No, no, no. (part 2)

Much has been written about my favorite adult beverage: The Bloody Mary.

When I consider the purchase of a given book of cocktails, I invariably flip ahead to the page containing the Bloody Mary and peruse the recipe. 99% of all cocktail tomes fail this in a spectacularly miserable fashion. The thing of it is that any book which lists "lemon" (as opposed to "lime") as the primary citrus component is wrong.

Mind you, I still buy some of those books because it has other, compelling reasons to compensate for the abysmal Bloody Mary recipe, and I am thinking specifically of David Wondrich's otherwise stellar Esquire Drinks. But, so far, the only book I have found in current circulation that has the proper recipe is the Williams-Sonoma Bar Guide which is as good as it gets if your cocktail/bar book collection may not exceeed "one." (Photo to follow, the image upload thingy is not cooperating)

Here is the correct recipe (and let's not have any more of this again) is as follows:

1 oz vodka (plain or "peppered" if you must; for this I prefer Finlandia)
3 oz tomato juice (V-8 or Clamato are acceptable, again, also if you must)
1 oz lime juice (save the wedge)
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins for me, thanks)
3 drops hot sauce (Tabasco®, ideally!)
3 turns of freshly ground black pepper
1 three-fingered pinch of salt

1- Add lime juice and salt to cocktail pitcher, stir to dissolve--this step is key.
2- Add cracked (to chill rapidly) ice and remaining ingredients, stir vigorously
3- Strain into an old-fashioned glass over FRESH uncracked (to control dilution) ice
4- Garnish with lime wedge and a rib of celery (a celery stalk is the whole thing!)

OPTIONS: Using celery salt in lieu of regular, adding freshly--and finely--grated horseradish, and/or rimming the glass with seasoned salt.

-Joke