To provide a taste of the upcoming PWTIC sister blog, Putting Coffee in Weird Things1, I present to you: A Car That Runs on Coffee.
(Thanks Shora!)
P.S. I bet the title fooled you into thinking I’d thrown a carp in coffee. Not yet, my friends, not yet.
P.P.S. Also for your consideration:
(thanks BRay)
1 Note: PCIWT will probably never actually exist.
My friend’s mom—let’s call her “V”—is a wonderful cook. Every time I’ve gone for dinner, she has whipped up dishes that were not only delicious, but creative. So when she emailed me a suggestion for the blog, I had to listen.
Her suggestion? Smoked paprika coffee, sweetened with maple syrup.
This is no regular paprika. The smokiness hit my nose as soon as I opened it, and trying a bit on my tongue, it was quite spicy.
I put just a bit in the grounds; maybe half a teaspoon or less1.
I mixed it up a bit, then brewed the coffee. I took a few sips of the coffee black. It was quite good; the smokiness definitely came through and went well with coffee’s natural earthy flavour. The spice was also prominent, coming across like a milder version of my successful Curry Coffee.
But I wanted to take all of V’s advice, in addition to taking the spicy coffee idea in a new direction. So out came the maple syrup.
The real stuff, obvi.
I put about two tablespoons of syrup, along with some cream 2. Then, to top it off and make it look fancy-like, some whipped cream and another pinch of paprika.
Well now, this is not bad at all. Having the paprika right on top made the smokiness really hit my nose as I sipped. The maple syrup is subtle, but it sweetens without detracting from the drink’s earthy theme. With the other flavours competing for attention, the spice comes through mostly as an aftertaste, providing an unusual little kick.
I’ll definitely try variations on this again. Apparently there is a sweet (vs. hot) version of the smoked paprika that may go better here. I’d also add a bit more maple syrup next time. However, I’m going to label this as a big success. I’d pay good money for it in a coffee shop. Hey Starbucks: hire me.
Note: If you’d like to try this yourself, the smoked paprika may be hard to find. You’re probably better off searching independent / specialty food stores than grocery stores (it’s called La Chinata if you want to ask for it by name). I got it at Jill’s Table here in London Ontario.
1 I actually freaked out and took a bit off after taking the picture. You don’t need much.
2 OK, I know, it’s not a true latte without hot/steamed milk. But “double double with paprika” just didn’t have the same ring to it.
In the comments to a previous post, a fellow named Taft wrote the following:
I shared the love on Metafilter a few days ago. So perhaps I have a voice in what you review next (heh)? I suggest mayonnaise and/or crumbled up Doritos in the grounds.
Indeed, the link from Metafilter is largely responsible for a lot of this blog’s recent success, so Taft deserves special attention. Mayonnaise it is!
Except I don’t have any mayonnaise around. I don’t even have its cheap and ugly little brother, Miracle Whip. Oh, but what have we here? PC Low Fat Whipped Dressing? I suppose that’s the next next best thing.
After my Eggspresso post, several people wrote in to suggest improvements. One that came up repeatedly was to whisk the egg into a little bit of coffee, then slowly add the rest, so it turns into a thick cream rather than a chunky mess. Since whipped dressing has egg in it, I thought I’d try this technique.
It seems to be working. There are a few floaty bits, but mostly it looks like coffee with a nice amount of cream.
I slowly whisk in a full mug. It’s looking good. Doesn’t smell too bad. Maybe this will be a surprise success. Bottoms up.
Oh. Oh my god. The moment it enters my mouth, I know that something has gone wrong. It’s sour; oh jesus, it’s like acid burning my tongue.
In the name of science, I take another sip. No yeah, this is the closest I’ve come to chugging vomit. Somehow it’s even worse than blue cheese dip.
I should have gone with the Doritos.
In my non-blogging secret-identity life, I am a scientist. As such, I value scientific techniques such as replication, blinding, and control conditions.
So it tickled my test tubes to see Kate (?) over at The Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything From Happening at Once perform a double-blind-ish taste test replication of PWTIC’s Eggspresso experiment.
You’ll have to click to see the results.
She also gets bonus credit for using the word “proteinaceous.”
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.
