Coffee Karintō

Coffee Karintō

コヒーカリン糖

¥100

Karintō are crunchy, bite-sized batons of yeasted wheat dough that is deep fried and coated, most often with a sweet glaze. 

Like most wheat-based treats, karintō were originally brought to Japan from another country, but it’s uncertain whether they were introduced by the Chinese in the 700s or the Portuguese in the 1500s. At any time during that span, both wheat and sugar were so expensive that karintō would have been a luxury food. As the availability of these ingredients increased and prices came down, karintō would have become more common; street vendors began selling them by the mid-1800s. 

Traditionally glazed with either white or brown sugar, modern karintō are available in a wide variety of flavors such as ginger and coffee. I purchased these from a Tokyo branch of Daiso, the   Japanese version of a dollar store. 

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams
3-scoop cup, $5.50

On at least a hundred occasions I've filled a Baskin-Robbins' cup with one of the clashing-est combinations possible:  one scoop of peanut-butter-chocolate AND one of daquiri ice.  And never has a B-R server paused and gently suggested to me that perhaps the flavors I'd requested might not pair very well together.  I had to go to Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams for that.  

I first had Jeni's several years ago at the original location in the Columbus, Ohio covered market and quickly decided that a second serving would justify a return trip to Ohio.  Since then the business has boomed and you can now find Jeni's outlets sprinkled around the Southeast.

The lines are long and slow, but even so the servers patiently encourage careful decision making and thorough sampling.  Before coming in I'd read the profiles of all of the current flavors online and made a plan, but I still sampled almost everything--you know, just to be sure. 

My first choice was Yazoo Sue with rosemary bar nuts:  "Built from the ground up with a creamy, rich, and mellow cherry wood-smoked porter (by Nashville's Yazoo Brewing Company) and fistfuls of savory 'bar nuts'—peanuts, pecans, and almonds dusted with rosemary, brown sugar, and cayenne."  Second, Black Coffee:  "We steep Batdorf & Bronson's single-estate coffee right in the cream (rather than in water). Our process yields coffee ice cream that tastes as delicious as a cup of intensely flavorful coffee smells."

Last, I shoehorned in the flavor that my concerned server suggested might not play well with the others, Cherry Lambic Sorbet:  "If your memory says, 'Skip it because it’s gonna taste like artificial, super-sweet cherry flavoring,' don’t trust your memory. In fact, our Cherry Lambic sorbet won the Gallo Family Vineyards award in 2008. We used the money we won from this award to begin direct-sourcing vanilla beans and pure vanilla extract from Ndali Estate in Uganda."

When I wouldn't budge, we came up with a compromise:  my server used waffle cookies to craft a dam between the creamy flavors and the tart one.  

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

1892 Eastland Avenue

Nashville TN 

615/262-8611

Crema's Coffee Soda

Coffee Soda
Crema Coffee

I've always loved the idea of coffee-flavored soda but had yet to drink one that matched up with the nectar of my imagination.  Then came Crema.  Their coffee soda blows my expectations out of the water, in large part because it's not coffee-flavored, but actual coffee that they carbonate to order.  A rotating selection of cold-brews get poured into some kind of Rube Goldberg carbonating contraption that requires a (trainee?) barista to shake it vigorously for several minutes.  To that they add ice, mellow demerara simple syrup, and a zippy little twist of orange zest.  Bring on the 100% humidity!

Crema Coffee
15 Hermitage Ave
Nashville, TN
615/255-8311

Coconut Kokis

Coconut Kokis
Tropicland, $2.95/box

In conversation I described these little Malaysian cookies at "crumb-y" and then had to clarify that the b was silent, not missing.

The term kokis appears to apply to a fairly broad range of cookies, cakes, and breads; these particular ones are mildly sweet compressed nuggets of toasted coconut and bread crumbs.  I imagine you could get something similar by dumping the detritus at the bottom of a cereal box into a panini press.  That their pleasantly abrasive crunch survived the trip from SKS Food Industries in Jahor, Malaysia to a scratch-and-dent grocery store in downtown Seattle might just justify SKS's extravagant plastic packaging.

These happened to be mildly "coffee flavor" ("perisa kopi"), but the manufacturer also offers original and pandan flavors.

Better Living Through Coffee

Peanut Butter Cookie

Better Living Through Coffee, $2.25

Seemingly stapled onto the backside of a building that fronts historic Water Street, Better Living Through Coffee juts out over the narrow beach and hogs one of Port Townsend's most mesmerizing views.  The light bouncing off the water gives the coffee shop's single room a hazy quality that underlines the vintage feel; not much about the wood-framed room would raise the eyebrows of an 1960s hippie--or even an 1860s settler.  

BLTC specializes in "Organic Fair-Trade Coffee & Nutrient Dense Food."  The coffee is locally roasted and dripped-to-order in a rack of standing filters.  The baked goods are made with organic ingredients and unrefined sweeteners, and some, like this light and melty peanut butter cookie, are also vegan and gluten-free.

Better Living Through Coffee
100 Tyler Street  
Port Townsend, WA
360/385-3388

Cafe du Monde

Beignets
Cafe du Monde, $2.10/3

Cafe du Monde's original location in New Orleans' French Market sells fresh beignets 24 hours a day. Whether you need something to balance out your morning oatmeal, or--more likely--could use a sobering bedtime snack, Cafe du Monde will supply you with as many deep-fried dough pillows as you require. During the day, the cafe is teeming and boisterous to an almost Disney-esque degree. In the small hours it has the unflattering starkness of an Edward Hopper painting, only with a few more people and a lot more powdered sugar.

Velvet Artisinal Teacakes

Teacakes

Velvet, $1 each

Velvet dispenses serious coffee and frivolous baked goods from a diminutive corner shop in New Orleans' ritzy Audobon neighborhood. The coffees are carefully curated and include Stumptown, Ritual, and Verve, made using your pick of methods; there's an espresso bar with the usual range of options, and three "slow bar" choices: a Chemex, a syphon, and a pour-over system.

The tiny kitchen also bakes and cranks out light meals. Featured treats included homemade pop-tarts and "artisanal teacakes"--a.k.a. bite-sized cupcakes. The vast selection caused me to panic a little and pick a couple of cakes that seemed reassuringly familiar: a "Sour Puss" (lemon cake stuffed with homemade blackberry jam with blueberry on top) and a "Coconut" (chocolate cake with buttercream coconut top). Only later, when read the full menu on Velvet's website, did I have a little twinge of buyer's remorse--and hunger. I could have had:

Mast Brothers Syphon: syphoned hand sorted Stumptown coffee w/Mast Brothers bar cake stuffed center as well as Madagascar chocolate frosting

NOLA: yellow cake-praline stuffed-praline frosting

WHO DAT: saffron rice filled cake with Creole frosting

Blood Orange: orange cake with a slice of blood orange stuff inside with orange frosting

Blue Flower: Mem Imports Earl Grey tea cake, blue flower frosting

Velvet Espresso Bar and Artisanal Teacakes

5637 Magazine St

New Orleans, LA

504/450-2129

Coffee Daifuku

Coffee Daifuku

Two days ago my beloved family dog died; today I made coffee daifuku. It was the most fitting tribute I could come up with. (If you want to skip the backstory and head straight to the recipe, it's at the bottom of the post.)

Tucker was a rescue who ended up at the Nashville Humane Society after his previous "family" moved out their apartment in the middle of summer and left him locked up inside with no food or water. When the landlord found him three days later he was in pretty bad shape, and when my mom and I spotted him at the shelter he was about as energetic and engaged as a wet rag; all the other dogs jumped and wriggled and twinkled, but Tucker just laid in the corner of his cage, avoiding eye contact. The same impulse that compels Mom and me to buy stained, one-eyed stuffed animals and spindly Christmas trees led us to take the world's most depressed dog home for a trial adoption.

It was awkward from the get-go. Tucker was ferocious towards strangers, but a whiny crybaby around us, so fearful of separation he'd keen and jam his front paws under the closed bathroom door if you just wanted to pee in private. Neither extreme was attractive. Eventually we had a dog therapist come in, and she said some things that made sense. We humans changed our ways and gradually Tucker transitioned from impossible to merely difficult to, finally, an awesomely affectionate little dog with some residual quirks. He was devoted to my dad and the two of them developed a program of entertainingly elaborate rituals; here's what would happen every morning when Tucker saw Dad for the first time:



One problem that we never really sorted out: Tucker was a binge eater. Our previous family dog, Mac, was a classic Westie, with stumpy legs, a pig body, and a piggish attitude towards food; he'd eat almost anything, but given his limited vertical range, it was usually easy to keep him out of trouble. Tucker, in comparison, could practically levitate. He was roughly the same size as Mac, but leggier by inches.

The first weekend we had Tucker we briefly left him alone in the kitchen; first, he climbed onto the counter and took a polite but dismissive nibble out of every item in the fruit bowl before discovering the real prize, a boxed Derby pie (pecan with chocolate chips), bought at a church sale that morning. When I wandered into the kitchen a little later, hankering for a slice of pie, I was confused to see a brand-new empty pie pan shining in a patch of sun on the floor: no dents, no marks, not a single crumb. The solution to the mystery was around the corner; our catatonic 15-pound dog lying on his side with his emaciated legs stuck straight out and an entire Derby pie swelling his belly like a cow inside a cobra.

On the vet's advice, I took Tucker outside and proceeded to funnel hydrogen peroxide into him at 10-minute intervals until the pie reappeared. If I thought he'd looked dejected at the pound, I hadn't seen anything yet. That pie was probably the best thing that had happened to him in years, and it had gone horribly wrong. He was stoic about the treatment but the look on his face could have been used to solicit charitable donations.

That was only the first of many crises stemming from Tucker indulging in too much of a bad thing. I know this makes me and my parents sound horribly irresponsible, but Tucker was devilishly quick, silent, and so dexterous you'd swear he had thumbs.

Once when he was accompanying my dad on a car trip, they made a few stops on the way out of town: first at Starbucks, where Dad bought an enormous latte for the drive, and then to drop something in the mail slot outside the post office. In the seconds it took for my dad to walk from the car to the building and turn around, Tucker had lifted the venti cup out of the console between the seats, flipped off the lid, and commenced slurping. Dad didn't make a sound ("I knew if I startled him he'd spill the whole thing"), just walked calmly back to the car as Tucker watched him over the rim of the cup, lapping for dear life. By the time Dad reached down and took the cup from between Tucker's paws he'd drunk about half--but hadn't spilled a drop. As they drove off, Tucker curled into a little ball on the passenger-side floor and went to sleep. My dad finished the coffee.

So there's something right about the fact that I was at a chocolate and coffee tasting when Tucker had a stroke. When my parents called with the news, there was sadness but no shock. Over the last couple of years, Tucker's much-abused body had begun to shut down. When I last saw him, about a week before he died, he was totally deaf and blind, his bony little frame studded with lumps and growths, his smile gummy, his coat--to quote my dad--"moth-eaten".

And yet he was still so cute people in cars would slow down and grin out their windows as we jaunted around the block, me as "seeing eye person" trying to keep him from running into trees or spilling off curbs as he clipped along. Even more impressive, he was seemed happier than he had been in his anxiety-riddled prime; sure, he slept 23 hours a day, but every single time you roused him he'd deliver an abbreviated version of the joyful dance in the above video.

The first stage of mourning a rescue dog is raw sadness, and the second is this: "At least I gave him/her a better life than he/she would have had." But that's where my mourning process derailed. Tucker was certainly better off with us than with his first owners, and probably better off than with many other potential adoptive families. So he had a better life--but I didn't really give it to him.

About four months after I incited my family to adopt Tucker, I packed up and moved to Tokyo. As an irresponsible act it wasn't perhaps on par with leaving behind a baby or even a horse, but it wasn't particularly fair to either parents or dog. Tucker's death got me thinking about that stage in my life, about the fine line I walked between adventure and escape, about the things that helped me to adjust to my new life just as Tucker was adjusting to his.

Which is where coffee daifuku finally comes in. Daifuku are basic Japanese sweets, balls of bean paste skinned in fresh rice dough. As an illiterate vegetarian, I was initially drawn to the rack of daifuku at my neighborhood grocery store on the assumption that I could expect them not to contain meat. I visited more regularly when I realized that just around the time I got off work, the day's unsold daifuku were marked down to half-price. And then, eating my way through the rainbow of options, I got to the brown one: it was coffee and it was delicious.

After that I ate them every time I got the chance, sometimes even paying full price. My habit ran for months, until one day, the coffee daifuku were gone. The next day, none again. And the next.

Emboldened by my addiction, I cornered a clerk and in shaky Japanese asked about my treat. He said there were none, which of course I already knew.

"Tomorrow?" I pleaded.

He responded with a clear shake of the head and a well-enunciated "No" (rare in Japan). I never saw those daifuku again.

So today I was feeling sad about Tucker and thinking about Japan and the fact that I hadn't eaten coffee daifuku in almost exactly eleven years when I suddenly realized that I had all the ingredients to make them sitting in my kitchen. And whereas I would normally mull and research and make lists until the impulse passed, today, in Tucker's honor, I made them right away.

I've learned a lot of things from dogs in general and from Tucker in particular: the importance of a good stretch, the need to trust one's instincts, the nobility of expressing unrestrained affection. And whether because of their short lives or their tiny bladders, dogs are also masters of the immediate: they don't make to-do lists, and they don't let things drag on. So with that I headed into the kitchen for a date with coffee daifuku, feeling the ghostly touch of a wet black nose goading the back of my leg.

Spur-of-the-Moment Coffee Daifuku

for filling:
250g (freezer-burned) shiroan white bean paste; you could also use store-bought red bean paste
1 tsp instant coffee

for mochi:
1 1/4 c water
1/4 c sugar
pinch salt
1/2 tsp instant coffee
1 1/2 c (not-too-expired) mochiko sweet rice flour
starch for dusting (eg cornstarch or more mochiko)

Let's say you had big plans to make fancy Japanese sweets last year so you spent a couple of days making a stockpile of white bean paste and that cured you of your urge to make wagashi; unearth a package of forgotten shiroan from the freezer and defrost. Mix the instant coffee with just enough water to make a smooth paste and blend into the shiroan (photo below).

You might also have some mochiko, with which you planned to make microwave mochi, but then the microwave died and you were intimidated by the idea of making stovetop mochi so you pushed the box of mochiko into a dark corner of the cupboard; dig it out and dust it off.

Combine the water, sugar, salt, and coffee over medium heat, stirring until everything has dissolved. Use a dampened wooden spoon to stir in the mochi about 1/3c at a time. Once it's all in, continue to stir the gluey mass vigorously for 2-3 more minutes.

Dump the mochi out onto a surface heavily dusted with cornstarch or more mochiko. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes, until you can handle it without wincing. Roll into a fat snake and divide into 10 pieces. Dust your hands well, then roll each piece into a ball and flatten into a small patty. Top that with about 1 Tbs of the bean paste, and stretch the edges of the mochi up until they meet and pinch them together to seal the shiroan inside. Set the daifuku seam-side down on the starched surface to cool.

You can tweak the daifuku to make them as round as possible but don't expect them to look like something a machine plopped onto a conveyor belt; you are not a machine. They will be lopsided and lumpy but you will enjoy the hell out of them anyway, as will the friends you share them with.

Intrigue Chocolates + Zoka Coffee

As part of the Northwest Coffee Festival, Intrigue Chocolates hosted a guided tasting of their flavored truffles paired with specially-selected joe from Zoka Coffee.

In a small kitchen just off Pioneer Square, Intrigue concocts French-style truffles; with no hard chocolate shell to protect them, these sexy little morsels of ganache start to liquefy the instant they hit your tongue. Intrigue's chocolatier, Aaron Barthel (above), is constantly tinkering with new flavor infusions, offering old favorites and new discoveries six at a time on a rotating basis.

For the tasting Aaron matched six of his truffles with single-origin and blend coffees roasted by Zoka and brewed with military precision by Zoka rep Jessica Schmidt. It was a fundamentally delicious experiment, in theory like a deconstructed mocha but so much more interesting. It was fascinating to experience how the flavors of the different chocolates and coffees played off each other, and how that interplay was further complicated by so many other variables--the order of consumption, the temperature of the coffee, the brewing technique used, etc.

Plenty to think about during the long sleepless night ahead...

Intrigue Chocolates

76 S Washington St #M104
Seattle, WA
206/829-8810

Beignets

Beignets
Café Du Monde, $2.10/3

One of my fondest memories of a childhood trip to New Orleans involves eating beignets from Café Du Monde--but not at Café Du Monde. My parents and I picked up a couple of orders of the deep-fried square doughnuts on our way to the airport. Our flight home was delayed on the runway, and we were stuck in our seats for several hours while our plane went nowhere. How to pass the time? Break out the grease-stained paper bags! As a rule fried foods don't travel very well, but those beignets were one of the best picnics I've ever enjoyed--although, of course, they never made it off the ground.

Beignet derives from an old Celtic word meaning "to raise", and the pastries are made from a yeasted dough that turns to a golden pillow when dropped in hot oil. Beignets probably arrived in Louisiana by way of France, possibly introduced by Acadians expelled from Canada in the mid-18th century or by Ursuline nuns who arrived in New Orleans in 1727. While French versions were generally filled with fruit, the American beignet is pure dough, served in a thick drift of snowy confectioner's sugar and usually paired with milky, chicory-tinged café au lait.

Café Du Monde opened in the open-air French Market in 1862, rival beignet stand Morning Call in 1870. When Morning Call moved to the suburbs a century later, Café Du Monde became a quintessential experience for French Quarter tourists. Franchises began to appear in the 1980s and they now include more than 50 locations in Japan alone.

The original French Market location is open 24 days a year, every day but Christmas--and, as their website notes, "...on the day an occasional Hurricane passes too close to New Orleans." Café Du Monde closed during Hurricane Katrina and reopened two months later, having undergone renovations rather than repairs.

Café Du Monde
French Market
800 Decatur Street
New Orleans, LA
504/525-4544

A newer player on the beignet scene, Café Beignet has two French Quarter locations. One is attached to the "Musical Legends Park" and boasts everything you'd expect from a Bourbon Street address--live music, late hours, and strong cocktails--plus fresh beignets ($2.95/3). On more sedate Royal Street there's a tiny full-service cafe; at a lacy cast-iron table on the patio it shares with the neighboring police station, you can enjoy an order of light, airy beignets and share your pound of excess powdered sugar with some very jazzed birds.

Café Beignet

334-B Royal St

New Orleans, Louisiana

504/524-5530

Café au Lait Crème Brûlée

Mini Café au Lait Crème Brûlée

La Madeleine, $1.99

A stop at La Madeleine cafe and bakery is a great way to ease into a New Orleans visit: you get a few sights and a light snack under your belt before the bingeing begins in earnest. Take in all the architecture as the St. Charles streetcar trundles down the Garden District's grand boulevard, then hop off just when it makes a sharp right onto Carrollton. To one side people jog, cycle and walk their dogs on the top of the steep, grassy levee that blocks the Mississippi River from view. To the other, you'll see La Madeleine, tucked into the crook of the road.

Although the bakery is part of a chain, the cheerful din and full tables are proof that it has been thoroughly adopted by the neighborhood. Founder Patrick Leon Esquerré grew up in the French countryside and wanted his cafes to provide the fresh, healthy, hearty food and communal experience he enjoyed at home. You can get omelettes, salads, soups and baked goods to eat there or take away.

Combining a popular dessert with a ubiquitous beverage, the café au lait crème brûlée is an inventive mashup of New Orleanian flavors. The buttery pastry cup is filled with an eggy custard tinged with coffee, the top caramelized and crowned with a flake of dark chocolate. If your New Orleans agenda calls for eating 4-5 meals a day, you'll appreciate that La Madeleine offers many of its desserts in "mini" sizes.

La Madeleine

601 S Carrollton Ave
New Orleans LA
504/861-8662

KA-POW! Bar

KA-POW! Bar

Sahagún, $6

Coffee and cacao have so much in common--they're both the pungent, oily seeds of exotic plants, both luxuries that have become part of our everyday lives. The quality of either finished product is the result of a long chain of variables such as varietal, roast, and terroir. And of course they're great tastes that taste great together: we melt chocolate into coffee drinks and smother coffee beans in chocolate.

Now Portland confectioner Elizabeth Montes has taken the coffee-chocolate parallel one delicious step further with KA-POW!, a bar that's not merely flavored with coffee, but actually made from it. The only ingredients are cocoa butter, coffee, and sugar. The cocoa butter binds the whole thing together, giving KA-POW! the "physicality of chocolate" and amplifying the heady scent and robust flavor of the coffee. Sugar is added to the mix at just the right moment, seeding the creamy matrix with contrastingly crunchy crystals.

Each bar features a single-origin coffee from Portland area small-batch roasters such as Water Avenue Coffee, Extracto, Ristretto, and Stumptown. A KA-POW! bar made from Extracto's Sumatra Permati has all the tangy gaminess of a strong shot--but in a more portable format.

Speaking of portable, check out other travel-appropriate treats at WanderFood Wednesday.

Manhattan Special

Manhattan Special

Five or six years ago, I was visiting friends in Brooklyn when I heard vague rumors about a locally made coffee-flavored soda with an historic pedigree. I set my sights on this exotic new quarry, trekking from corner store to bodega to corner store in a futile search for "Manhattan Special". Most people had heard of it; nobody had it to sell. My frenzy culminated in an act of sweet-toothed stalking: I bused over to Williamsburg and knocked on the factory door.

And knocked again. And again.

The guy who eventually answered the door was surprised to find a tourist in search of soda, and politely regretful that he couldn't direct me to a single neighborhood store that would have Manhattan Special in stock.

I admitted defeat and left town. When I eventually tried Manhattan Special it was in Oregon, of all places, where a neighbor nostalgic for her East Coast childhood had taken to special ordering it by the case. It tasted more or less like what I always expected coffee would taste like before I'd ever had any: a little fizz and a lot of sweetness rounding off the bitter espresso's sharp edges. The "secret recipe" dates from 1895 and is heavy on coffee beans and cane sugar (the exception being the modern diet version, which contains NutraSweet). The label appears to date from about 1922, and is heavy on drama, verve, and allusions to Rudolph Valentino.

Fast forward to 2010, and Manhattan Special is still in production, still a nostalgic novelty, but now somewhat easier to find thanks to internet sales and growing interest in niche and vintage foods. In this NYT article, read more about the brother and sister behind Manhattan Special, who took over the family business as teenagers after their father's murder.

Pocket Coffee

Pocket Coffee
Ferrero

For those times when you need a caffiene hit but a to-go mug is just too much bother, consider investing in Pocket Coffee. Made by European confectioner Ferrero (see also Mon Cheri, Kinder chocolates, Rocher, Nutella, Tic Tac), Pocket Coffee is a hollow dark chocolate cube lined with a crisp sugar coating and filled with a concentrated shot of liquid espresso. Pocket Coffee is too fragile to be produced or sold during summer months, but at colder times it's generally available at convenience stores in Italy and can be ordered by the case in the US.


Want more to chew on? Check out other food/travel posts at WanderFood Wednesday...