Cooking and pairing food with coffee seen as a coming culinary trend

The Canadian Press

Cooking with coffee isn't new. But with all the varieties now available in the marketplace, using coffee as a food, along with pairing different coffees with specific foods, is undergoing a resurgence in popularity.

"My 93-year-old grandmother in her generation cooked with coffee a lot," says Trish Magwood, owner-operator of Dish, a Toronto cooking school and culinary centre. "Her original recipe for Mocha Mousse, which I refined a little (for this story), was made with instant coffee."

She's right. In Kate Aitken's "Canadian Cook Book" first published in 1945, and then reprinted by Whitecap in 2004, there was a Coffee Custard recipe. And Edna Staebler's Coffee Almond Tarts appeared in her "More Food That Really Schmecks" (McClelland and Stewart) in 1979.

The use of coffee as food goes back to its earliest history. Coffee is a fruit of an evergreen bush, and it resembles a bitter cherry. Among the tribes of Ethiopia, where coffee originates, coffee was often eaten rather than drunk, according to Antony Wild's "Coffee: A Dark History." Coffee is now widely grown in high-altitude tropical regions.

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