Tallgrass: Warm up with Magic Coffee.
Once upon a time, in a little cafe in Madison, Magic Coffee was served…
“Wait a second!” you say, “All coffee is magical — what’s so special about this coffee?”
If you’ve spent any time in Madison, you know. It’s been served on the Capitol Square since the early 2000s, first at Cafe Soleil (L’Etoile’s casual cafe and bakery, now closed), and the tradition continues at Graze.
It’s not just coffee. It’s coffee plus espresso, with brown sugar, cinnamon and half-and-half. Sounds like a lovely midwinter pick-me-up, doesn’t it?
Nutritionists are constantly advising people not to drink their calories, but I’m a beverage advocate. I down a lot of water, but I love interesting drinks of all types: caffeinated, bubbly, alcoholic.
I’m loving the trend of restaurants focusing on their beverage program beyond the wine list. Great cocktails are a must, but more are developing in-house nonalcoholic drinks, including house sodas, lemonades and teas with intriguing flavor profiles.
I begin the day with hot or iced tea. Green usually, but I love the herbal mixes from Milwaukee’s Urbal Tea, especially Brain Booster and Inner Fire. If I’m on the go, I’ll shake up ice water, a touch of stevia or honey and 1 to 2 tablespoons of matcha tea powder in a big water bottle.
I also like water, both still and sparkling, scented with citrus, fruit and herbs. In the winter I do chai tea lattes or London Fog lattes. I wasn’t a coffee drinker — until recently.
It started with dirty chai tea lattes (the latte you know and love with a shot of espresso). Most coffee always tasted overly burnt and bitter to me, so this was the most I could tolerate. Then I met Jayson Moyer of Lodge Coffee Roasters in Baraboo.
Moyer started by roasting micro-batches of coffee beans in an old whirly-pop popcorn machine, and he now roasts slightly larger batches (seven pounds), all by hand. He wooed me with a perfectly brewed cup of Costa Rica Deredia. The coffee is naturally sweet, with notes of cherry, caramel and cocoa. It’s deliciously deep on its own or brightened with just a touch of raw sugar. (You can purchase it on his website.)
Here I steeped it overnight with a few spices, magic-coffee style. This is a riff on an adaptation, as famous recipes like this tend to go. Erin Hanusa, a Madison writer, created a version that was published on Food52.com. This is a close rendition of that, with some additional spice and a touch less sugar.