Cardamom coffee for a crowd

Just the words ‘cardamom coffee’ on Sophie Hansen’s Local is Lovely blog here intrigue me enough to ask Sophie for the recipe. She warmly obliges and now it is my go-to solution for making coffee for a crowd. Who wants to wait for half a dozen stove top espressos or one stovetop espresso working overtime? And plunger coffee just doesn’t cut it for me.

I am making coffee now on my conventional electric stove, and remembering mornings of the weekend just passed with Annabelle Hickson of The Dailys, photographer Luisa Brimble and new friends The Slow Diaries, Lean and Meadow, Caitlin Melling, Liveability, Hunting_and_gathering,Hannahmacmedia, Rae Fallon and Julia Harpham. We warm espresso coffee infused with cardamom, vanilla bean and brown sugar in a saucepan on a campfire or the wood fuelled stove of the shearers’ quarters kitchen of Moorabinda Station at Mingoola in the Dumaresq Valley of northern inland NSW. We serve the cardamom coffee in 125ml Falcon enamelware mini mugs to make the coffee go further and it feels like an exquisite gift.

Here’s Sophie’s recipe. Brew your syrup and keep it in a glass jar in the fridge for making batches. Or take a jar on your next weekend away. No one will be seeking out a takeaway coffee from the nearest cafe.

Place 350g freshly ground coffee, 1 tsp ground cardamom, one vanilla pod (seeds scraped in and pod added too) and 4 tbsp brown sugar in a large jug and pour over 6 cups cold water. Let it infuse overnight.

Place a sieve over a large bowl and line with 2-6 pieces muslin (depending on how refined you like it and if you don’t have aesthetically superior muslin on hand I have been known to make-do and use a clean Chux), pour coffee mixture over this and discard the coffee grounds. Keep the coffee concentrate in the fridge. To serve, heat concentrate in a small saucepan, to serve, mix 1 part coffee concentrate with 1 part boiling water (or to taste) and add milk (to taste).

Listen to a conversation about warming winter spices, including Cardamom Coffee, with New England North West Food Journeys here.

 

Photography by Annabelle Hickson

 

---

---

Leave a comment

Name *

Email *

Comment *

Comments will be approved before showing up.