular old red cherry toms I had on the counter) and then strained them though a metal mesh strainer, stirring them with a spoon to get the most liquid out before setting aside the remaining mush to spread on toast with liberal amounts of salt and maybe some ricotta cheese.

And to go with the next round of Tomato Martinis that I’ll be enjoying in the sunny backyard this afternoon with friends, the hubby has been busy at work this morning repeating this genius.

As my father always used to say: “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight!”

Advertisement