FIX MY DRINK
Each week in this space, we better our beverages together.
Combine certain foodstuffs with alcohol and most people recoil in horror at the very thought. Mention to guests that a drink contains raw egg white while you’re handing the glasses to them, for example, and you can practically watch the blood drain from their cheeks as the ( possibly misguided) fear of salmonella takes hold. Milk engenders nearly the same degree of reflexive revulsion, as I learned when I engaged in a recent and unlikely trend by serving milk punch at a little get- together the other week. “Milk and lemon juice together?” someone asked. “But doesn’t it curdle?”
Yes it does, and that’s precisely when it gets interesting. Clarified milk punch, a delicious treat dating back to at least the 19th century, has slowly crept onto cocktail menus of late. The principal appeal lies in the slightly oily sweetness that remains after you scald milk, curdle it, and filter out the white solids from the milk. Whatever remains behind — presumably lactose, water and some fats? — the result is sweet and slippery. Drinks writer David Wondrich once called milk punch “unctuous,” but I’m not quite certain that’s quite the right word to describe the silky- smooth deliciousness. You really do have to try it.
So where can you? In this country, milk punch has been spotted at Vancouver’s Bambudda and Toronto’s sadly defunct Geraldine. I have it on good authority — because he dropped off a test batch at my house — that Vincent Pollard of Toronto’s Bar Raval has an exquisite “Toronto milk punch” in the works for its next menu update. Containing rye whisky, lapsang souchong tea, Fernet- Branca and other unlikely things added to the essence of milk, it happens to have been one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted, a slippery-sweet fluid with a tang of yogurt and a bouquet of winter spice. Just wait.
If you want to play along at home in the meantime, I applaud the impulse but warn you that it’s a lot of work: The online version of this column contains a recipe for a basic milk punch by one Mary Rockett, who lived in late Victorian England. The gist is that you make a mixture of brandy, sugar and lemon juice and then pour hot whole milk into it. The milk curdles almost immediately: White squidgy blobs form before your eyes with a speed that is both miraculous and sort of gross. Then you really get to work filtering out the curds.
In my mad obsession, I gave my milk punch an uncalled- for third filtration by lining a funnel with coffee filters and letting it slowly drip through. You’ll go through a few dozen filters and it takes hours, but the result is fully transparent punch — another miracle. If this all seems too much like mad science for you, I can assure you that your guests will be awed when you hand them a glass of “milk punch” t hat t hey can see ri ght through. After they get over the initial fear, that is.