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Infuse your desserts, sauces with coffee flavor
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I fell in love with the taste of coffee at the breakfast table at my grandparent's home in St. Clair, Mich., at the age of 4. Grandpa put a teaspoon of his coffee in my glass of milk, giving it a hint of the coffee flavor. That's all it took to get me hooked.
Later I graduated to coffee, espresso, cappuccino, Turkish coffee, all sorts of other coffee beverages. Some are the Middle Eastern coffees made with finely ground coffee briefly boiled with water and sugar and sometimes with spices such as clove or cardamom. The liquid is poured very slowly into a demitasse so that the coffee grounds don't spill into the cup. The aroma of cardamom, in particular, is captivating.
When cooking with coffee, candy and dessert recipes are likely to come to mind first. Coffee and chocolate make a fine pairing, not just in a mocha latte, but in chocolate desserts. Coffee is often the secret ingredient in cakes, puddings and all kinds of chocolate sweets. It adds a certain depth of flavor without announcing its presence.
For a more obvious version of the coffee-chocolate blending of tastes, I sometimes make a coffee frosting and spread it on a batch of brownies. The simplest frosting has strong coffee, milk, butter and powdered sugar in it. You might try it on your next batch of brownies for a change.
Years ago an Indonesian friend made one of the most unusual coffee desserts I've ever tasted. I've never forgotten her mix of avocado, sugar, coffee concentrate, cream and crushed ice. I shouldn't have been surprised that she chose this coffee-flavored dessert to prepare for us. After all, some of our most popular coffees such as Sumatra and Java come from her country.
In these warm-climate Asian countries where coffee grows, coffee beverages are made with roasted coffee beans ground more finely than for espresso. Sometimes seeds or even whole green cardamom pods are ground with the coffee beans to add to the exotic flavor. It's served with sweetened condensed milk instead of - or sometimes with - heavy cream. If you want to taste it, look for it on the menus of some of our local Asian restaurants.
Powdered or instant coffee is often used in savory recipes. It's usually diluted with a small amount of water before it's added to the recipe. You also can get this strong coffee flavor with double- or triple-strength brewed coffee, but if you decide to substitute brewed coffee for the instant, be careful to maintain the overall ratio of liquid to dry ingredients.
Coffee also shows up in recipes for marinades, rubs and barbecue sauces for meat, especially pork, and occasionally, in mild versions, with chicken. You can use brewed or dissolved powdered coffee in marinades. Use dried, powdered coffee with a blend of other dry and/or grated ingredients to make a rub. These dried seasonings are usually mixed with a little water or vegetable oil to make paste so they'll stick to the meat.
Sometimes a little coffee is added to tomato-based sauces for pasta or to stews and even to chili. It adds an almost imperceptible note of bitterness to make the overall flavor mysteriously complex - unless, of course, you toss it in with a heavy hand.
My favorite coffee treat is probably coffee ice cream, the indulgent version of the coffee-in-milk idea. Even now, when I crave it, I'll sometimes dodge the extra fat grams and calories and put some coffee in skim milk with some ice cubes to satisfy my whim. It makes me think of my grandpa.
Source : Wednesday, 08/29/07 in the Tennessean
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