My word! I think those are Veuve Clicquot!
Re-reposting here since this in my mind is now the drink thread. You can’t stop me!
My comment from the other place:
Ok, here we go. Wall of text ahead.
Here’s an easy and hopefully non-fussy recipe for (Venezuelan) eggnog, called Ponche Crema. I suppose it translates to cream punch but it’s basically a very thick and sweet eggnog that’s spiked with rum and flavored with vanilla and whatever else you like. You can flavor it with coffee, chocolate, and i’m sure you could use other things but for us we default to vanilla and coffee versions. Typically you serve it on the rocks or crushed ice, this will help keep it cold but also dilute it.
This homemade nog will store for a long time in a fridge, in my family we typically make it around xmas or before the end of the year and then stash it in the fridge to enjoy the following year during the winter holidays. But technically you can make this the same day or the day before, but ideally you want to make it a few weeks up to a month or two in advance because sometimes it needs time to “set” (aka thicken in the bottle). Ultimately it’ll taste fine even if you make it the same day.
Ingredients:
- 4-5 egg yolks
- 1 14oz can of sweetened condensed milk
- An inexpensive aged rum, you’ll use 14oz worth of rum so use the sweetened condensed milk can to measure. Rum-wise i recommend Flor de Caña 4 year old rum but if you have easier access to something else go ahead.
- Vanilla to taste
Preparation:
- Crack and separate the yolks from the whites.
- Use a hand mixer, stand mixer or a blender to mix the egg yolks. Buckle up because you’re going to need to mix them for a long time, the longer you can aerate them the better and quicker the Ponche Crema will thicken. If you’ve got the luxury of time and you’re making this way in advance then you can mix them for a shorter amount of time and they will eventually set. But give it 15-20 mins at least, if you can give it longer then great.
- Once the yolks have been mixed long enough you can start adding in all of the ingredients. Mix it all and then pour into glass bottles that have been property cleaned and sterilized, you can reuse corks, buy silicone corks or buy/upcycle glass bottles that are sealable like this one. This recipe will make about 700-750ml worth of Ponche Crema. Make at least a double batch so you can have a regular vanilla one and one flavored.
- If you’re using coffee or other flavorings i’d recommend adding it at the end when the Ponche Crema has already had time to set in the fridge. Add the coffee or whatever additional flavoring a little bit at a time and taste it, you don’t have to be heavy handed. If using coffee then use instant if you have it on hand and dissolve it into a small amount of water, if you use coffee grains just make it extra strong but again try not to add too much liquid.
Notes:
- The final consistency of Ponche Crema is somewhat thick, however it’s not uncommon for it to set overly thick in the bottle so you might need to add milk, booze, or another liquid to help loosen it up to what you need. What’s the correct thickness? Not sure what the best references to use are but took a look what my fridge and i’d guess it’s between peptobismol and ketchup? If a Venezuelan or someone that’s had it before wants to give a better descriptor have at it lol.
- For the amount of rum you can use more or less depending on your preference, though if it had too little rum i’d be concerned over the lack of alcohol not preserving it well and it going off.
- You want to be a good Ponche Crema drinker? Sneak small tastes of it throughout the year and be indignant if anyone suggests drinking it outside December… unless they really want a taste. Then you give them a small serving to enjoy and then cut them off and say if they want some more to wait until Dec. You’d also happily sell them a bottle.
- Could you flavor this with winter spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and the like? Sure! I haven’t done so myself mainly because the vanilla is what’s nostalgic to me.
- Date and label your bottles, especially if you’ve got different flavors.
- When filling up a bottle leave plenty of room, don’t fill up the neck. You want enough room to dilute if needed.
Have questions or comments about this? Let me know, hopefully i didn’t miss anything but if i did i’d be happy to edit my post.
PS: You can probably reliably use 4 egg yolks, you just need to mix/aerate them real well for as long as you can. A hand mixer does the best job at that.
PPS: It is entirely possible to use some oatmilk or other plantbased milk to thin this out. An uncle of mine makes one that is at least half oatmilk but i think i am morally opposed to it, i tried it and it’s just… not for me. I don’t need my eggnog to be healthier. I need it to be delicious.
Felt like trying something new for the Thanksgiving break, drink-wise. I bought a gin with some citrus in it, it’s right up my alley. Kind of wish the botanicals were a bit more pronounced but overall i love the lemony taste.
Also let’s be real. I bought it because I liked the bottle
That’s a beautiful bottle! I don’t blame you!
How long for boiling turkey bones for stock to immediately then turn it into a soup? I’m seeing anywhere from 2 hours to like 15 hours when I do a search for that…
if you want to clarify it, cook it longer, skim the smutz off and keep adding water and boiling it down, slowly. the flavor intensifies and the broth is clearer - if that is a consideration.
like making a good phọ broth, you want lots of flavor, yet a clarified soup.
also, add your seasoning veg in mesh bags. keeps your broth clear.
I’m probably gonna go as simple as possible, so just boiling what bones we have, taking them out, and then adding in what we want in our soup (potatoes, green beans, onion, left over turkey…). So clarified is not really an issue, if that makes sense? It’ll be immediately turned into soup.
I’m a lover of using pressure cookers for broth, all the flavor remains in the broth, including the aromatics, and it’s far quicker to get a really high-quality product (I make great broth in 40 minutes from a whole chicken) if you pressure cook the ingredients for 2 hours, that would be pretty good stuff I’d say.
Our go-to is simmered low, covered, for 4-8 hours. I know that’s a big range, but it’s basically whenever we bother to get going on Friday morning to dinner time on Friday evening.
I strongly recommend simmering with celery/carrots/onion/garlic/herbs for the full time. It really helps to make the broth flavorful.
We’ve been doing a thing lately where, when we remember to, we put all the veggie off-cuts (onion ends, bell pepper middles, kale ribs, etc.) in a bag in the freezer and just keep adding to the bag until we’re ready to make stock. It works well, and gets one more use out of the scraps before they go on the compost heap.
We do the same!
My wife Laurie thinks I am weird for many reasons. When I unload the dishwasher, I put the just-cleaned dishes under the older clean dishes in the cupboard.
Yes!
I would have purchased it for the cool bottle and name.
Also, Gin!
That’s the system I grew up with. Vertical rotation. Anything that isn’t stacked on top of each other is rotated horizontally in the cupboard.