101 Things to do with an egg… Sex up your Nog!
December 15, 2011
So the Sex and the City girls did it for Cosmopolitans. The Mad Men revived the Old Fashioned. Vodka Martinis are inseparable from James Bond, Miles from Sideways championed Pinot Noir, and Homer is the poster boy for Duff beer. Even White Russians sound tempting when The Dude is drinking them. But who is campaigning on behalf of egg nog? Why is this transatlantic nutmeg-sprinkled yuletide drink so out of favour? I mean, what’s not to like? It’s creamy… sweet… protein filled… and 3 or 4 of them will have you dragging pretty much anyone under the Christmas tree. Clearly what egg nog needs in a new, elegant, hard bitten, ice cool detective to kick start its PR campaign. Someone with the silky smoothness of perhaps Denzel Washington , the curvaceous qualities of a girl like Christina Hendricks and the homely bourbon pathos of say, Steve Buscemi. Step forward… David Mitchell?
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs, separated
- 50–75g caster sugar
- 100ml rum or bourbon
- 200ml full-cream milk
- 150ml whipping cream
- Freshly grated nutmeg, to serve
Method
- Whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar for a few minutes with an electric whisk until pale, light and fluffy. Now whisk in the rum or bourbon a little at a time, then whisk in the milk. (The mixture will separate over time, so it may need to be whisked again.)
- In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Fold the boozy egg mixture into the whites, slurp by slurp. Finally, whip the cream until it just holds its shape and fold that into the mixture as well.
- Ladle into punch glasses and serve with a dusting of nutmeg. Mmmmm.
Poultry Power – Electric Vibes from the Chicken Coop!
October 5, 2011
The Chicken has to profess to being all a-cluck about a new series is starting 9pm tomorrow night on BBC4 - Shock and Awe, the story of Electricity. It has been made by BBC in collaboration with the Open University – see a sneak preview here.
What would we do without electricity, I ask you? We take it so completely for granted, and yet its discovery and innovation are really very recent history. From William Gilbert’s early experiments, via Nikola Tesla’s visionary innovations – and now chickens are doing their bit for the energy crisis with poultry droppings being used to generate electricity!
Thanks to Tony Buckley at the Science & Technology Facilities Council for alerting us and for his help with Hannah’s TESLA GIRL feature film script, which excitingly has just been shortlisted for a Sundance/Sloan commissioning grant!
There’s a New Hen in the Roost!
September 28, 2011
Yes it’s true, there’s a new chicken in the coop, producing a dazzling quality of egg. Hannah Robinson joins Muckle Hen and comes to us with a mountain of fantastic experience as a writer and director of real creativity and quality.
The movie which ignited her passion for film was the chemistry comedy THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT, and she has had a lifelong interest in stories which involve scientific themes. She won the American Screenwriters’ Association Grand Prize for her co-written feature FIREWORKS and was recently commissioned by Scottish Entrepreneur Shaf Rasul (of Dragon’s Den) to write POINT OF NO RETURN, a conspiracy thriller which wove in both an examination of global warming and the lifecycle and neurotropic properties of the Ergot fungi! Her work is usually comic in tone and she continues to work as a screenwriting consultant for the comedian and writer Lenny Henry. (To be honest – we are quite hoping he might make an appearance in the coop himself one day soon.) She has directed numerous short films – her half hour NIGHT SWIMMER won the Grand Prix at Vendôme Film Festival and IN THE MOOD – a comedy about a tap-dancing German spy starring Kelly Brook – was a festival hit internationally.
She has also worked as a writer and director on corporate and commercials for clients as diverse as RBS, Glasgow Caledonian University, The London Fire Brigade, Bosch, Plan International, John Menzies and Scottish Enterprise. She is hugely talented and Muckle Hen are delighted to welcome her to the fold.
However as one chicken enters the coop, so another one must leave to make room and it is with a tear in the eye (although that may just be the onions in my Panini) that we bid farewell to Creative Director Andrew Macintosh after 6 years. He is off to work in a comms role for G2G3. We wish him luck.
