Time to Increase Your Celery
Maybe it’s just my age—that age that makes one begin a story “maybe it’s just my age”—but a celery stick symbolizes every person’s dream to look swimsuit summer fashionable. You know, when you end up sadly uttering, “I won’t have the cheese course, just give me celery,” as you regret that surprisingly large number your scale flashed at you that morning.
So let’s instead celebrate celery’s salty-peppery subtlety in a cocktail, and we can still feel we’re sort of slimming for the season. The Bikini Bod Cocktail is refreshing, gorgeously incandescent jade green, well-iced and easy on the eyes. It gives us all something to aspire to.
Of course, celery tends to be pretty humble, despite once being a massive Southern California crop. A recent David Karp article in the Los Angeles Times tells of its rise and fall (a twisted tale of Japanese internment and real estate investment), but also points out that today 80% of the country’s celery supply comes from California, with Santa Maria as one of the chief spots to find the best. Lucky us at our farmers markets, then.
For summer it doesn’t hurt to be able to at least pretend a drink is good for you, and right now there’s a publishing cottage industry extolling the benefits of celery. As with any claim suggesting one food is a miracle bullet, you have to take these notions with a grain of (celery?) salt, but it’s nice to imagine a Bikini Bod Cocktail will lower inflammation, reduce blood pressure and even reduce the risk of cancer, as some assert. At least it will certainly increase smiling.
This drink doesn’t mess around, offering celery four ways—the stalks, the leaves, the seeds and celery salt—but each has its own slightly different character. The seed simple syrup provides sweet depth, the juice a bright spice rack, the leaves a bit of crunch, the salt for the rim an almost funky mushroom note. Then the lithe slip of absinthe brings a hint of anise, adding to the green flavor of the drink, if that makes sense. You don’t even need a green-colored absinthe.
I tested this cocktail with vodka, which works, but the nuances you get with an actually flavored spirit work even better, given celery itself is rather mild. That’s why I settled on gin, with its juniper notes, but it’s also fun to use a more exotic gin, so that’s why I recommend Gin Mare from Barcelona. Available in the U.S. for the past three years, its bottle looks like a giant nail polish, but I promise it’s much better than that. It’s meant to evoke the Mediterranean, and since Santa Barbara is supposed to do so too, it seems a good fit, with its notes of olive, basil, rosemary, thyme and citrus.
Bikini Bod
Ingredients
- 4 ounces gin, Gin Mare recommended
- 3 ounces celery juice, fresh
- 1 ounce lemon juice, Meyer preferred
- ½ ounce celery seed simple syrup, recipe follows
- ½ ounce absinthe, clear preferred
- Lemon juice, for rimming
- Celery salt, for rimming
- Celery leaves, for garnish
Celery Seed Simple Syrup
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup water
- ½ tablespoon celery seeds
Instructions
- To make the celery juice, start with a bunch of celery (organic, as non-organic can often be covered with pesticides). Chop off the bottoms of the stalks and compost them; chop off the tops—with leaves—and reserve. Chop the stalks into 2-inch-long pieces. In a juicer or high-powered blender, pulverize the chopped-up stalks. Celery is quite fibrous, so be prepared for this juicing phase to take longer than you might imagine. Often it’s good to feed in a piece of celery at a time. Adding up to a ½ cup of water can also help and not overly dilute the juice. Afterward, strain the juice into a jar where it can be stored.
- Rim your glasses before making the cocktail. In a shallow small bowl squeeze a bit of lemon juice (a few tablespoons); in a small dish pour a half tablespoon or so of celery salt. Take a double Old Fashioned glass and carefully dampen a quarter of its outer edge with the lemon juice. This is powerful stuff, so you want each drinker to have the opportunity to taste as much as she prefers. If you get any on the inside, wipe it clean. Then carefully, at a 45° angle, roll the outer, dampened edge of the glass in the celery salt. Clean again as necessary. Set aside (or even in the freezer).
- To make the cocktails, add the gin, celery juice, lemon juice, simple syrup and absinthe into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake to chill. Double strain into the rimmed glasses. Add 1 large ice cube to each. Garnish both with a celery leaf.
For the Celery Seed Simple Syrup
- In a small saucepan, bring all of the ingredients to a boil. Lower heat to simmer and stir so all of the sugar is dissolved. Heat for 5 minutes.
- Let cool, strain to remove celery seeds and pour into a small jar. Continue cooling to room temperature. Store in fridge. Will remain good for approximately a month.
