To-Die-For Ube Cocktail: An Asinine Yuletide Recipe
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Ube Cocktail (Photo by France Viana)
Uletide UBEggnog-Silog Cocktail
Ingredients
ube (purple yam) extract — like McCormick
eggnog — store-bought
Tanduay rum — or your favorite rum
Kahlua coffee liqueur
calamansi juice — sweetened in cans, or use sweetened fresh lime juice
pinipig — (toasted young green rice) or Rice Krispies
chicharron — crispy pork skins
jellied cranberry sauce — in can
crushed ice — use your halo halo ice crusher
For variation —Lambanog (palm wine)
Have on hand (shouldn’t be a problem if you are even vaguely Filipino)
suman — sticky rice cake wrapped in banana leaves
Queso de Bola — Edam cheese in red wax ball, preferably Marca Piña brand
Noche Buena — standard Christmas midnight buffet with paella, lumpia, galantina, macaroni and fruit salad, fruitcake
Belen — Nativity scene figurine set
Parol — Filipino star-shaped lantern
chestnuts and/or Spanish castanets
More Ube Cocktail (Photo by France Viana)
Directions
· Fill a small glass with ice and pour two shots of rum. You will not put any of this into the cocktail—just drink it to get in the mood.
· Take the toothpicks from the suman that you brought home from the Simbang Gabi, the predawn 4:00 am Mass, and prop your eyelids open.
· Open the can of jellied cranberry and unmold vertically onto a plate. No, it won’t go into the drink either, but it’s a must for the Noche Buena midnight buffet. You might as well do it now while you can still be neat and keep all those line marks intact — you will be too drunk later. Plus, you can jiggle it to entertain yourself while the eggnog chills.
· Fill a cocktail shaker with ice, 1 ounce eggnog, 2 ounces rum, 1 ounce Kahlua coffee liqueur, 2 ounces calamansi juice and 10 drops of ube extract. If you don’t have a shaker, use the empty cranberry can. See, there is method to this madness.
· Ube extract has a wonderful perfumy fragrance; if you can’t smell it, you haven’t kicked that bad habit of dabbing Vicks VapoRub on your nostrils. A few drops of the extract may fall on your clothes, don’t fret. Take the shirt off and save it for New Year’s Day when wearing polka dots is considered lucky.
· On YouTube, play Ang Pasko Ay Sumapit Christmas Carol. The Filipino Choir of Los Angeles has a good version. Shake the shaker vigorously in rhythm with the first verse. If you are still going by the second verse, you’ve shaken too long and the ice will be chipped. Drink up the whole cocktail quickly, go back to the beginning and start a new one. If homesickness tears begin to flow, catch them in the shaker; a little salt always helps.
· Prepare some appetizers: Queso de Bola; Marca Piña brand, is best, but be careful, it so expensive there are fakes. If you are too cheap to spring for the real thing, just “make bola” which in Filipino slang means to tell tall tales and hyperboles. You can say that the cheese ball rolled out of the grocery bag and you ran over it with your new Tesla, which is why it is flat and looks suspiciously like sliced American cheese.
· Castañas (roasted chestnuts) are also good to serve. This is no time to decolonize, after all we are celebrating Christmas, the major conquistador holiday, so display our Spanish heritage. Take comfort that we exact revenge on our colonizers when we perform our heathen rituals, like Karaoke. If you don’t have chestnuts, bring out the castanets for your guests to gnaw on.
· Strain the liquid into a highball glass, fill with crushed ice, and stir with a long spoon. If you don’t have a long spoon, don’t try to use the giant wooden one from the pair hanging on your wall. Instead take some fried lumpia (eggrolls) from the buffet and stir with those. Crush some pinipig toasted rice and chicharron, and rim the glass with the mixture. Now you have a bonafide liquid silog (egg combination dish), complete with pork, rice and eggs, plus with the Kahlua, coffee. Ayos!
· Some people like fruit in their cocktails; be judicious. It is ok to add a little pineapple from the macaroni salad, or the canned fruit salad swimming in condensed milk, but stay away from the candied fruits in the fruitcake. If you have already filched out some candied fruits, wrap them in foil and give them to the inevitable guest you won’t know from Adam who will show up out of the blue on Christmas Day claiming to be your inaanak (godchild) and demanding a gift. This will get rid of them for good.
· I forgot: you will need a couple of olives. Take them from the paella on the Noche Buena buffet; don’t wash off the squid ink, it will add some depth of flavor.
· Hold your glass up to the parol star-shaped lantern to check the color. It should be a deep lavender hue. If it is too pale, do not add more ube extract, it may get too sweet; instead, re-paper the parol with red crepe paper or cellophane. Quickly quaff that off-colored drink and start a fresh batch. Repeat as needed until the parol reflects the correct color. Don’t have a parol? Hold the drink up against your Louis Vuitton bag to make your guests salivate on cue.
· Garnish your drink with a slice of lime or chicharron chip. Get creative. Me, I like to raid the Belen set on the home altar and top my glass with the ass in the manger. Cheers!
Variation: Bicol To Heaven Express
Every year, dozens of unfortunate souls have an unplanned mystical experience and die around the holidays from drinking lambanog (palm wine) made in backyard distilleries. Improperly-processed lambanog contains residual methanol which in high levels is positively lethal to humans. If you really must have lambanog, try this:
Directions
· First, go to Confession
· Then, follow the above recipe, substituting backyard lambanog for the rum
· Drink it up by the Last Supper artwork in your plastic-covered dining room
· Meet your Redeemer
Silent Night, Ho-Ho-Ho-ly Night!
France Viana, the self-proclaimed Empress of Ube, is an artist, art historian, curator, and mythologist. She engages in social practice and employs food in live performances, photographs and installations to interrogate how Filipinx immigration is redefining what it means to be American.
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