el crispito

Supposedly, the stuff started out on ranches and in small towns in central Mexico, but its popularity has spread throughout the country. You can get it at traditional Mexican food restaurants where it is made the old-fashioned way, but it's so popular that someone has come up with a packaged mixture that you can put into your coffeemaker and brew it like regular drip coffee.

I am sure that even considering making it that way would bring down generations of shame on ones household though, because the pot used to make it is reportedly the one element that must not be omitted. After all, it is named "café de olla," and the "olla" is the pot.

All the ingredients are combined in the pot and simmered, and there are a couple that are interesting Mexican things that you might not know about.

One is piloncillo, unrefined cane sugar that comes in cones. In fact, the name means "little pylon." In India it's jaggery, and in Colombia, it is known as panela.

[This was confusing to me because in Mexico, panela is a type of cheese, but in Colombia they have a drink called agua de panela. I thought this sounded less than delicious, thinking that it was "cheese water," but really this just means hot water with piloncillo dissolved in it. The kicker though is that in Colombia, people melt a chunk of cheese in their agua de panela, so when it comes down to it, a Mexican thinking "they're drinking cheese water!" would be right.]

Another ingredient in some café de olla recipes that is perhaps foreign to those readers that live outside the sphere of Mexican influence is Mexican tablet chocolate. In Mexico, this means Ibarra chocolate de mesa, or "table chocolate." In English, it's called tablet chocolate because it comes in round tablets that you can break into smaller pieces. It consists of sugar, cacao nibs, cinnamon and lecithin and it is most often used to make hot chocolate by melting it in milk.

There is a competing product on the market, but in my opinion, anyone that uses that instead of 100% mexicano Ibarra table chocolate is a traitor and should be drawn and quartered. I might be a bit biased though, because Ibarra is made right here in Guadalajara. I guess there's also Chocolate Moctezuma, made in Michoacán, and that's also acceptable. But that other Swiss crap...I wouldn't use it to clean my toilet.

In addition to these ingredients, various spices are added. Cinnamon is universal, but the other spices vary. Some recipes call for anise, others orange zest. Cloves seem to be a popular addition too.

Below are some recipes for café de olla if you want to try making it at home. Note that most of these recipes do not even mention the use of a clay pot, but as I mentioned before, you're supposed to use one or it's not real café de olla.

• Astray's café de olla: one & two
  
• Gourmet Sleuth's café de olla
  
• Kill Vehicle's café de olla
  
• Food Network's café de olla
  
• About.com's café de olla