cloves | Jenna's Everything Blog

I love coffee, and I’d always wondered about making my own creamers or syrups. But I never felt quite motivated enough to spring into action until I saw Tracy’s post about this pumpkin spice syrup. It looked ridiculously easy. Why not give it a whirl? I asked myself.

So I tossed everything in a pot and simmered it for a bit. Once the syrup had cooled down, I brewed a fresh cup of coffee. I foamed some half and half, added the syrup, and took a few pictures–then I took a sip.

“OH!” I exlcaimed loudly.

“What’s wrong!?” piped up my husaband, rushing to my side.

“Nothing’s wrong! THIS IS JUST SO GOOD!”

I make a lot of things that are delicious. But this one made me shout. The amount of deliciousness just caught me offguard–I wasn’t expecting it to be so incredible. But it was. Please make this. You can start readying your soul immediately.

I doubled the recipe and used whole spices as much as possible to eliminate the need for straining the liquid and to get rid of any grittiness. And it’s perfect.

I do have to add that the deliciousness of the cup of pumpkin java is directly related to the quality of the java itself. I brewed a meanly delicious cup on that first day, and the syrup just made it sing. But in subsequent tastings of the syrup, when paired with weak and blah-hey coffee, of course the syrup did not cause me to shout. So do a good deed and make sure the coffee is strong and wonderful on its own. Then you may just be moved to shout as well.

Ingredients

2 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 TBS pumpkin puree
3 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
10 whole cloves

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan.

I love waterfalls of sugar.

Simmer over medium-low to low heat for 15 minutes and stir occasionally. Don’t let it boil!

Let the syrup cool (until it’s lukewarm) and discard the cinnamon sticks and whole cloves. Pour the syrup into a bottle or jar . . .

. . . and store it in the fridge for up to 1 month.

You may have to shake it up before using it, because with time the heavier elements sink to the bottom.

And that’s it!

Unbelievably easy, eh?

When you’re ready to make your coffee, brew up a fresh cup. You can do an American-style drip coffee or make an espresso–but make it strong. In fact, if you can make it strizzong, even better.

Just add your usual amount of coffee and half and half to a mug, and pour in a little syrup.

Give it a little taste–since the syrup has sugar, you probably won’t need to add any more sweetness. And if you want to pile on foam or whipped cream, well, that will just be the icing on the cake. I also sprinkled on a little extra nutmeg, as you can see.

It’s fabulous. And I didn’t miss the pumpkin season window, did I? Well, maybe I did. But anyway. One more pumpkin recipe will be up on Thursday regardless! Over and out.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Pumpkin Spice Latte Syrup

I’ve been following and reading Prerna’s blog “Indian Simmer” for a while. She cooks traditional Indian dishes and takes the most beautiful and artistic pictures of food. After reading about her kitchen and seeing her gorgeous photography for months, I finally got around to making one of her recipes. And oh man, is it good.

Perfectly spiced . . . perfect consistency and texture . . . perfect tenderness of the chicken . . . ‘perfect’ is the operating word here, in case you hadn’t noticed.

And once ‘perfect’ has been thrown out there, well . . . I don’t really have anything left to say.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

4 red chilies
6 cloves garlic
1 TBS grated fresh ginger
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 ½ lbs chicken thighs
1 tsp cloves
1 TBS cumin
½ tsp cardamom seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp turmeric
½ TBS whole peppercorns
4 TBS vegetable oil
1 ½ tsp mustard seeds
1 large onion
2 tsp salt
Cilantro, to garnish

De-seed and mince the red chilies.

I was wary of the heat, so I only used 2. BUT! I totally should have used 4. The heat (for me) was barely noticeable with 2.

Mince the garlic . . .

. . . and grate the ginger. After shouldering tons of guilt for letting my ginger shrivel in the fridge due to un-prompt usage, I finally followed someone’s advice and froze it. I keep frozen lumps of ginger, and when I’m ready to use them, I grate them with my microplane zester.

Works like a charm! Seriously. You’d think that grating frozen ginger would be tough–but it practically grates itself as I watch in wonder.

Soak the chilies, ginger, and garlic in the vinegar for half an hour.

Grind them or process them to make a paste.

My mortar and pestle experience wasn’t exactly ideal, since the liquidiness and the bashing together made for a very splashy time. So I recommend using a little food processor. However, the dish didn’t seem to suffer because the garlic and chili were in chunks.

At this point, I happily poured the mixture on the chicken thighs for the hour of marination to begin.

Then I remembered that I was supposed to chop up the chicken.

Whoops.

No harm done, ultimately. Unless you consider the additional pictures of raw chicken harmful.

My thumb. It looks gross. The chicken renders it totally unphotogenic, man.

Anyway, marinate the chicken in the chili paste for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Grind the cloves, cumin, cardamom seeds, cinnamon, turmeric, and peppercorns in a spice or coffee grinder.

The smells are heavenly, people. This alone is a reason to make Indian food: to experience a world of scented spices.

Once everything is nicely ground up, mix in the salt.

Dice up the onion. I love dicing onions.

I hope you do too, because I certainly do a lot of that on this here blog.

Heat the oil over medium high heat in a large pot or Dutch oven. Add the mustard seeds . . .

. . . and when they start to pop, add the diced onion.

Note: the smell of mustard seeds heating is simply wonderful. And totally not what you’re thinking it might be if you’ve never smelled it before.

Cook the onion for 6-8 minutes, until the onion is softened and starting to brown. Add the marinated chicken with any accumulated juices to the pot, and stir fry for 4-5 minutes.

Add the dry spice mix . . .

. . . and stir it around until the chicken is evenly coated.

Cover the pot, turn the heat down to low, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot about every 7 minutes to avoid burning the sauce.

You may be thinking to yourself: but wait! There’s practically no sauce involved! Where is this ‘curry sauce’ that’s supposed to happen?

Well, the liquid released from the chicken and onion and such will somehow magically make things work. Just believe me. And believe Prerna. She’s an expert.