Coffee flavoring is distinctive in most
dessert recipes, but when adding to meat
dishes, it tends to bring out the meat flavor
without an overpowering coffee flavor. Try
some of these coffee recipes to perk up your
home cooking. The coffee in these recipes may
be in brewed, whole bean or granulated form
so be sure to read the recipe thoroughly
before beginning to be sure you have the
proper ingredients.
In
cooking, coffee should be treated as a spice.
However, the rules are similar to those you
would apply when preparing coffee for
drinking. Lighter roasts are more delicate
but also more acidic, while darker ones are
robust, toasty and strong. It's these that
work best in cooked dishes where the coffee
must hold its own against other powerful
flavours
Delectable
coffee recipes, and not just the liquid
variety, abound in these pages. Choose from
among hot and cold coffee drinks (many of
them the alcoholic variety, like Coffee Punch
a la Russe, Cafe Brulot, or Spanish-style
Iced Coffee) coffee cakes, pies, souffles and
ice creams, to come up with your favorite
caffeinated concoction
Coffee
Types
The most desirable coffee is grown in
altitudes about 3000 feet. The altitude
produces more elegant, complex flavors in the
coffee cherries which contain the beans. The
fruit must be hand-picked from trees which
can bear flowers, green fruit, and ripe
cherries all at the same time. The outer pulp
and parchment of the coffee cherry are
removed to reveal two beans, which are then
cleaned, dried, graded and hand-inspected.
The beans range in color from pale green to
dark yellow when raw. They are exported in
their raw state for roasting, blending and
grinding at their final destination. Most
commercial companies use primarily C. robusta
and C. arabica in their blends.
• American
(regular) roast: beans are
medium-roasted, resulting in a moderate brew,
not too light or too heavy in flavor.
• French roast and dark French
roast: heavily-roasted beans, a deep
chocolate brown which produce a stronger
coffee.
• Italian roast: glossy,
brown-black, strongly flavored, used for
espresso.
• European roast: two-thirds
heavy-roast beans blended with one-third
regular-roast.
• Viennese roast:
one-third heavy-roast beans blended with
two-thirds regular-roast.
• Instant coffee: a powder
made of heat-dried freshly brewed coffee.
• Freeze-dried coffee:
brewed coffee that has been frozen into a
slush before the water is evaporated,
normally more expensive that instants but
with a superior flavor.
• Decaffeinated coffee:
caffeine is removed from the beans before
roasting via the use of a chemical solvent
(which disappears completely when the beans
are roasted) or the Swiss water process which
steams the beans and then scrapes off the
caffeine-laden outer layers.
