A world full of coffee shops flooded with milk. Where there are only blonde, medium and dark roasts, the dairy selection boasts cow milk, soy milk, almond milk, cashew milk, oat milk, hemp milk, and coconut milk. Where coffee can be prepared as a pour over, espresso, in the pot, or cold brew, milk comes steamed and frothed, creamy or powdered, condensed in a can (if you’re Vietnamese) or curdled into cheese (if you’re Swedish), and even churned into butter. Our coffee is drowning in dairy.
Drowning indeed, so let the coffee get its revenge. In the great Italian tradition of la vendetta one unsuspecting café offering turns the tables: the affogato. An icon of the gleaming, steam-punk age of espresso behemoths, the name literally translated as ‘drowned.’ This time, the dairy drowns in the coffee.
Simply put, the affogato is a scoop of ice cream, gelado, or fior di latte (a simple cheese made from fresh milk), assaulted by a hot and bitter pour of espresso. Some serve it with a swirl of amaretto while others make it more youthful by subbing the coffee for hot chocolate. More traditionally, a swallow of strong grappa is mixed in as a version of an espresso correto with the addition of ice cream.
The affogato is best served with little ceremony–honoring its two ingredients without distracting from the point–-the contrast within the drink before you. A drinkable pun on the term bittersweet. A dichotomy between hot and cold. The states of matter clashing in liquid and solid. The yin and the yang of vanilla and coffee. A dietician’s qualm between drink and dessert. Your daily cup of coffee is transformed with a scoop of ice cream.
And after the meal, the waiter asks, “Any coffee or dessert?” Someone orders both and the waiter makes a delicious blunder. Espresso drools from some shining stainless steel tower that must have come from Italy during times of historical migration. A plop of ice cream dragged from a display cooler with a belly of curved glass and chrome detailing. In a mug, any old mug, the two duel it out.
The heat of the fresh espresso nearly sublimates the ice cream into an airy, white foam. The cool core of the scoop dissipates the coffee’s scald. Each bitter molecule donning a sweet jacket to insulate itself from the insulting cold. The creamy dairy runs out in miniscule deltas of muddy milk. Black and white, hot and cold, bitter and sweet vying for supremacy as you sip and spoon ambiguous states of matter into your hungry mouth. After a bit, homogeneity. A room temperature beige drink with something reminiscent of the fluff of ice cream and the bite of espresso.
Coffee taken with milk and sugar is not so different from coffee taken with ice cream. The difference is the drama present in the affogato which elevates it from the mundane cup of joe.
In Lancaster County, the Pennsylvania Dutch have a long heritage of making tea from foraged wild mint. Typically, “meadow tea” is made during the early months of summer when the mint is just growing. It was served as a refreshment in the fields at one time.
Thomas Jefferson did so many great things in his life that they often cloud his alcoholic accomplishments. Jefferson was the greatest wine lover of his time! He also became a locally renowned brewer of ale. While he did not drink hard liquor, America’s first book on distillation was even dedicated to the President. His love of these drinks came from an understanding that they were farm products.
It’s a nerdy party trick to know your wine based on taste alone, but what about knowing the vine based only on the leaf? This is the obscure and necessary science of ampelography. Identifying particular varieties of grapes is vital in protecting vineyards from diseases and optimizing output.
The Aztec strictly controlled the consumption of their choice alcohol, pulque. Only warriors, the elite, and the elderly were allowed to get drunk. One group south of Tenochtitlan, however, may have celebrated a festival known as the Pillahuana or Drunkenness of the Children. During this festival, children aged 9 and 10 became drunk on pulque for the first time. The celebration likely acted as a coming-of-age ceremony as well as a fertility rite.
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