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Central American Brown-Sugar Coffee
Café de Pilón Dissolve 1/2 cup dark brown sugar by simmering in 1 quart water. Add 4 tablespoons pulverized coffee and cook only 1 minute before setting it in a warm place for coffee to settle.
In the tropics where brown sugar is eaten every day in every way this Café de Pilón is looked upon as both food and drink. Its high sugar content, indeed, is more stimulating than the coffee itself. In the West Indies where coconuts are more common than cows, coconut milk is used in the morning coffee, just as the buttery flesh of avocados often takes the place of cow butter.
A one-pot sweetened coffee, closer to Mexican café de olla than to anything brewed through a filter. The whole method turns on keeping the coffee off a rolling boil once it goes in.
- The hinge: one minute, no boilCoffee held at a boil turns bitter and harsh within a few minutes. Bring the sugar water to a bare simmer, stir in the grounds, give it the minute specified, then pull it off the heat entirely to settle.
- "Pulverized coffee"This means a very fine grind, finer than drip \fFine grounds settle slowly but extract fast, which is why the contact time is so short. A medium-coarse grind is easier to clear and more forgiving if the pot sits longer.
- Settling versus straining"Setting it in a warm place" lets the grounds drop to the bottom so the clear coffee can be poured off the top. Five to ten minutes undisturbed is enough. Pouring through a fine sieve or a cloth is quicker and gives a cleaner cup.
- SugarHalf a cup of dark brown sugar to a quart makes a frankly sweet drink. Traditional versions often use piloncillo or panela, unrefined cane sugar sold in hard cones or blocks; chop or grate it, and expect it to take several minutes to dissolve. Dark muscovado is a close supermarket match.
- Coffee strengthFour tablespoons to a quart is on the light side by modern standards, well under half the usual ratio. The sweetness carries the drink, but six to eight tablespoons gives it more backbone if you want coffee rather than syrup.
- YieldA quart of water yields about four 8 oz cups, less whatever the grounds absorb. Reheat gently; do not re-boil.
- Coconut milkThe West Indian addition mentioned works, but canned coconut milk is far richer than the fresh-pressed kind meant here. Thin it with water, or use a lighter coconut beverage, or it will overwhelm the cup.
- Outdoor versionOver a fire, pull the pot to the edge of the coals rather than trying to judge a simmer over flame, and let it stand off the heat while the grounds drop.
Café de pilón is generally taken to be named for the pilón -- a word that covers both the wooden mortar used in the Caribbean and Central America for pounding corn, coffee and spices and the cone-shaped loaf of unrefined cane sugar that sweetens the drink; which sense gave the coffee its name is not settled. Sugar boiled and set in moulds at the mill was the cheapest sweetener available in cane-growing country, retaining molasses that refined white sugar has stripped out, and coffee brewed straight in sweetened water rather than sweetened in the cup is the ordinary form across much of Mexico and Central America, where it is called café de olla after the clay pot. The author's remark that the sugar is "more stimulating than the coffee" reflects an older way of thinking about sweetened drinks as food for working people rather than as indulgences, and the observation about coconut milk and avocado standing in for dairy is a fair account of kitchens in places where cattle were scarce and coconut palms were not.