White Chocolate Pistachio Butter Espresso Savoury Bite

There are few food establishments that I find more romantic than cafe's. At the heart of any cafe is strong coffee and great conversation. Although, interesting conversation shared over a warm beverage may have become rarer over the past few decades. That does not mean we should not still try to make room for one of the great simple pleasures in life. Catching up with old friends, sharing ideas with colleagues, or learning about a new topic from a well-traveled stranger.

The comfort of lively conversation around a cup of coffee or carefully crafted espresso has been a part of Western popular culture for centuries. In fact, espresso's popularity in Europe and the development of the café can roughly date back Around 1668 the Turkish ambassador in Paris had coffee parties. And within 10 years the institution of the café became "the resort of the most renowned wits, artists, and philosophers of the French metropolis - Rousseau, Voltaire, Piron, with Marmontel and many others." (Hewitt Jr. 18) Now this is not to say coffee was not popular in other parts of the world before Parisians fell in love with the drink, though the first Parisian cafe's predate the signing of the declaration of independence by almost 100 years.

Espresso is a personal favorite caffeinated drink of mine. As Dan Nosowitz at Popular Science points out, Espresso is easier to define what it is not, than what it actually is, but I think he did a great job. "Espresso is a concentrated, often thick coffee beverage with a layer of dense foam whose ingredients are exclusively coffee and water, created with a machine that forces hot water through a basket of tightly packed, finely-ground coffee for a limited amount of time at very high pressure."

Espresso has a very bold flavor, I wanted to develop something to eat along side my espresso that enhanced the flavor. Much like how the English eat biscuits or other savoury bites with their tea, I needed a morsel companion. The idea to pair a sweet with coffee is nothing new, but this recipe takes a new spin on a familiar concept. Nut butter and chocolate is an American favorite, and I found playing around with this idea birthed an irresistible companion for espresso.

White Chocolate Pistachio Butter Espresso Savoury Bite

Ingredients

• 2 c White chocolate chips
• 1 c Plain shelled pistachios
• 1 T Honey
• 1/4 t Kosher salt
• 1/8 t Vanilla extract
• 1/8 t Ground cardamom

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Roast pistachios for 6 minutes.
3. Put in small food processor with honey, salt, vanilla, and cardamom (Put 1/4 t vegetable oil at a time if you need the butter to be more wet).
4. Form small round disks on sheet pan with wax paper.
5. Freeze pistachio butter in the freezer for 30 minutes.
6. Start a double boiler and add white chocolate chips to the bowl.
7. Spoon melted chocolate around the frozen pistachio butter chunks.
8. Return the white chocolate pistachio butter bites to the freezer.
9. Take the sheet pan out of the freezer and let the bites come to room temperature.

Total Time: 1 hour 30 min

Citations and Further Readings:

• Afternoon tea recipes. BBC, n.d. Web. 3 Sept. 2014. <http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/afternoon-tea>.
• Hewitt Jr., Robert. Coffee: Its History, Cultivation, and Uses. New York: University of California Libraries, 1872. 17-18. Print.
• Nosowitz, Dan. FYI: What Is Espresso?. Popular Science, 12 June 2012. Web. 3 Sept. 2014. <http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-06/fyi-what-espresso>

Photos by Jordan Henline