The bar was three deep in the lounge area of East Harlem’s Gran Piatto D’Oro restaurant last weekend and the shots — filled with a creamy, ivory-hued sweet concoction — plentiful and free.
“Ooh, I can taste the fresh coconut,” one imbiber assessed, before sampling the next of five competing batches.
“Too much nutmeg,” another said, wincing in dissatisfaction.
This was the fifth qualifying event of the annual Coquito Masters since early November, held by the International Coquito Federation to determine the best recipe for what is commonly described as “Puerto Rican eggnog.”
“A lot of people don’t know what coquito is,” says Debbie Quinones, who founded the federation 11 years ago to promote the holiday beverage.
“It’s not eggnog with a shot of rum, it’s more than that. It needs a specific consistency and body — it’s like looking for a white unicorn in a cup,” says Quinones.
The winner that night was 69-year-old Emilio F. Carillo, a retired exec who grew up drinking it in East Harlem with family during the holidays. “Everybody made it, and everybody wanted to know whose was better,” Carillo says.
Frank Maldonado, executive chef at Puerto Rican restaurants Sazon in TriBeCa and Sofrito in Midtown and White Plains, has been making and selling his own version for the past few years. “On the most basic level, the major difference between coquito and eggnog is that the former is a traditional drink native to Puerto Rico whereas eggnog is native to the United States,” he says. “Both drinks are associated with Christmas, but while eggnog is milk- and egg-based, coquito has a very prominent coconut and spicy-tea base. Essentially, it’s a blend of coconut cream, evaporated milk, condensed milk, spices and rum. The result should be a rich, bone-white, creamy concoction with flecks of cinnamon.
Maldonado, who ran restaurants in his native Puerto Rico before moving to New York in 2006, is one of the few in the city to sell coquito, which means “small coconut,” in a retail establishment. (It’s offered as a dessert cocktail in the special prix fixe menu at each of his locations. In White Plains, it comes alcohol-free.)
Most procure the sweet drink from Puerto Rican friends and family, who traditionally make batches every holiday season.
“A lot of my neighbors make it,” says Diana Perez, a 35-year-old Mexican-American food stylist who recently made the trek down from her home in Washington Heights to Sazon and remembers trying it for the first time as a child on the Upper West Side. “That was the highlight of the Christmas season at school — non-alcoholic, of course.”
Perez takes a sip of the thick concoction from a snifter filled by Maldonado. “His is just perfect,” she says. “It gives you a buzz, but it won’t make you frat-party drunk.” She says she’s seen fliers advertising homemade coquito posted in laundromats around her neighborhood.
“It’s our moonshine,” says chef John Colon, from La Brisa Farm Café at La Marqueta in East Harlem. “We do it from home.”
That said, in order to offer his tipple at La Brisa Farm, he had to obtain a license and up his standards. “It can’t come out of abuelita’s kitchen,” he adds.
Colon, who’s been drinking coquito since the age of six, also points out how competitive coquito makers can be. “It’s a pride thing,” he says. “You want to show off your stock. Everybody throws in a spice or two that offsets it and makes it over the top — like ‘wow,’ mediocre, or ‘yuck.’”
So what’s in his recipe? “I can’t tell you or I’ll have to kill you,” he says.
TRY THESE RECIPES!
Coquito by Frank Maldonado
Ingredients
3/4 cup Spiced Tea
(see below)
1 cup cream of coconut
1 cup condensed milk
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1-1/2 cups Don Q Gold rum
Spiced Tea
2 cups hot water
1/4 cup fresh ginger mashed
6 whole cloves
4 cinnamon sticks
6 anise stars
Cooking Instructions
Place the tea ingredients in a saucepan and pan boil for 5 minutes. Strain and set aside. Then place the cooled tea, coconut milk, condensed milk and ground cinnamon in the blender or hand blender. With the it on, add the evaporated milk, cream of coconut and rum. Chill for 4 hours in the refrigerator. Serves 25, when poured as a shot, which is traditionally how Coquito is served.
Eggnog from “King Cocktail” Dale DeGroff
Ingredients
1.5 ounces Makers Mark Bourbon
4 ounces fresh apple cider
1 egg
1.5 teaspoons sugar
1-2 dashes of Dale’s
Pimento Bitters
Cooking Instructions
Assemble bourbon, cider, egg, and sugar in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake very well to completely emulsify the egg. Strain over ice into a large goblet and top with freshly grated nutmeg. Serves 6.