Coffee. An elixir to many, a cardinal companion to more. Every day, millions prefer to greet their day with this gift from nature in several forms; Hot, strong and black or smoothly blended with ice, sugar and cream. Carefully roasted grounds slowly dripped to perfection or instant powder hastily heaped and hastily dumped in to a steaming mug of milk, coffee is mainly considered to be a beverage and is mostly consumed that way. In our imagination, what would a good cop movie be without a stale pot of coffee sitting in the corner or a cold evening in Italy without an espresso shot? But it’s always imagined to be a beverage. Well, it could be so much more.
5 ways to reimagine your favorite day and night beverage:
A handful of ground coffee beans could add a new twist to your meat marinades. Throw in some ground coffee with equal amounts of chili powder along with your other usual marinade ingredients and taste the birth of a new favorite meat marinade. Be it beef or pork, coffee tends to bring out the flavor of the meat. Remember, coffee lends a strong flavor. Its fellow ingredients should be picked with this in mind. Experiment by pairing it with soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce or even peanut sauce.
Though usually there is no such thing as having brewed too much coffee, there will be days when this happens. Do not throw away the leftover coffee. Step away from the sink and make an exotic barbecue sauce. Combine brewed coffee, ketchup and vinegar with sautéed onions and garlic and add salt and pepper to taste. Coffee will bring its own brand of richness to the sauce’s color and taste. The stainless steel french press is the winner with regards to full-bodied, rich-tasting coffee. Don’t have brewed coffee but you still want to try something like this? Dissolve instant regular coffee or instant espresso powder in water and cook away.
The last place you would expect coffee to be is on a big, fat, juicy cheeseburger. And yet, it got there too. Make a glaze with instant coffee, Worcestershire sauce, corn syrup and brown sugar. Stack a mighty cheeseburger, top it off with a spicy sauce and glaze it with this aromatic concoction and just, well, bite.
How could we limit coffee’s presence to just meat sauces? It makes a mean fudge sauce too. Bring together instant espresso powder and brewed coffee to make a delightful hot fudge sauce that you can drizzle on top of cakes, brownies, ice creams or anywhere your imaginative faculty takes you. Heat unsalted butter, sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, a pinch of salt, the espresso and brewed coffee mix, boil for two minutes and add a few drops of pure vanilla extract. Your mocha fudge sauce is now ready to drizzle.
How could we wrap this up without a proper dessert? When it comes to coffee flavored desserts, coffee cakes and Tiramisus are your usual suspects. Since we are reimagining here, let’s go a little further. Sugar, flour, nuts and spices- all good things to put in a dessert. Add coffee and raisins to these and make a refreshing fruitcake. Just imagine the explosion of flavors that you will get marrying coffee with spices like cinnamon and nutmeg.
Happy munching coffee!
