San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Sweet solution to hard sugar problem
San Antonio’s lone finalist in H-E-B’s eighth annual Quest for Texas Best contest may be the most interesting and useful product I’ve crossed paths with in a long time.
Olla Express Café’s Raw Piloncillo Syrup is a brilliant solution to an age-old problem: how to harness the flavor of rock-hard piloncillo sugar without the knuckle-busting or finger-slicing trauma that often goes along with grating or chopping the stuff.
Piloncillo, generally sold as a cone of raw cane sugar, lends an indispensable character to many traditional Mexican dishes. It’s a highly flavorful, unrefined sweetener with a deeply caramelized taste and potent notes of molasses that also has a lower glycemic index than refined sugar.
This game-changing product packages all that flavor in a deep brown syrup laced with a touch of cinnamon and lemon — basically the concentrated tastes of café de olla, a traditional Mexican coffee.
The most common method for making a batch of café de olla is to bring a pot of water to a boil with chunks of piloncillo, cinnamon, and sometimes cloves and star anise. To that liquid, coffee grounds are added and then strained into cups.
When Andrea Ley opened Olla Express Café in a Volkswagen bus converted into a coffee truck, she was looking for a way to expedite that time-consuming and low-yield process to make and sell more café de olla. So she created the more concentrated syrup (sans coffee), which she now adds to coffee, resulting in a drink very similar to traditional café de olla. She sells tons of steaming cups of the stuff now.
Ley quickly found the syrup to be a good all-purpose sweetener. I sampled it on pancakes, fruit, ice cream and, of course, in coffee while serving as a judge during the H-E-B contest, held Aug. 26 and 27 at the San Antonio Food Bank.
Ley wasn’t one of the winners, but she definitely won at least one loyal customer. As a certifiable sugar junkie, I can promise I’ll be keeping this syrup stocked in my pantry. There’s even a splash in the coffee I’m drinking while writing this column. I’m particularly excited to cook with it — I suspect this will make a remarkable glaze on grilled pork chops or shrimp, or add a light touch of sweetness in a vinaigrette, among other uses.
Ley is a Guadalajara, Mexico, native who spent her pre-coffee days as a software engineer after
moving to Texas in 2010. Coffee breaks were the best part of those eight desk-bound years for her, and they triggered a longing for her family, as well as a career change. She launched Olla Express as a way to soothe her homesickness, reconnect with her Mexican roots and help spread café de olla across San Antonio.
While Olla Express’ syrup isn’t in H-E-B stores at the moment, she’s building momentum for the brand, and it will likely wind up on a shelf near you in the future.
For now, you can buy the syrup ($6 for a 12-ounce bottle) at ollaexpresscafe.com, at Blue Star Provisions in the Blue Star Arts Complex, 1414 S. Alamo St., or at her truck, which is most frequently
found Friday through Sunday outside Morningstar Storage at 6366 Babcock Road.
Olla Express Café, 210-7637303, ollaexpresscafe.com, Facebook: @ollaexpresscafe
1⁄2 cup kosher salt
6 cups of water
36 large shrimp, peeled and deveined Seafood rub, to taste (see Notes) 1 stick of butter, melted
6 cloves of garlic, minced
Juice of 2 lemons, plus extra lemons,
quartered, for garnish
Special equipment:
Gas or charcoal grill
12 wooden chopsticks
Basting brush
Instructions: In a large, bowl, mix the the salt and water, and add the shrimp, making sure they’re submerged. Cover and soak overnight in the fridge.
Remove the shrimp from the brine and pat dry with paper towels.
Set your grill for an indirect setting at medium-high heat (400 degrees) with the charcoal on one side of the grill.