AI-generated image
Café Touba (spiced Senegalese coffee)
Kafe Tuuba: coffee roasted with grains of selim and cloves, the taste of Dakar mornings
Poured from tall kettles into small cups on street corners from Dakar to the holy city of Touba, café Touba is coffee roasted together with djar, the smoky, peppery pods also called grains of selim, and often a few cloves. The drink is linked with the Mouride brotherhood and its founder Cheikh Amadou Bamba, and it is drunk sweet and strong at any hour. It has a deep roasted bitterness with a tingle of pepper and clove at the back of the throat. Roasting green beans at home takes about 20 minutes and makes enough for several pots; if you cannot get green beans, toast the spices separately and grind them with medium-roast coffee. Most people go wrong by grinding the djar (selim pepper) too coarsely, so its peppery note never comes through. Chef's tip: roast over a moderate heat and keep the beans moving, since high heat burns the outside while the inside stays raw and sour.
- Total time
- 30 min
- Difficulty
- easy
- Serves
- 4
Ingredients
For the spiced coffee
- 1 tbsp grains of selim (djar)lightly crushed; or 1 tsp black peppercorns
To brew
- 2 ½ cups water
- 4 tbsp sugaror to taste
Shop this recipe on Amazon
What you'll need
Spices & pantry
Links open Amazon in a new tab. As an Amazon Associate, WhatToEat.Today earns from qualifying purchases.
Method
0/6 doneStep 1: Open a window or turn on the extractor: roasting is smoky. Heat a heavy frying pan over a medium heat and add 3 ½ oz green (unroasted) coffee beans.
Step 2: Roast, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the beans turn from green to yellow, then crack and darken to a deep, even brown.
15 minStep 3: Add 1 tbsp grains of selim (djar) and 4 whole cloves and keep stirring until fragrant and the beans are very dark but not black, with an oily sheen.
3 minStep 4: Tip onto a plate to cool completely, then grind finely in a spice or coffee grinder.
Step 5: Bring 2 ½ cups water to the boil. Put 5 tbsp of the ground coffee in a paper or cloth filter over a jug and pour the water through slowly. Pour it through the grounds a second time for a stronger cup.
5 minStep 6: Stir in 4 tbsp sugar and serve hot in small cups. Keep the remaining ground coffee in a sealed jar for up to 2 weeks.
Nutrition per serving
- Calories
- 50 kcal
- Protein
- 0 g
- Carbs
- 13 g
- Fat
- 0 g
- Fibre
- 0 g
Nutrition values are estimates.
KrazyBadal
Good to know
- How long does café Touba (spiced Senegalese coffee) take?
- About 30 minutes in total: 5 minutes to prepare and 25 minutes to cook.
- How many people does it serve?
- 4 as written. Change the servings above the ingredients and every amount scales to match.
- Is it vegan?
- Yes. It has no meat, fish, dairy or eggs.
- Is it gluten free?
- Yes, as written. Check the labels on stock, sauces and spice mixes, which sometimes contain gluten.
- What can I use instead of whole cloves?
- Ground cloves, ¼ tsp for every 3 whole cloves.
- What can I use instead of sugar?
- Caster sugar, same amount.
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to cook it.
Rate this recipe
Sign in to rate and review this recipe.
You might also like
Guava delight
A thick, fragrant blend of ripe guava, mango and banana, boosted with a spoonful of guava powder from the health shop. The book calls it a modern-day vitality drink, drawing on guava's long use in traditional Indian medicine. Serve it well chilled; sieve it if you don't like the little guava seeds.
Power pack
A sweet, energising juice of apples, pears and kiwi fruit with a stick of celery, all used unpeeled for extra goodness. It's naturally sweet, so it needs no sugar. Serve well chilled.
Horchata de chufa
Horchata de chufa is the drink of Valencia's summer, sold ice-cold in the city's horchaterías with long, soft fartons pastries for dipping. It is made from chufas, or tiger nuts: small wrinkled tubers grown around the village of Alboraya just north of Valencia, which have their own protected designation of origin. Soaked, ground with water, strained and sweetened, they give a creamy, nutty, naturally dairy-free milk with a hint of cinnamon. Valencians drink it very cold, or half-frozen as 'granizada'. Chef's tip: soak the tiger nuts for a full 24 hours and change the water once; they must be plump and soft enough to blend into a fine pulp, or the horchata will be thin and taste of raw starch.
Spanish