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Hot For Cold

In summer, we'll take our coffee iced

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BARRY WONG Milk, sugar, vanilla and ice transform a hot staple into a cool refresher that chef Greg Atkinson calls Coffee Frappé.

SEATTLE'S OFFICIAL nickname is the Emerald City, but given our reputation for coffee consumption, we might just as well be known as Java Junction. Americans in general love coffee, but no one loves it more than the people of the Pacific Northwest, where our oft-rainy skies provide plenty of opportunities for a hot cup of Joe. So what are we to do when the clouds part and the skies are clear and blue for that brief moment known as summertime? Drink it iced, of course.

It may be commonplace now, but cold coffee drinks were once quite an anomaly. Even though I grew up on the Gulf Coast where the weather would seem to dictate that beverages be served as cold as possible, coffee was always hot. In my mother's kitchen it was, in the words of an old Creole maxim, "Fort comme la mort, doux comme l'amour, et chaud comme l'enfer" — strong as death, sweet as love, and hot as hell.

What's more, it was not off-limits to thrill-seeking teenagers like me. Unlike cigarettes, alcohol and sex, coffee was one grown-up indulgence that kids were allowed to have in moderation. So, when Mom's friend Char, our local suburban ambassador of the avant-garde, whipped up a batch of iced coffee one July afternoon in the early 1970s, I was there to try it.

Char's brew involved a spoonful of instant coffee and a couple of spoons full of sugar dissolved in a splash of boiling water, then topped off with milk and ice. The consensus among adults and teens alike was that the stuff was fantastic, and for the rest of the summer, and several summers afterward until the fad ran its course, iced coffee became the afternoon pick-me-up of choice all over the neighborhood.

Char may have been ahead of her time introducing iced coffee to our little enclave, but I discovered pretty quickly that she did not invent it. As a college student in New England, I stumbled upon the peculiarity known as "coffee milk." Made with coffee syrup, a product seemingly produced only in Rhode Island, coffee milk is, according to several manufacturers of coffee syrup, "the official beverage of the state of Rhode Island." The brand I first encountered was Fox's U-Bet Coffee Syrup, which featured two perked-up, cherub-cheeked kids sipping the stuff through straws. In their latest book, "Two for the Road," Jane and Michael Stern cite coffee milk as a primary example of Rhode Island's extreme culinary weirdness.

Seattle has its own unique versions of iced coffee, and like both coffee milk and the semi-instant concoction I enjoyed as a suburban teenager, they derive a lot of their goodness from milk. Known primarily by its proprietary name, Frappuccino, which is a conjunction of Frappe and Cappuccino, our region's most popular blended coffee-and-milk drink can be traced to a New England-based chain known as Coffee Connection, which was acquired by Starbucks in the mid-1990s. Like coffee milk, the Frappuccino is available in bottles at grocery and convenience stores.

Starbucks is not, however, the only chain with its own blended-coffee drink. Seemingly anticipating the trend, Baskin Robbins launched its "Cappuccino Blast" in 1994; Dunkin' Donuts introduced its "Coffee Coolatta" in 1995. Tully's Coffee recently re-launched its popular "Spin," made with a fresh shot of espresso as the "Bellaccino," and whatever they did, it seems to taste better than ever.

But for all the widespread availability of chilled and frozen coffee drinks, I still like to make iced coffee at home. Whenever I brew more coffee than we can drink in one morning, I pour the leftovers into a jar and pop it into the refrigerator. This, I sweeten to taste (a shocking 2 tablespoons per cup), and dilute it with an equal amount of milk to make an afternoon pick-me-up.

One of the most memorable batches of a Coffee Frappe I ever made was whipped up in the kitchen of an orphanage in Tijuana. I was there cooking for high-school kids from my own town who went there to build homes for the locals. Just as I do at home, I saved the leftover morning coffee for an afternoon treat. One of the highlights of being there was working with the doñas who run the orphanage. They taught me to turn off the stove and the lights in the afternoon, and honor the local siesta schedule, not necessarily with a nap but with a cool, quiet time. On market day, I bought a used blender and used it to make coffee frappe for the doñas.

Greg Atkinson is author of "Entertaining in the Northwest Style." He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at studio@barrywongphoto.com.