After you hog, eggnog

Concocting it classic

Eggnog, a lush beverage of milk, egg, alcohol and warm spices, conjures up visions of a white backyard and festive families huddled around bonfires—images that hold little charm in the weak chill of tropical winters. All the same, city chefs see nothing wrong in relishing the snug, sometimes acquired taste of this beverage as the final month falls off the calendar. 

Vishal Atreya, Executive Chef at JW Marriot Mumbai Sahar, doesn't believe in tweaking classics. "The original flavours of eggnog, memorised across generations, have a lot of festive sentiment,” he says. Available at the restaurant's Christmas brunch from December 24 – 25, the traditional tumbler can also be whipped up at home.

Ingredients

Dark rum / Bourbon    150 ml
Heavy cream    250 ml
Whole milk    250 ml
Eggs, separated   5
Sugar    130 gm
Vanilla pod    1
Cinnamon sticks    2-3
Grated nutmeg for garnish
Castor sugar    a pinch

Method

Heat milk and cream together with cinnamon sticks, vanilla and nutmeg; bring it to boil. While it cools down, beat the egg yolks and sugar together till it achieves ribbon consistency. If you scrape the bowl, you should be able to see the bottom clearly for a few seconds before the mix covers it up again.

Add rum to the just-about warm mixture, and stir. Prepare and refrigerate it the night before you plan to serve. Right before serving, beat the egg whites with a pinch of castor sugar, fold the stiffened whites into the drink and garnish it with nutmeg to lend it a light, airy sweetness.

Filling sips in ganache chocolates

For chef Sunil Shanmugaum of the professional pastry school Wisk by Cakesmiths, the thrill lies in tucking away silken gulps of eggnog in chocolates. His secret? Use of butter and white chocolate, instead of eggs. For his creation, the luxurious line up of butter, honey, nutmeg, vanilla bean, white chocolate, brandy and melted dark chocolate come together as ganache that's used as filling for chocolates. While it's not available for sampling (unless you're a sneaky student at Wisk), this recipe will help you rustle up some edible 'drinking tumblers' all by yourself.

Ingredients (For 30 pieces)
Dark chocolate moulded shells: 30
For eggnog ganache
Brandy: 10 ml
Softened butter: 30 gm
Honey: 10 gm
Vanilla bean, split and scraped: 1/2
Ground nutmeg: 1/4 tsp
White chocolate: melted, tempered at 28 degree Celsius: 125 gm
Dark chocolate, melted and tempered, for finishing

Method
Cream together butter, honey, nutmeg and vanilla bean seeds till the mixture achieves a cloudy colour. By hand, stream the tempered white chocolate into the butter mix, ensuring there are no lumps. Stream in the brandy, stirring until it's homogeneous and let the ganache sit for several minutes at room temperature so that it can attains piping consistency.

Using a pastry bag, fill the chocolate shells with ganache. Allow it to crystallise for 15 - 20 minutes till  firm and then fill the shells with the tempered dark chocolate and allow to crystallize for an hour. Unmould and serve.

Gorging on gingerbread

A good way to comfort easily shivered-up winter haters is eggnog with a gingerbread twist. That "smack of ginger" makes all the difference to the sweet concoction insists Indigo Deli's General Manager, Chetan Patel, adding, "we brought gingerbread and eggnog together as both have a strong Christmas connect".

Ingredients
Cinnamon Anglaise (1 egg yolk + 30 ml milk + 30ml cream + 10 gms sugar, whisked together and flavoured with cinnamon). Once prepared, set aside 60 ml of the Anglaise for this recipe.
Brandy: 45 ml
Coffee liqueur: 15 ml
Home-made caramel sauce: 10 ml
Ginger extract: 5 ml
Whipped cream: Single round of piping around the glass
Caramel sauce to drizzle
Ginger cookie crumble (half) for topping

Method
Like all good eggnogs, the gingerbread variety too, follows the classic recipe to relishdom. Just remember to add ginger extract to your mixture, use whipped cream instead of egg whites and drizzle caramel sauce before you heap those old-fashioned glasses with a greedy helping of ginger cookies. Santa might want to sleepover at yours.