{"id":40,"date":"2006-11-03T12:20:48","date_gmt":"2006-11-03T16:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/2006\/11\/coffee-you-can-eat\/"},"modified":"2007-09-03T12:45:38","modified_gmt":"2007-09-03T16:45:38","slug":"coffee-you-can-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/2006\/11\/coffee-you-can-eat\/","title":{"rendered":"Coffee you can eat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Times<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A few years ago the Italian coffee company Lavazza hired the world\u2019s leading molecular gastronomist, Ferran Adr\u00eca, to come up with coffee you can eat. The Spanish chef, known as the wizard of foam, converted a cappuccino into a sort of pudding Jell-O, and last month \u201cEspesso\u201d was introduced in this country in the Lavazza shops in Chicago.
\nWhat\u2019s amusing is that any home cook could do just as well without setting foot near a laboratory. Simply treating coffee as an ingredient in cooking is so much easier than all that mad science. Something as basic as steeping coffee beans in milk or cream is the first step toward a souffl\u00e9 or mousse. Adding espresso powder to brownie or cake batter or brewed coffee to a sauce will also produce the miracle of coffee you can eat.
\nIt\u2019s easy to see why the concept is so compelling in an age when great coffee beans are so easy to find and so seductive you want to turn them into more than a wake-up drink before breakfast or after a heavy dinner. Already a few quintessentially Italian coffee-converted-to-food ideas have taken hold in this country, particularly granita (frozen espresso) and tiramisu (layers of richness cut with very strong espresso) and coffee ice cream (gelato by another name).
\nBut coffee can do so much more, in the same way wine can. The same attributes that make a Syrah or a Muscadet so suited to a braise or a sauce apply to coffee, too: rich, full flavor and an almost intoxicating aroma.
\nCoffee also has one big advantage over wine. You can use it in other forms beside liquid. A couple of tablespoons of ground beans can jazz up many desserts, without affecting the balance of liquid to solid in recipes such as cookies where that is crucial, and can even be used as a dry marinade for beef, duck breasts or pork chops.
\nChefs, many as well known as Ferran Adr\u00eca, have long made coffee edible as well as drinkable by taking a shortcut. Their guilty secret is espresso powder, which is intensely concentrated coffee essence. Admittedly, it packs a powerful punch — I keep Cafe Bustelo in my freezer for baking; it might not make much of an espresso for drinking but it does sends coffee flavor straight through a panful of brownies. But if you start your morning with excellent espresso, you already have a better ingredient on hand.
\nOne of the more venerable tricks in American cooking is deglazing with coffee. Southern and Western cooks originated the idea of splashing from the coffeepot into the skillet when making gravy with ham, and the result has always been known as redeye gravy, to be ladled over biscuits or grits. The almost bitter coffee counters the richness of the cured pork to produce a sauce good enough to pass for French but quintessentially American.
\nA splash of brewed coffee and a little cream added at the end of saut\u00e9ing shiitakes has just as dramatic effect, and equally so with a sauce for a seared duck breast. Brewed coffee goes together like cream and sugar with braised onions, too. And of course coffee is a time-honored secret ingredient in barbecue sauce, for its almost smoky essence.
\nYou can also eat coffee in both a dry rub and a braising liquid for a beef brisket \u2014 marinated overnight in a mixture of kosher salt, sugar, chile powder and espresso powder, the fatty, fibrous meat takes on the coffee flavor while excreting extraneous liquid, while the cooking liquid imparts a double dose of flavor.
\nBut coffee you can eat turns up most often in dessert, whether in souffl\u00e9s, parfaits, tiramisu or mousse. That\u2019s the time it fits the best with its natural partners, cream and sugar, and also with spices, particularly cardamom or cinnamon. Another Italian classic is fresh ricotta combined with espresso powder, sugar and rum and served cold.
\nCoffee\u2019s aggressive flavor is especially effective in buttery batters, especially any involving chocolate, and especially brownies. The combination doubles the caffeine, which is why I renamed my favorite fast dessert, made from a Jack Bishop recipe he calls double mocha brownies, buzz bars. (As good as the recipe is for brownies, it can also be made in a round pan and served as a cake.) Espresso is also a jazzy addition to muffin batter, especially one using chocolate chips.
\nIn cooking with coffee, the most important consideration is using the best possible beans. I use them ground for espresso, which is very fine, and I\u2019m partial to blends from Italy \u2014 rather than beans from a specific country \u2014 because they have that wine-worthy aspect. Even more than with wine, you want to cook with a coffee you would happily drink on its own.
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Los Angeles Times A few years ago the Italian coffee company Lavazza hired the world\u2019s leading molecular gastronomist, Ferran Adr\u00eca, to come up with coffee you can eat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actual-cooking","category-coffee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}