I bought a book called Winter Cocktails: Mulled Ciders, Hot Toddies, Punches, Pitchers, and Cocktail Party Snacks by Maria Del Mar Sacasa at TJ Maxx for super cheap. Pro Tip: ALWAYS check out the cheap books in non-bookstores. You’d be surprised at what you’ll find.
As I mentioned in my update, I am testing cocktails for both practical reasons and love of alcohol and glamor. Considering my friend and I want a seasonal cocktail menu in our future speakeasy, we’re currently running at winter at full speed (it’s November), and I love visiting liquor stores…here we are.
I started last weekend with the relatively simple mulled white wine recipe. Due to a communication mixup, I didn’t actually have any brandy or pear eau-de-vie so I substituted triple sec…which worked well enough, although I’m going to try it again.
This week, I went with the Rompope recipe, which I’d never even heard of until opening this book.
According to this book, ‘rompope’ is a derivation of the Spanish ‘ponche de hueve’ (egg punch) and first brewed by 17th century nuns in Mexico. Rompope and Conquito (another recipe later in the book) are milk punches. It can be served warm or cold – I went warm.
Now, this recipe isn’t that complicated…
and the final result was delicious…
but it was labor intensive – it took the better part of three hours including prep & cleanup. AND THERE WAS A LOT OF CLEANUP. You can’t even see the huge mess the stove is in this photo.
First, the recipe calls for blanched almonds. I had trouble finding these in stores, so I blanched my own. Blanching and hand skinning the almonds took about 25 minutes by itself. This only becomes a big deal because the rest of the recipe takes forever. After finishing that up, I used the food processor to grind the almonds and sugar into paste…which is where I would go back later and write in “Shortcut 1.” More on that later.
Next, you bring the milk (and lemon rind, vanilla extract, baking soda, and cinnamon sticks) to a boil then allow them to simmer. You know what you don’t do? TURN YOUR BACK FOR 30 SECONDS. I had the Islanders and Penguins game on in the background and I had JUST checked the pot when I heard the Isles’ goal horn. In the 30 seconds it took me to watch the goal, the pot boiled and spilled over everywhere, burning on the stove. AWESOME.
After doing the best clean up I could without burning off my finger prints, I got back to work. I let the pot simmer for 20 minutes. Carefully following the directions, I whisked the almond paste with the egg yolks and the rest of the sugar…which is where I learned “don’t use a whisk.” The sugar, almond paste, and egg yolks only balled together inside the whisk, like a bright yellow ball of sugary sunshine in a cage. I had to jab it out with a butter knife.
Anyway, after taking the milk off the stove and removing the solids (lemon rind & cinnamon stick) and confirming the milk at the bottom of the pot got burned, I poured the useable milk into the yolk/sugar/almond mixture, mixed it together with the spatula and put it back in the pot, where it would sit on the stove 5-7 minutes on low heat, “thickening.”
7 minutes later, there was absolutely no thickening. I had a feeling that maybe the “almond paste” was getting in the way. Remember Shortcut 1? Shortcut 1 is “Buy almond paste.” My food processor could not get the almonds fine and pasty enough to dissolve in the milk mixture…or be something you could drink, anyway. Since at some point I’d figured out that I was basically making liquid custard, I realized that the heat wasn’t high enough and the almond “paste” probably wasn’t helping, so I strained the almond paste out of the liquid with a tea strainer. That took 5-10 minutes. I cranked the heat up to medium (rather than low) and let go for another 7 minutes.
I knew at about minute 5 that I’d made the right move, because it coated the back of the spoon, which was a hint to “it’s ready” in the recipe.
The stuff was delicious, and with the rum mixed in, it was very good.
Unfortunately, there was tons of it. I had a mug, I handed out a mug to everyone in the house, and the pot was still half full. I poured the leftovers into a tempered glass pitcher. The book says Rompope keeps for a month in a sterilized glass bottle, but I didn’t have one of those, so I went with the pitcher. If I die of some kind of bacterial gastroenteritis, you’ll know why. I won’t have leftovers around that long, but who knows how fast bacteria can kill you?
The finished product was sort of a twist on egg nog. Different taste, same texture, but it was really good.
So, Rompope, which was delicious, was a 3 hour milk punch trial by fire that I just wasn’t ready for. Part of that was my own fault (pot boiling over) and part of it was OMG SIMMER IT FOREVER. There was also a lot of it. Only use this particular recipe if you’re having 4-6 people drinking it.
This is also a recipe you don’t want to try for the first time when guests are coming over. Unless you are some kind of liquid custard whiz, I suggest trying this before making it in case you have anyone you don’t want seeing you embarrass yourself. I also suggest making it days ahead of time, which can be done too.
words in scarlet ink 