Okay, I’ve talked about being interested in modern cocktails and nontraditional presentations, namely solid cocktails. Here’s an example of something I’m working on: Deviled Egg Nog.
How did I do it?
I broke out my “new edition” (no, not New Edition) Betty Crocker Cookbook tonight for this one and adapted three recipes: One for deviled eggs (duh), one for egg nog (duh) and one for panna cotta (huh?)
Panna cotta is most easily described as an eggless creme brulee. It’s a cream and gelatin mixture sweetened and flavored with vanilla (or whatever flavor extract you care to use - get creative). If you can make Jell-O, you can make panna cotta. And I’m not kidding. Heck, I’ll post a quick recipe here right now:
Panna Cotta
2 cups cream
1 packet unflavored gelatin (or 1 1/2 tablespoons)
1/4 cup sugar
Vanilla extract
Salt
Mix gelatin into cream in saucepan. Let stand 10 minutes. Add sugar, vanilla extract to taste and a pinch of salt. Heat to light simmer, do not boil. Divide into four serving cups and chill 4 hours / until set.
See what I mean? If you can make Jell-O, you can make this stuff. Now go forth, impress your lady friends and multiply.
Your traditional egg nog recipes call for whipping the egg whites to peaks (google it) and then folding that into your mixture of yolk, cream, sugar, vanilla and (most importantly!) booze.
For the “deviled egg” part of this recipe, I pretty just hard boiled the eggs, shelled them, cut them in half and spooned the cooked yolks into a bowl. Simple. I’ve separated the “peaked egg whites” permanently, but the element is still there in a new form.
I bloomed my packet of gelatin in a cup of half & half for ten minutes. I also added the seeds from a mexican vanilla bean, about half a cup of powdered sugar and a touch of vanilla extract. Using a fork, I mashed the yolks into small particles and folded them into the mixture. I then heated this mixture to activate the gelatin.
Wait! Where’s the booze?
Since I was heating this “panna cotta” mixture (now an egged eggless custard…I didn’t say this “cocktail” wouldn’t confuse you) to just before boil, I didn’t want to heat the alcohol as well. Alcohol boils off at 73 degrees Celsius, water at 100 degrees. I’m not sure of the boiling point of half & half. I just knew that I didn’t want the liquids to pass 70 degrees with the booze in it. So I let the liquid cool a bit before adding a half cup of Michter’s Single Barrel Rye whiskey.
Rye? What about rum? Or brandy? Or bourbon?
This rye is very smooth… To my palette it’s like a more-focused bourbon than it is a spicy rye. So far as brandy, it would have been an equally good choice. Rum… Well, I have opinions about rum that we’ll cover later.
After pitching the whiskey into the mixture, I put it in the fridge for about four hours to set. Once that was done, I stirred it up with a spoon and filled each half egg-white, then topped with nutmeg.
How’d it taste?
For a first attempt: pretty good! It’s a solid start but needs some tweaking. What didn’t I like?
A half cup of booze was too much for this, and it needs to be a touch sweeter (and this is coming from someone who tries not to oversweeten his drinks and loves his big boozy flavors.) I’ll probably use cane sugar instead of confectioner’s next time. I ended up with about 5 times more filling than the egg whites could hold (not terribly surprising, but more excess than I’d planned). So I need to reduce the proportion of booze to half & half, increase the proportion of sugar, and then shrink it all down to reduce waste. Finally, the filling mixture was a bit more “wet” than I’d prefer. I didn’t quite heat the half & half mixture as well as I should, but I think I might need a higher proportion of gelatin as well to really make that component a bit more solid once chilled.
Note: The flavor of egg is now present due to the egg whites. I don’t mind this, but permanently separating the whites from the rest of the mixture made this inevitable. If you don’t like so much “eggy” flavor in your egg nog… well… heck, if you wanted REAL egg nog you wouldn’t be considering making this for yourself anyway.
I’m looking forward to playing with this in the weeks leading up to the holidays. I’m fairly close as it is, so I’m excited about getting this one dialed in. I’m pretty experienced in the kitchen and this was my first time making deviled eggs… everything here took me about 45 minutes to prepare, so this is something that shouldn’t be *too* difficult for the culinary-impaired aspiring molecular mixologist. When I get everything right, I’ll post a proper recipe.
Cheers! (Chews?)
Ken
