Chestnut Cocoa
I have had a lot of jobs. I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t working at least a little bit. Helping at my grandparent’s factory, babysitting, selling merch for touring bands, cleaning model homes— I did all of this before I had reached the age of majority. One of the more charming ones is officiating weddings. So far, I’ve only done it for friends and family, but it brings me so, so much joy, and I like to think I’m pretty good at this.
Record scratch, freeze frame, etc.
You’re probably wondering how I got here.
So it’s the year 2000-something and my boyfriend and I are very drunk. This memory is so hazy that I am not even sure which boyfriend this might have been, but I have my suspicions. If it was you, please text me. For reasons not clear, we end up deciding what we should do that night is read the Bob Jones University rule book. Why? I don’t know. It was a Tuesday. Why do nineteen-year-olds do anything?
We get fairly riled about how dumb the rules are (separate staircases by gender! dress checks! curfews! no walking on grass!) and end up in some kind of discussion about how bullshit a lot of this religion stuff is, man. Somehow, we conclude we should get ordained that night. I forgot about it immediately; there was a golf hoes and tennis pros party to attend the next evening, I’m sure.
Flash forward maybe a decade, and a friend’s wedding officiant cancels pretty last minute.
“I’m a minister, actually,” I offered. I was probably drunk during this conversation, too.
“Great, rehearsal’s at six.”*
Much like so, so many of the best things in my life, this started off as a joke and ended up falling victim to my insatiable lust for doing stuff for the story. I ended up doing a nice job, and now I’ve done six or seven weddings. This weekend, I had the great honor of doing the much-delayed nuptials for my friends Sarah and Gian out in Los Angeles. This was, uh, the first wedding I have officiated since everything got real bad for me.
When the one-two punch of COVID and the humiliating collapse of my life happened, I very shyly asked the bride if she’d like to ask someone else to perform the service since what the hell do I know? I can’t keep a man, which seems like kind of bad vibes going into one’s own marriage,.
“Are you kidding me? No. If you don’t want to because it makes you too sad, that’s okay, but for us, the list of people we wanted was just you.”
If you saw me crying into my cell phone at the CVS in Westport in Kansas City last winter, no you didn’t.
Going out to LA was fraught for a variety of reasons: traveling during a pandemic, being nervous about my duties, visiting my former husband’s hometown for the first time without him, my general anxiety disorder that was in full technicolor. But I was surprised: taxiing into LAX and watching DTLA come into view felt amazing. Rather than evoking the sense of a prodded bruise, it was revitalizing.
Sarah and Gian’s was one of the most fun weddings I have ever attended— it was a positively ebullient celebration of hope and love for about fifty people underneath a pinky-red Southern California sunset. Without a whimper of complaint, they rescheduled and reworked over and again, and they were rewarded with a perfect night. I cried a lot, but from joy. It was the first time since everything went to hell that I had a glimmer of a feeling that maybe this could happen for me again. Not the wedding part, necessarily, but the bit where I could be that happy and everyone would be that happy for me. This feeling is better than drugs and I will be chasing it for the rest of my life.
If anyone knows how to photograph liquids in a compelling fashion, by allllllll means, please tell me.
My overly emotional bullshit aside, it was absolutely the most stylish wedding I have seen: Italodisco music, explosive colors, a bride wearing Tabi boots, the groom in a terracotta-colored suit, vegan Mexican catering, an ice cream cake. I drank mezcal, I laughed too loudly, I wore an absolutely batshit burnout velvet evening gown, I danced with my old friends, I gorged on tacos. I was unselfconsciously joyful and will shortly have the Instagram pics to prove it.
But now I’m home. It’s about to snow and I need to un-Christmas my home. I should probably do some laundry. I’m beat, but I had promised myself cocoa if I kept it together through the ceremony, and cocoa I shall have.
I found this when leafing through the Nigella Christmas book and didn’t quite understand it. I had thought it was a hot chocolate situation and set my heart upon it. On further investigation, it turns out to be a sort of pot de creme setup, which sounds great but serves six and, critically, is not cocoa. I retooled this until it fit my needs, and I think it succeeds. It’s very rich and this could serve two, but I’m a glutton. This is barely the recipe in the book, but much like the deal I made with myself that I’d be happy again, this absolutely makes good on the rules of engagement past Kirsten made with present Kirsten. Enjoy.
*As an aside, this woman’s brother (maybe twenty himself) hit on me at the reception because, let’s be real, a M[inister]ILF is a rare thing, and I told him I was too old for him. “Nah, babe, how old are you?” Thirty. “OH MY GOD.” He recoiled and, to the best of my knowledge, had a nice time with someone closer to his age. This remains one of my favorite moments of my life.
Chestnut Cocoa
adapted from Nigella Christmas
serves one or two
Ingredients
1.5 cups/350mL whole milk
1/4 cup/60mL cream
1/4 cup/40 grams semisweet chocolate chips (I ran a knife through these to make them smaller so it’d be less grainy, but that’s optional)
1 generous tablespoon/15 or 20 grams chestnut puree
1 shot of dark rum
To Do:
Warm the milk and cream until almost boiling over low-medium heat, whisking constantly so it doesn’t get scalded. Mix in the chocolate chips and whisk until fully integrated, then tip in the chestnut puree. Once everything is all settled, remove from heat and stir in the rum. Serve immediately in a warmed-up mug.