Eggnog for One: How to Impress Your Date
All right, kids. I don’t normally dispense romantic advice on this here blog because I like to keep the house secrets as house secrets, but it’s the holidays and I’m feeling generous. One of the benefits of having worked at a cocktail bar for a year and a half is that I can always make conversation at a house party, and then I can get you drunk on something slightly more delicious than a bourbon ginger. I’m by no means a picky, trained bartender, but I was working at one of Food and Wine’s top 50 bars in America (proud!) so I know some stuff.
Anyway. At this time of year, for whatever reason, people think eggnog is a super great idea. Currently I am dating one of those who are partial to drinking whole, raw eggs at the holidays (no, he’s not Rocky or Gaston, but you’re close). I can’t stand eggnog, or any cocktail that contains a large portion of cream, especially when it is combined with eggs, but I have a large amount of cocktail knowledge, and among that is how to make eggnog for one, so I figured I’d do something nice for my man friend and impress him with some eggnog for one.
Here is how you impress your date:
- Put two ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. You need a cocktail shaker for this drink.
- Take one egg. Preferably a farm egg, but both the farms my co-op gets eggs from had issues with salmonella and chicken rights this year, so I barely even give a shit about where I get my eggs from anymore. Salmonella’s on the shell anyway, so crack it into the shaker all one-handedlike (you should learn how to do this; haven’t you seen Sabrina?), toss the shell and wash your hands. If you want to eat eggs, ever, you’re taking chances anyway. Your life is full of taking chances, and eggnog is all of those chances in one glass.
- Add some heavy cream. No half and half. No milk. Heavy whipping cream. Add like 2/3 of a shot of it. There’s already a whole egg in there, so not too much.
- Add a shot of a sweet brown booze. Rum, brandy, and bourbon all work perfectly well; rye, gin, or vodka are all terrible ideas for eggnog. You can put in more than a shot, too.
- Put in a healthy dash of vanilla extract. That’s like 35% alcohol, so it’s pretty much your bitters.
- Add some sugar, preferably brown. If it’s a new potential lover you’re trying to impress, you’ll have pre-made a simple syrup, but once you’ve been dating for a while, you can just throw some sugar in there. Not too much; just enough.
- Add more healthy dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Shake it up! Shake it up until the metal of the cocktail shaker gets so cold you can barely hold it. Shake it hard, so that your date sees that you are STRONG and good at MOVING.
- Strain it into a nice cocktail glass and top it with a dash of cinnamon.
Your date will be drinking that raw egg and cream boozefest in no time. Then, make yourself a hot toddy and the two of you can snuggle and watch Elf, cocktails in hand, knowing that you didn’t waste a ton of time making one of those giant batches of eggnog that are on recipe websites. If a real bartender (like my former boss) sees this, he will probably cry “BLASPHEMY!”, but your date will not know the difference.
Merry Christmas, y’all.
Deb-style chicken salad
From my kitchen, you can see the patio of Common Roots, and they make a damn good chicken salad that is probably extremely socially responsible, but I like to think that mine’s the best on the block.
For this one, I got three boneless skinless chicken breasts and baked them in a little tinfoil cave (just take two pieces of tinfoil and enclose the chicken like you’re making a pie). I put some slices of red onion and a smashed clove of garlic along with salt & pepper on top of the chicken in the tinfoil cave for flavor— a strategy I learned from my first job in high school where they too had a great chicken salad. Flavor the chicken somehow, or else it gets too plain.
Cook the chicken at 350 for 45 minutes, or until it’s done. Let it cool off for a while.
Add some crunchy stuff to the bowl. I added a granny smith apple and a few slices of red onion, diced, but any crunchy stuff will do— celery, cukes, pistchios, etc. Some people like to put grapes in their chicken salad, but unless they’re supercrisp, I don’t like the flavor or the texture.
Shred the chicken breast with a fork. This is the annoying part. Cutting it into chunks is for pussies. Shred it, dammit, and you’ll enjoy the endorphins that you get from the activity.
This chicken salad is all about the dressing, which consists primarily of goat cheese, one of the greatest substances on earth. Add 2-3 ounces of soft goat cheese (take it out when you start cooking the chicken and it’ll be nice and soft). Coat the chicken and the crunchy stuff with the goat cheese. Taste it because goat cheese is awesome.
Add a hefty squirt of spicy brown mustard and a small teaspoon of mayo. Stir it up. Add some more salt and pepper to the bowl. Taste it. I usually add some more goat cheese at this point, but it’s all up to you.
Here is the general dressing ratio: 4 goat cheese:2 spicy brown mustard: 1 mayo.
Instead of serving it while the chicken is still warm, chilling it is a pretty great idea. Because of this, I have no pictures now, but maybe I’ll add one tomorrow.
Is this too long to tumbl?
