This holiday season, when you’re getting ready to nestle up by the fire with an eggnog and a plate of cookies, consider enhancing your cool factor (something has to counteract those big patterned socks) by treating the family to an eggnog recipe from hippest-of-the-hip jazz legend Charles Mingus. Mingus’s 5-Star Rapturous Deadly Holiday Eggnog, which we first heard about over at skies of blue, might be a little vaguer/more alcoholic than your typical eggnog recipe, but we would expect nothing less from the passionate Mingus. In her book Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs , Janet Coleman writes, “Mingus’s holiday eggnog was a concoction so delicious and mind-blowing, you would do anything to make sure that you saw him at Christmas. Over the phone once, he gave me the recipe.” Click through to read Charles Mingus’s holiday eggnog recipe, and if anyone’s brave enough to try it, let us know how it goes in the comments.
1. Separate one egg for one person. Each person gets an egg. 2. Two sugars for each egg, each person. 3. One shot of rum, one shot of brandy per person. 4. Put all the yolks into one big pan, with some milk. 5. That’s where the 151 proof rum goes. Put it in gradually or it’ll burn the eggs. 6. OK. The whites are separate and the cream is separate. 7. In another pot— depending on how many people— put in one shot of each, rum and brandy. (This is after you whip your whites and your cream.) 8. Pour it over the top of the milk and yolks. 9. One teaspoon of sugar. Brandy and rum. 10. Actually you mix it all together. 11. Yes, a lot of nutmeg. Fresh nutmeg. And stir it up. 12. You don’t need ice cream unless you’ve got people coming and you need to keep it cold. Vanilla ice cream. You can use eggnog. I use vanilla ice cream. 13. Right, taste for flavor. Bourbon? I use Jamaica Rum in there. Jamaican Rums. Or I’ll put rye in it. Scotch. It depends. See, it depends on how drunk I get while I’m tasting it.