January 26, 2006

Coffee News: Cooking with coffee

"Everyone knows that coffee is a great drink. More surprising is the fact that coffee is also good for eating — and not just in the form of chocolate-covered beans. In fact, coffee is a fully functional ingredient that is useful in all kinds of culinary combinations.

"I don't think people often think of coffee in terms of an ingredient in a pot roast or something," says Michael Kierans, owner of Prague's Káva Káva Káva, noting the number of coffee recipes available on the Web. "There are tons of recipes with sweet ingredients, but the savory recipes struck me as a very interesting idea, a new way of having coffee."

Pot roast with coffee is just one variation of java-enhanced cuisine. The Web site www.recipesource.com lists hundreds of recipes with coffee as an ingredient. Many are sweet cakes and cookies, of course. But the site also includes recipes like onion soup with espresso, pork with port and coffee sauce, coffee-flavored meatballs and coffee-flavored chicken wings. Other recipes include a "cowboy brisket" with coffee, coffee risotto with orange and lamb cutlets in coffee sauce.

It might sound new, but the use of coffee as a foodstuff probably goes back to its earliest history — it is a fruit, after all, resembling a bitter cherry. Among the tribes of Ethiopia where it originates, coffee is often eaten rather than drunk. According to Antony Wild's Coffee: A Dark History, it is used:"

Full article here.