Hi, Friends of Cocktails. There’s dozens of Negroni variants, but we still can’t get enough, so today we'll make it in another form - a Foam Negroni you can eat. And to make it an adult version of an Easter Egg, we’ll serve it in an egg shell, so I’ll call it an Eggroni! This will be the second Easter-themed cocktail on the channel, with the first one being The Bunny’s Favorite Cocktail, a Margarita riff with acid adjusted carrot juice, tequila, agave syrup and rimmed with carrot-salt.
The inspiration for both of these cocktails comes from a special 3-part Easter Cocktail Menu I prepared 4 years ago at the cocktail bar I worked at, and not a lot of people showed up… so here we are! To make the Eggroni a true Negroni variation I still wanted to keep its DNA, so firstly you’ll need gin, Campari and sweet vermouth. For gin I’ll be using Plymouth, and Campari is of course non-negotiable. For sweet vermouth I’m going with 9 Di Dante Inferno.
9 Di Dante is a vermouth flavored with 27 botanicals, nine of which have been "carefully chosen to guide you through Dante's 9 circles of hell”, although the taste is anything but that. Now, if you were to pour this into an iSi Siphon and make a foam with it the bitterness would just overpower everything. Also it would just go flat pretty quickly, so to balance the flavor we need a few extra things: water for the dilution, honey syrup for the sweetness, tartaric acid for some wine sourness, saline solution - of course, and a little beetroot powder for the color, but this is optional.
For the foaming agent I originally went with egg white, and that worked fine, but I’ve found an alternative that gives better results… It’s called Sosa ProEspuma and it makes light foam from a liquid state when used with a Nitrous Oxide Gas for Cream Whippers. This one is to be used with cold liquids so it’s perfect for our Eggroni. It also adds less flavor than egg white, but you can also of course gelatine or methylcellulose, but ProEspuma is more stable than both.
But enough of that, we first need to prepare our serving vessel, an empty and thoroughly cleaned egg shell, and for garnish I’ll sprinkle it with a little dehydrated orange peel. Back in the day I carefully cracked the egg shells with a knife, trying to get a clean cut around the top, but luckily I’ve found a handy tool that does that for me, the Egg Topper. Because you take off the top… of the egg… let’s start, it’s Cocktail Time!
Egg “Glass”
● Large chicken eggs
Try to find the largest chicken eggs you can - or dragon eggs, if you’re hosting a party. Give them a good rinse under water before we use the tool to cut open the first egg. Gently hold the egg, place the egg topper on the top of the egg and release the spring to crack the egg with a clean cut. Carefully open the egg and pour out the contents which you’ll of course use in your favorite way (sunny side up is my preferred option). Now do that with a couple of eggs, so you can share the cocktail, then place the egg shells in boiling water for 3 minutes.
After 3 minutes take the egg shells out, leave them to dry and that’s it. With that we can start building the cocktail, which we’ll mix with a stick blender and transfer into a cream whipper.
Eggroni
● 60mL (2oz) Plymouth Gin
● 60mL (2oz) Campari
● 60mL (2oz) Sweet Vermouth
● 140mL (4.75oz) water
● 22.5mL (0.75oz) honey syrup
● 7.5mL (0.25oz) 6% tartaric acid solution
● 4 drops 20% saline solution
● 10% of total weight ProEspuma
● 1g beetroot powder
● sprinkle dehydrated orange zest
Add all but the orange zest to a tall container to prevent splashing and mix with a stick blender, then pour the cocktail inside the iSi Whipper, that we’ll charge with 1 nitrous oxide cartridge. Now give the Whipper a good shake then place it in the fridge to chill properly. If you don’t have any dehydrated orange zest on hand, you can make some while our cocktail chills by grating the peel of a thoroughly washed orange and placing it in the oven for about 1-2 hours at minimum temperature to dehydrate completely.
Simple as that, you now have a dusting of orange zest, so with everything ready it’s finally time to serve the cocktail. You could use those small little ceramic egg holders for boiled eggs, but in the spirit of easter let’s say the bunny brought us some nice fake greenery, almost as a bed for our easter cocktail egg shell. Place the egg on top and fill it to the brim with our Negroni foam. Sprinkle it with a dusting of dehydrated orange zest in place of the typical orange peel, add a small spoon and make sure the kids don’t find this during the easter egg hunt. Cheers!
Aroma is that of a Negroni with amaro and citrus on the nose, but a bit on the subtle side, due to the dehydrated orange. Flavorwise it has all characteristics of the Italian classic, but the completely different mouthfeel makes it something special. That, together with the original Negroni DNA, make it well worth a try, and the small serving is the perfect size for a foamy cocktail. Have we taken the Negroni too far? I don’t think so…
Making foam cocktails that you can eat is a way to present a cocktail in a different and fun way for your friends or customers, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about it. What other cocktail do you think would be fun to eat? Let me know in the comments of the episode on YouTube, and don’t forget to check out the Bunny’s Favorite Cocktail, and I’ll see you next week. Cheers, Friends of Cocktails.