Randy Wong: Double Bassist, Arts Educator, and Researcher

I’m starting to get back on the Milk Punch kick again! These are not the brandy ‘n’ nutmeg milk punches that are commonly made, but a homemade liqueur-like punch made in the style of Mary Rockett’s 1711 recipe.

My first project was a cardamom-lime milk punch, basically an Air India in milk punch form. I was inspired to do this by David & Vani, two friends I made at Drink. D&V invited me to their wedding reception after-party, and to be a good guest, I wanted to present them with something I made myself.

Here’s the recipe:

Cardamom Milk Punch

750 mL gin
1/3 cup whole cardamom
3 limes, zested
1 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 1/4 cup rich simple syrup
2 cups whole milk

Gently muddle the cardamom in a saucepan and toast over low heat. Add 1/4 cup gin; remove from heat before it boils. Funnel this mixture back into the gin bottle and add the zest of 3 limes. Cap the bottle and let sit for the next 48 hours, shaking occasionally.

Remove solids and filter infused liquid into a large clear bowl, pitcher, or wide mouth mason jar. Add lime juice and simple syrup and stir well. (If you are making your own simple syrup, I suggest using caster sugar—or blending your sugar in a food processor to cut down the size of grain—before adding it to water; this helps to make the sugar dissolve quicker). Heat the milk in a saucepan until it is scalding (but not boiling) hot. Pour it directly into the other mixture and let it sit for about an hour, or until it cools and the curds rise and solidify. Strain thoroughly so that all the milk curds are removed, and enjoy the milk punch that remains. Must be stored chilled. You can lighten or thicken the consistency with soda water or hot water, respectively.

Donga Milk Punch

750 mL agricole rum
3 long cinnamon sticks
2 grapefruit, zested
2 limes, zested
1/2 cup grapefruit juice
3/4 cup lime juice
1/2 cup cinnamon simple syrup
2 cups whole milk

Follow the same basic preparations as for the above recipe: Lightly toast the cinnamon sticks over low heat, adding 1/4 cup agricole rum to help with the infusion, etc… makes a lovely milk punch version of Donn Beach’s Donga Punch!

A General Note About Milk Punch Preparation

You’ll have to do a lot of straining. I usually do one round of cheesecloth+metal strainer and then another round through coffee filter paper. It will take a long time, but this is absolutely imperative. Once filtered, your milk punch should be completely clear and totally devoid of any remaining milk solids. Bottle this clear liquid and refrigerate. I’m told that it can keep for two years, but usually it’s gone within the next few weeks.

Sam Treadway, creator of The Gin Wong cocktail, informed me that the new Painkiller restaurant in NYC may be adding two of his drinks—the Gin Wong and the Non-Tiki Tiki—to its drink menu! Regardless of whether either of them actually makes it to the P’s print menu, you should go ahead and order’em anyway.

Sam’s recipe for the Gin Wong can be found here.

Other gin tiki recipes … here.

This is a drink I came up with while ‘tending at The Lodge (The Mayor of Exotica’s home bar) yesterday night. We were helping send-off the Vibranaut… he’s going on a two-month tour with John Williams and The Star Wars In Concert orchestra before moving down to NYC for grad school. But this recipe is another one meant to appeal to my biggest fans… Anyways, here’s the drink:

La Luna Luna

2.0 oz. white Jamaican rum
0.5 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
0.5 oz. house-made allspice falernum (see below for recipe)
0.25 oz. St. Germain
soda float

Serve over crushed ice. Float soda

The centerpiece of this cocktail is an Allspice Falernum I made as an experiment.

To make the Allspice Falernum, first I heat-infused 1/3 cup of whole allspice, half a cinnamon stick, and 1 tbsp. whole cloves in 2 cups of Barbancourt white rum.

I then added this mixture to the remaining rum and let it sit for about 2 months. At that point, I filtered all the solids. Next, I created a rich simple syrup, 1:1:1 demerara sugar, raw cane sugar, and water, and mixed that syrup with the rum mixture in equal parts, storing it in a new bottle. That bottle sat for another few weeks until yesterday night, when I measured out 1 cup of the allspice infusion to take to The Lodge, where I made a lime syrup using equal parts fresh lime juice, water, and sugar. I then combined the lime syrup with the allspice infusion (1:1) and added 2 drops of pure almond extract per each 8 oz. of the combined mixture. The resulting product is a much spicier, thicker, richer one than falernum usually is.

Yeah, I know it sounds like a lot of work, but the result was worth it. Hey, the Allspice Falernum tastes great with soda on the rocks, too…