Café Touba
Cafe Toubaka-FAY TOO-ba
Coffee beans roasted together with djar pepper, then ground, brewed through a cloth and sweetened hard. It tastes of eucalyptus and black pepper over a dark roast, and it is sold on every street corner in Dakar.
At a glance
- Coffee : water
- 1:12
- Active time
- 20 min
- Total time
- 30 min
- Makes
- 4 small cups
- Serve
- Hot, very sweet
- Kit
- Pan + cloth filter
Ingredients
Note: If roasting green beans is a step too far, you can grind djar into pre-roasted coffee instead. The flavour is flatter, because the spice never caramelises, but the drink still works.
Method
-
Roast the beans with the pepper
Put the green beans in a heavy dry pan over a medium heat and stir constantly. After eight or nine minutes, when they have gone through first crack and are mid brown, add the djar pods and keep going for another three or four minutes.
The spice goes in late on purpose. A whole roast at that temperature scorches it, and scorched djar tastes of ash rather than eucalyptus.
Roast 12 to 14 minutes -
Cool, then grind them together
Tip the lot onto a tray and let it cool completely, which takes about ten minutes. Then grind beans and pods together to a fine powder, finer than you would for filter and closer to Turkish.
Cool 10 minutes -
Brew it through the cloth
Put the ground coffee in a cloth filter over a jug and pour the hot water through slowly, in stages, letting it drain between pours. It takes a few minutes and you can pour the whole thing back through once if you want it stronger.
Brew 5 minutes -
Sweeten hard and serve small
Stir in the sugar while it is hot and serve in small glasses. This is not a mug drink. The spice is strong and a small glass is the right amount.
Why this works
Djar is not pepper in the botanical sense. Grains of selim come from Xylopia aethiopica, a West African tree, and the dried pods carry a mix of eucalyptus, nutmeg and a woody heat that is nothing like black peppercorn. Roasting the pods alongside the beans in the last few minutes caramelises their sugars at the same time as the coffee's, which fuses the two rather than leaving the spice sitting on top of the cup.
That timing is the whole technique. Add the pods at the start and twelve minutes at roasting temperature burns off the volatile oils you want and leaves the bitter ones behind. Grind them into finished coffee instead and you get a sharper, thinner spice note, because nothing has caramelised. Late in the roast is the compromise the Senegalese method arrived at.
The fine grind and the cloth filter belong together. Ground that fine, coffee would choke a paper filter and over-extract in a press. Cloth has a looser weave and lets the oils through, which gives the drink its heavy body, and the Senegalese pour-and-repour method controls the strength by contact time rather than by grind.
Robusta is the traditional bean and it is the right one. Arabica's acidity sits awkwardly under djar, where robusta's flat, cocoa-like body gives the spice something solid to sit on.
The drink is tied to Sheikh Amadou Bamba, the founder of the Mouride Sufi order, and to the holy city of Touba that he established. It spread from the brotherhood out into general Senegalese life during the twentieth century, and it is now sold everywhere in Dakar by vendors with flasks.
Variations
- With cloves: two or three ground in with the djar. Common in some Dakar versions.
- Touba with milk: a splash of evaporated milk. Less traditional, easier if the spice is new to you.
- Pre-roasted shortcut: grind a teaspoon of djar into 100 g of dark roasted coffee. Flatter, but ready in two minutes.
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Questions
What is djar?
Grains of selim, the dried pods of Xylopia aethiopica, a West African tree. It is also sold as Guinea pepper, Senegal pepper or kili. It tastes of eucalyptus and nutmeg with a slow woody heat, and it is not related to black pepper.
Can I use black pepper instead?
No. Black pepper brings piperine heat and nothing aromatic, so you get hot coffee with no eucalyptus. If you cannot find djar it is better to wait than to substitute.
Do I have to roast my own beans?
It is better, because roasting the spice with the coffee is what fuses the two. If you would rather not, grinding djar into pre-roasted coffee gives you perhaps two thirds of the effect.
How much djar is right?
Around eight pods to 100 g of beans is a middle setting. Senegalese versions often run stronger. Start lower on your first attempt, because the eucalyptus note builds quickly.
Is there a filter alternative?
A fine metal mesh works. Paper will clog at this grind, and a French press over-extracts it into something harsh.