Bloody Mary Oil

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This recipe is part of a larger dinner party menu you can find on my Substack. The category is Italian Heatwave, and it features low or no-cook courses inspired by the food of Southern Italy. You can find the recipe booklet and a handy party prep schedule here.

Good bread, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar are a combination that can’t be improved upon. It’s tart, chewy, unctuous perfection. But can it be expanded upon? Can you “yes, and” a plate of dipping oil into a whole new territory. Apparently, you can! Behold this Bloody Mary Oil. This beauty boasts a pool of golden olive oil, flavoured with garlic, minced sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped celery leaves, horseradish, and red wine vinegar. Essentially, if you can find it in a Bloody Mary, you will find it swimming in this oil. The result is a dip that can make a good baguette disappear in record time. This recipe takes approximately 5 minutes to prepare and requires no cooking. This is summer eating at its finest. So let’s dive right in!

As you may or may not know, I recently launched a Substack. You will find all of the more recent recipes you find here over there. The nice thing is that the recipes are delivered directly to your inbox, so you don’t have to click a link or press a “jump to recipe” button or anything like that. So yeah, it’s convenient from that standpoint. But there is also another branch of my Substack called Hardcore Supper Club. It initially started as a place for my more ambitious recipe ideas. Dishes that took multiple days to pull off, taught new techniques, and generally broadened culinary horizons.

After creating content like this every week for 6-7 weeks, I realized it was unsustainable. It was a fantastic amount of work, and if I’m really honest with myself, it was also sort of alienating. Not everyone wants to flirt with molecular gastronomy; some people just want to have a good time. And I realized I was a person who just wanted to have a good time. So, after a little two-week break to recharge my creative batteries, I relaunched Hardcore Supper Club last week with a new raison d’être: the art of the dinner party. I realize it is well-trodden territory, but so is everything at this point. So why not bring my perspective to it? 

Last week’s theme was Big Kid Birthday Party, and it included my recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Hard Lemonade. You can find it here or on my Substack, and it is completely free. The rest of the recipes, like the ones for the Sweet Corn Cool Ranch Salad and Salami Deluxe Focaccia, are available in a downloadable eBook format, and they come with a handy prep schedule, so you can make a multi-course dinner party happen without spending more than an hour a day on the meal.

I’m particularly proud of the scheduling aspect of this project because all too often, I think people hesitate to invite people over because they don’t think they’re up to the task. And honestly, if you try to fit dinner party prep into one day, it is truly a slog to get through. But if you practice what I like to call the Joy Layaway Program, you’ll find yourself blissfully unoccupied once your guests arrive. I think this is key to bringing the fun back to entertaining. None of these recipes is particularly hard to make by themselves, but they can be a lot to keep track of, if you stack them all together at once. Restaurants don’t run like that, and neither should your kitchen. 

This week, this Bloody Mary Oil is the starter for a larger dinner party menu that will go live this Sunday. The theme is Italian Heatwave, which means you’ll find influences from Southern Italian cuisine in a low or no-cook format. The evening kicks off with an Orange Rosemary Bianco Spritz and the aforementioned oil, then moves on to Spaghettoni and mussels dressed with Pesto Alla Trapenese served alongside a refreshing Cantaloupe and Olive Salad with Crispy Prosciutto. Dessert is a Red Berry Sorbet served on a bed of whipped ricotta and garnished with olive oil and black pepper. If any of this sounds enticing to you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing and upgrading your membership to paid. I can promise a new dinner party menu once a week. And yes, the themes will probably become far more unhinged, so that is its own form of entertainment. 

Okay, enough about Hardcore Supper Club, let’s talk about today’s Bloody Mary Oil. This recipe is very straightforward, so there is very little to warn you about/advise you on. It is as simple as pouring a little oil into a shallow dish and adding all your toppings. And I know I just waxed poetic about the plan ahead, dinner party schedule, but this dish is a day-of situation. I wouldn’t put this together until your guests’ arrival is imminent. You can have all your ingredients prepped and ready to go, but nothing should be mixed until everyone has a drink in their hand. This isn’t the worst thing because, as I said, this recipe takes 5 minutes to put together and you don’t have to even approach a stove. Very heatwave friendly and something you can easily whip up and plunk down in front of chatting friends. 

Okay, so that’s all you need to know about this Bloody Mary Oil and a sales pitch to boot. Please know self-promotion is not my preferred wheelhouse. But apparently, marketing is “important”. Lol! So please forgive me if this article (?) came across as cringe. It really is such a pleasure to make content for you, fine folks, that I feel compelled to find ways to make it more economically viable in the long term. But if this is something that is out of your budget, I totally understand and see you. And that’s why there will always be free content on this site and my Substack as well. 

Thanks for listening, pals! I hope you enjoy this one!