Cook school confidential: cooking with coffee

While using coffee in a savoury context tends to be what grabs the headlines, it’s still a great way to add depth of flavour to sweet dishes. Roberto challenged Le Cordon Bleu's Master pastry chef Nicolas Houchet to create a light dish that displayed the sweet honey and date notes in a particular type of coffee. What Nicolas ended up with was a fluffy, iced coffee soufflé, which would tick both the dessert and digestif boxes at a dinner party.

Coffee comes in many forms – whole beans, ground to a powder and brewed as a liquid – which makes it a pretty versatile ingredient. In its liquid state, coffee can be used as a very effective marinade, as its acidic nature means it will tenderise meat as well as adding a depth of flavour. It can also work well as a spice rub; Roberto marinates veal ribs for twenty-four hours in a mixture of ground up coffee beans, herbs, spices, garlic and salt, before slow cooking it in olive oil.

The espresso martini is one of the success stories of the modern cocktail scene (conceived by the late Dick Bradsell, one of London’s most famous bartenders in the 1980s) and is now a staple on cocktails lists across the world. This simple drink opened the gateway to more inventive coffee-based tipples, whether the beans are used as a simple garnish (something Vivek Singh incorporates into his Oaxaca coffee cocktail) or playing a more prominent role (like this Moka martini served at Pied à Terre).