Tag Archive: coffee


Baking Biscotti

Filed Under: Food, General by Kathryne — Leave a comment
April 10, 2012

Today I was in the mood to bake. I didn’t want to bake cookies or a cake or brownies, but I wanted to bake. I hate it when I get in these little moods where I want something but I really don’t know what it is I want. But there it was. In a vain attempt to distract myself, I went to a little coffee shop I like in Vancouver, Thatchers.

They make great coffee and they also bake a lot of things right there. I guess I was thinking that a cup of coffee, a little baked goodie, and a new book (The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, if anyone is interested.) would be enough of a distraction to get me out of the baking mood. I stood there looking at the array of goodies, and what caught my eye but a jar of cardamom biscotti. It was perfect, it dunked nicely into the Porcelain mug of hot coffee – let me just say that I love that they give  you a real mug and real plate at this place – the spiciness of the cardamom was perfect with the brew. Heaven.

Biscotti was a bit of a mystery to me for a long time. I would see jars of it in coffee shops, jars where the volume never seemed to change. And when I tried it? I nearly broke a tooth! Who would eat dry, hard, crumbly bread like this? Madness I say, sheer madness. Then I watched someone dunk the concrete like substance into their coffee and had my aha moment. I tried it again and I finally got it. You kind of need the coffee flavor to go with the whole thing. It enhances it. And you need it to be dry so that you don’t end up with a soggy mess of cookie in your lap. For me, biscotti is to coffee what Oreos are to milk.

In any case – I came home with visions of biscotti dancing in my brain. Could anything be more Northwest in the baking realm? Sure, I know, Italian and all of that. But hey – coffee and the Northwest? Biscotti is practically the state cookie. For the last two hours I have been happily perusing recipes for this twice baked goodie. There are the basic almond and vanilla varieties (not unlike Mandelbrot) but it seems to branch out from there. Recipes that call for chocolate chips, dried fruits, every kind of nut you can imagine; I even came across one that used mini peanut butter cups. And then there is the whole dip or drizzle dilemma (which is just wonderfully alliterative to say out loud – go ahead, try it.); which includes every variety of chocolate and several different types of frosting type substances.

So here it is, early evening and I have not even started to bake biscotti. Nary an egg has been cracked, not an iota of flour measured, not a single nut chopped. I don’t know if I will actually bake biscotti tonight, but it has been fun to see the possibilities. From the grimace inducing ‘eews’ I have uttered over ridiculous inclusions to the appreciative ‘ooohhhs’ for the more intriguing ideas (seriously - cinnamon sugar biscotti, brilliant!) I don’t feel like the time has been wasted.

Then again, the idea of biscotti with my morning coffee is pretty wonderful. Sigh. Okay, I need to go to the store now.

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Coffee in Winter

Filed Under: General by Kathryne — Leave a comment
December 12, 2011

A while back I wrote a little treatise on how much we Northwesterners love our coffee, which boils down (pun intended) to not wisely but too well. Point in fact, I am sitting here at my computer with a fresh pot of Cellar Door Coffee’s Bali Kintamani Organic, Natural Process coffee.  Sure, it means I won’t be sleeping tonight; a small price to pay for a cup of really good coffee.  Besides, it is cold outside and cold calls for coffee. Coffee is, indeed, one of the main reasons to stick out a wet, foggy, cold Northwest winter.

I have loved coffee for a long time, probably longer than is good for me as I started sneaking cups of the parents’ Yuban before I was a teenager. There was something about the flavor, the acidity, the heat, the taste of impending adulthood about it; it was one of those wonderful things in this world that smelled enticing and tasted nearly as good as it smelled. Here a couple of my brothers will quibble with me in that they love the smell and abhor the taste. But still, in my book – smelled great, tasted good.

I never thought I would turn into this coffee monster, the one that is filling the French Press at four in the afternoon, perusing the shelf to decide which coffee will be best for this cold but sunny day. To be honest, I never dreamed there would come a time that I talked about coffee the same way I talk about wine. And yet here I am.

Everyone in this region has their favorite coffee, they have their favorite roaster. Craig is a devotee of Victrola in Seattle. Sarah drinks nothing but Vivacce. Sharon is a bit more cavalier in her tastes and has been known to duck into a Starbucks when no one was looking. It was Mitch, however, who got me to see that there is something to be said for seeking out new roasters, new places, new coffee. He is always on the lookout, it seems; he has been known to delay a wine tasting trip to scope out a coffee place – heaven forefend!

So I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I found myself at Deco Distilling this weekend – for the coffee. Cellar Door was there  giving out samples, talking coffee, selling beans. I just wanted to try it because frankly, I really haven’t found a ‘favorite’ in Portland yet. Cellar Door doesn’t so much do a dark roast – this appears to be a Portland trend – they concentrate on flavor rather than roast. I blame the big chains for making dark roast coffee the norm, which explains why so much coffee out there tastes burned to me.

Let me describe this coffee to you in terms that a wine lover can appreciate. First there is the nose. The Bali Kintamani is big on nose and not the typical roasted coffee aroma one expects. There is a definite curry note when you open the bag, all warm exotic spice that seems to fade into a smokey wood the longer you try to pin it down.  Color? It is a pale brown, not much darker than the bag it comes in. Brewing it (as mentioned, I use a French Press) yields a light liquid more typical of a good Darjeeling than my usual coffee.  The curry notes are less pronounced, more smoke and tobacco on the nose once it is brewed. And the taste, you ask? Mild, slightly sweet, the exotic spice prevalent. A very drinkable coffee, a very unusual coffee that seems to change as it crosses your tongue.

Yeah, I like it. This is coffee for a winter afternoon. And yes, I feel a bit silly talking about coffee this way. Yet it fits. Maybe it is because once you start paying attention to how something tastes, how it feels, how it makes you feel; it is hard to stop. Okay, we probably are a load of pretentious gits in this corner of the country, but we have good cause to be that way.  The rest of you are just jealous. Or more sane. You pick.

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Coffee

Filed Under: Food, General by Kathryne — 1 Comment
May 5, 2010

I love coffee.  I have loved coffee since I was a kid.  My favorite ice cream is coffee.  The smell of coffee makes me happy.  I seriously love coffee.  So it makes a certain sort of sense that I ended up in the caffeine mecca of the country – Seattle.  I can recall the almost magical feeling of seeing coffee carts on the side walk when I first moved there.  You couldn’t go a block without running into one of them.  My favorite one was on the corner right outside the office where I worked.  The name of the place was Blue Jamaica, and was associated with the coffee house that was around the corner and down a flight of stairs.

From the guy who ran the coffee cart I learned a lot about coffee.  That I like a medium coffee rather than overly bold.  That good coffee should never require milk or sugar – and that really good coffee tastes just as good cold.  He taught me about the essential oils in coffee and how they break down rather quickly. Which meant buying whole beans, instead of ground coffee.  About fresh, filtered cold water vs. tap water.  About getting a good coffee maker if you want good coffee.  The coffee carts have disappeared into Seattle history, the victim of an overly zealous health department.  But good coffee is still the hallmark of the city.

Now it is all about micro and craft roasters.  About small enterprises that do one thing and do it well – coffee.  Thankfully the days of the overly pretentious barrista are coming to a close as well, and the focus is instead on organic, sustainably farmed coffee; high in quality, roasted well and producing a great cup of coffee (both in and out of the coffee house).  I have to say that one of the things I have missed in my temporary relocation to Portland is my favorite coffee house.

Vivace, in particular the East Lake Union location, is one of my favorite places in Seattle.  Close second is the sidewalk bar on Broadway in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. The second one because it so reminds me of the coffee carts.  Any coffee connoisseur in Seattle will have his or her ‘own’ coffee place.  For some it is Zoka, usually the Greenlake Zoka; for others it is Victrola on Capitol Hill; still others will rave about Caffe Fiore on Queen Anne.  And others are arriving all the time.

It is part of what I love about the Northwest. We take our passions seriously.  Sometimes a little too seriously, but always with a certain over the top panache.  I know people (and I include myself) who after leaving Seattle will still send to their favorite coffee house for beans.  Or who insist that the first stop on a visit to the city is that self same coffee house.  I have watched in amusement as co-workers have insisted that some visiting German dignitaries to the company be whisked away to Vivace to get ‘good’ coffee.  And I too have dragged many a visiting friend on coffee tours of the city.  Including one or two who were not so much coffee fans.  We love our coffee, we want you to love it too – because we are pretty sure the only reason you don’t drink coffee is because you have never had ‘good’ coffee.

Take the last sentence, use it interchangeably with the following nouns: wine, beer, sushi, berries (though the modifier ‘local’ should be substituted for ‘good’ in this instance), farmer’s markets, bookstores.  Yep, we are fanatical about local here.  Probably comes from all that caffeine.

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