Dancing Goats In Hula Skirts
There is a coffee company near my house, Batdorf & Bronson. The place is as iconic as the city itself in many ways – like the fish throwers at Pike Place Market – anybody who’s worth their snuff in these parts has been to this place.
Outside their orginal cafe, affixed to the windows, is an image of a dancing goat. Easily two feet tall, the picture is a throw back to the company’s roasting division which goes by the name (you guessed it) Dancing Goats.
Why goats? And more importantly, why are they dancing? Good question. Millions of people drink cup after cup of coffee each day and I would venture to guess that all but a handful are unaware of the origin of coffee – a.k.a. the legend of the dancing goats.
Coffee has been around for nearly 900 years now. It was first brewed in open pits with crushed beans and boiling water in the area that is now Ethiopia. In the high mountain regions, a goat herder by the name of Kaldi discovered that his wandering animals had returned from the fields with an extra spring in their step. When Kaldi searched the area he found his herd feasting on red berries from a patch of bushes and gathered some for himself to try. Later, he dried and ground the berries and made a tea of sorts. The result was the first cup of coffee … and presumably, the first recorded caffeine high.
Now you know about the goats, but are wondering why are they wearing grass skirts -right?
The answer to that has to do with pizza. Confused yet? Hehe, I’m getting there.
Something about the idea of Hawaiian pizza being Hawaiian simply because it has pineapple on it has always struck me as funny. Same with those yummy little chocolate covered macadamia nut things. If you go to Hawaii, people always ask you to bring those back, like you can’t go to Walgreens and buy a box yourself there. Something about the macadamia nut and the pineapple seems exotic to people.
So when the urge for a strong cup of coffee and a cookie hit me in the late hours last night, I decided to pull out some coconut, macadamia nuts, dried mango, almaretto and make biscotti instead. Then I decided to call it Hawaiian biscotti because it seemed like the appropriate cliche at the moment.
This is why I should not be left alone in the kitchen. With a coconut. And Jimmy Buffett CDs.
Anywho, I threw the basic of the thing together -the flour, butter, egg stuffs – then went to town with every Hawaiian-inspired ingredient I could think of along with some white chocolate chips … because those just sounded good.
The result was a lightly sweet, entirely delicious biscottini* (that means oops, I made the biscotti too short so I changed the name to something small and cute sounding).
I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did along with a fresh cup of java. The recipe is over in the sidebar.
