We love coffee in all its permutations, from a creamy affogato through Vietnamese coffee dripped over sweet condensed milk to a restorative Swiss kaffee fertig or Italian caffe corretto. Here are some of my favourite coffee recipes.
Turkish Coffee For a short time during my travels around Turkey I helped out in a friend’s cay evi (tea house) and became quite a dab hand at making Turkish coffee, called kahvesi. The trick to getting that prized thick foam on top is removing the pot – called a cezve (pronounced jez-VEY) – from […]
Barbajada Barbajada, traditional Milanese hot chocolate, is the best mocha you’ll ever taste! It was created in the mid-1800s by Domenico Barbaja, a waiter at Café Cambiasi next to Milan’s famous La Scala Theatre. Traditionally it’s made with equal quantities drinking chocolate, coffee and cream (or milk). My recipe is inspired by Alessandro Pavoni’s decadent […]
Coffee Granita My favourite dessert at MG Garage – in fact perhaps my favourite dessert of all time – was coffee granita with chocolate mousse. When chef Janni Kyritsis and I wrote Wild Weed Pie, we did a whole section on granitas saying: “‘squeeze, freeze, scratch and serve’ is almost the only recipe you need […]
Vietnamese Iced Coffee When I first visited Vietnam in the mid-90s it was impossible to get any coffee except the traditional dark roast dripped into a cup of sweetened condensed milk from a small aluminium filter called a phin. As I don’t have a sweet tooth it took some getting used to, but once I […]
While cocktails are typically served before dinner, I find some are better suited to the end of the evening. Here’s my version of five classic cocktails that are perfect after, or instead of, dessert. Make your own simple sugar syrup by combining equal quantities of water and sugar or have fun with the exciting range […]
Swiss Kaffee Fertig Adding alcohol to coffee is popular in many cultures. Caffè corretto (coffee ‘corrected’ with a nip of grappa) is a common way to start the day in Italy, in France it’s pousse-café and in Spain, carajillo. The Swiss drink kaffee fertig (‘finished coffee’) at any time of day; and call it kafi […]
Tiramisu Desserts don’t get much easier than this delicious combination of coffee-dipped sponge biscuits layered with mascarpone lightened with beaten eggs. Meaning ‘pick me up’ in Italian, tira-mi-su is a relatively new creation, first appearing in Treviso (near Venice) in the 1960s. It’s a great dish to have in your repertoire as it doesn’t require […]
Mocha Self-saucing Pudding For me recipes, especially desserts, have to be quick and easy. And it doesn’t get much easier than this mocha self-saucing pudding. This is a grown-up pudding with a hearty shot of coffee in it to balances the sweetness – use boiling water instead if you prefer a sweeter version. Dutch-process (or […]
Affogato Depending on the ratio of ice cream to coffee, this delicious creation appears on either coffee or dessert menus in cafés and Italian restaurants everywhere. Affogato means ‘drowned’ in Italian, and in it’s simplest form it hardly needs a recipe: just ‘drown’ a scoop of ice cream in a shot of espresso. But I […]
