I love me some butter chicken. So when I created curry coffee last Friday, I couldn’t help but see what happens when one of butter chicken’s defining ingredients was added.
(yeah, butter, not chicken)
It gave the coffee a completely different, but not entirely unpleasant, smell. Taste-wise, it was like adding butter on top of spicy coffee. No real complimenting of flavours going on.
I’ll stick with “normal” curry flavored coffee.
It sure looks cool though!
Spice on the grounds, spice on the grounds, lookin’ like a fool with your spice on the grounds.
“Curry” is such a general term that no two curry recipes are alike. This is a classy culinary blog, so I didn’t want to resort to the mysterious “curry powder.” Instead, I extracted the core message of all existing recipes: curry is just taking all the spices in your cupboard and throwing them together.
For the record, that’s garlic powder, turmeric, cumin, cayenne, and paprika. About 1/4 tsp of each, on top of regular medium roast coffee grounds, brewed with about 6 cups of water. I was afraid this would clog the filter basket, but it brewed just fine.
Now, before I even sip this, I want to comment on the smell. My nose is currently telling me that my apartment is an Indian restaurant. Since I love Indian restaurants, that is a very good thing.
A bit of a film on top, but nothing to be concerned about.
No cream or sugar to mess this up. I had high hopes for a straight black spicy coffee, and I was not disappointed. Dark chocolate and chili have become a common pair lately, and the same delightful bitter / spicy combo is present here. The flavour is completely infused into the coffee; no texture problems this time, not even at the bottom.
I think I stumbled on just the right amount of spice. It’s got kick without being undrinkable. For more adventurous coffee drinkers, I highly recommend giving this a try.
In fact, I’m gonna go ahead and dub this the first official PWTIC success story.
Namaste, curry coffee.
I came across this video over on Sensible Erection (possibly NSFW link). Gonna go try this now.
By the way, I am extremely appreciative of the love this blog has received in the last few days. It’s been picked up by a few food blogs and news sites (starting with Reddit and The Smithsonian’s Food & Think blog), sending thousands of people this way. Now that people are actually paying attention, I’ll try to update more than once a month.
The Smithsonian’s Food & Think blog has just posted about coffee, and putting weird things in it. They gave a much-appreciated shout-out to this here blog, and also gave me lots of ideas for delicious coffee additions.
The long tradition of putting egg in coffee caught my attention. John Steinbeck once wrote: “I cracked an egg and cupped out the yolk and dropped white and shells into the pot, for I know nothing that polishes coffee and makes it shine like that.” Me, I’ve learned a few things in my time, for example: 1) Don’t argue with John Steinbeck; and 2) Shiny things kick ass.
lol! jk!
I crumbled the shell by hand and just dropped it right in there.
Then put the rest of the egg in the mug to await its caffeine infusion. I know I know, Steinbeck recommended just the white, but it’s not like I’m on a freakin’ diet.
The brewed coffee didn’t look any more shiny than usual, but it had yet to meet the rest of the egg.
I saw a few floaty chunks as I was pouring, but I was surprised by how well the majority of the egg blended smoothly with the coffee.
Of course, when you dig for them, the chunks are still there.
The taste is actually quite good. Honestly the egg doesn’t affect the flavour much (or the shine), but it does have a slightly thicker texture that is quite nice. I barely needed to add cream or sugar. The aftertaste seems to linger longer than regular coffee. As if the flavour is glued to the roof of my mouth for a few minutes rather than washing away like regular drinks.
As usual, the only real problem comes at the bottom of the cup. I’ve used the “warm snot” analogy before, but, well, it’s even more appropriate here.
I think, what the world needs now, is love swe a coffee mug that, somehow, has a bottom that can be cut off from the rest of the coffee and removed after a few minutes. Sure, I could put it through a filter, but I think that would mess with the flavour. This invention is, um, copyright and patent pending and stuff.
In the interest of science I also tried the egg shell brewed coffee on its own. It may have had a less-bitter, more-chalky flavour, but it’s subtle at best.
Until next time, coffee lovers. It was eggsellent to see you.
Coffee can have a smokey kind of flavour. I had some smoked salmon cream cheese lying around. Are they a match made in heaven?
I thought it was really just artificially fish-flavoured and pinkified cream cheese, but the third ingredient is real honest-to-goodness smoked salmon.
Be sure to avoid leftover bagel crumbs stuck in the cream cheese.
In with the coffee. This one needs to be mixed up really good. But even then…
My god—it’s full of stars.
It looks really cool when you swirl it around.
Ah, but my arch nemesis, texture, is back. The bits that refused to melt tasted like little blobs of half-melted rubber. Maybe adding cream will help.
Er…nope.
The taste of the coffee itself was actually not that bad. Once I was able to suspend the knowledge that I was drinking coffee with fish in it, I realized that the smokiness of the salmon actually did go pretty well with the earthy Sumatra coffee I used.
I thought maybe the chunks were just cream cheese that refused to melt, so I threw the mug in the microwave for a while. All that accomplished was a fishy-smelling microwave. I’m thinking the rubbery white bits were the salmon itself, which given their unrecognizable state, tells you something about the quality of the salmon used in the cream cheese. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to list “ground up fish product” on the ingredients label.
Maybe if the coffee was drained through a very fine filter (say, a coffee filter), it would be drinkable. Delicious even. But unfortunately I tossed it down the drain in disgust before I thought of this. Maybe next time. Stay tuned.
You asked for cheese, so I bring you cheese.
So let’s say you order a pizza and two dipping sauces. You eat the pizza, dipping all the way, but in the end you still have half a blue cheese dipping sauce left over. What could you possibly do? Well, when you run a blog called Putting Weird Things in Coffee, the answer is obvious.
Mind those leftover pizza crumbs!
It looked okay at first. I eagerly anticipated the smooth, creamy, savoury goodness. Then I stirred.
It immediately became a curdled mess. The smell was oddly familiar, not unlike vomit after the drunken inhalation of late-night street pizza.
I couldn’t just dump it without at least one sip, so I bravely filled the cup and plunged in.
As soon as my lips hit the coffee, I knew it wasn’t going to end well. It was a multi-step experience; the top layer of curdled blue cheese had a sour taste that hurt my tongue. Then the actual coffee broke through and added some earthy bitterness. I forced myself to swallow, but now I’m regretting it, because it’s been half an hour since that sip and both the taste in my mouth and the feeling in my belly resemble having just gotten my guts forcibly ripped from my body, through my mouth.
All in all, I don’t recommend putting blue cheese in coffee.
Just a quick note to point out a link suggested by Tatiana … Juustoleipä, an Excuse to Dip Cheese in Coffee.
I’ve been meaning to try various cheeses in coffee for a while. I’d never heard of this form of cheese, but apparently it is often made with reindeer milk. Maybe some coffee and juustoleipä can make a delicious unpronounceable Christmas treat.
Stay tuned for my inevitable experiments with cheddar, blue cheese, and cheese-in-a-can.
In the comments on a previous post, reader Leah made a wonderful and simple suggestion: “Cake!!”
I just so happened to have some Mississippi Mud Pie lying around. But what is the best way to get its chocolatey nutty mocha-ey flavour into coffee? Well, I’ve never been a fan of subtlety, so I just dropped the whole damn thing in.
Add some cream and sugar.
Then supercharge that mocha flavour with some coffee.
And blend the heck out of it.
The thing I immediately noticed about the finished product was that it looked like a foamy fancy drink, and smelled delicious.
The taste was good, but not as sweet or as bold as I thought it would be. It was like a mild hot chocolate. Obviously the mocha flavour, which stands out in the cake on its own, was all but absent in a drink that’s 3/4 coffee.
I’ve done some undocumented experiments with nuts before, and found that whole nuts (vs. nut butter) give coffee a gritty texture without the subtle nutty flavour I desired. The candied pecans here were no exception, even though there weren’t many. I was surprised that the rest of the cake blended smoothly into the coffee, though, leaving only some nut bits at the bottom.
Overall, it was good, but for all the calories I’d rather just make a nice café mocha.
I gotta try this with other cakes. I bet vanilla birthday cake with lots of icing would be delicious.
Is that a banana in your coffee, or are you just happy to see me?
Directions: Put a banana, sugar, and some chocolate powder in coffee. Blend.
The first few sips were not bad. Like a mocha with a bit of banana flavour in the background. I was surprised by how smoothly the banana blended into the coffee.
But it began to get thicker with every sip. After two or three minutes, it became apparent that something had gone horribly wrong. Soon, instead of sipping coffee, my lips hit a jelly-like mass.
It’s clear that some sort of curdling or condensing or something has gone on here. I couldn’t bring myself to drink any more. I carried the jiggling mess to the sink.
I’m very sorry to have to show you this, but you must be warned to never, ever put bananas in your coffee.
Banana mocha coffee may sound delicious, but seriously kids, just say no.
