Origin: Senegal  |  Prep: 5 minutes  |  Brew: 10 minutes

About This Brew

Café Touba is Senegal's national coffee, named for the holy city of Touba and credited to the Sufi spiritual leader Sheikh Amadou Bamba. Its defining ingredient is djar, also called grains of Selim or Guinea pepper (Xylopia aethiopica), roasted together with the green coffee beans, sometimes with a few cloves added.

The pepper gives Café Touba a flavour found nowhere else: spicy and warming with an almost smoky edge and a lingering, nutmeg-like aftertaste. Traditionally the coffee and djar are roasted, ground and brewed through a fabric filter, with sugar stirred in after brewing. Sold from carts and stalls across Senegal, it is poured long and frothy from pot to cup and drunk sweet and hot, a fragrant centrepiece of daily social life.

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp coffee roasted with djar (Selim/Guinea pepper), or coarsely ground dark roast
• 1 tsp ground Selim pepper (djar) if not pre-roasted in
• 1-2 whole cloves (optional)
• Sugar, to taste
• Hot water

Equipment Needed

• Fabric coffee filter (or fine cloth)
• Pot
• Cup

Instructions

1. If not using pre-spiced coffee, grind the Selim pepper (and cloves) and mix with the coffee grounds.
2. Place the grounds in a fabric filter set over a pot or jug.
3. Pour hot water through the grounds, then pour the brew through again for strength.
4. Stir sugar into the brewed coffee to taste.
5. Pour between two vessels to build a froth, then serve hot.

Tags: Africa · Hot · Intermediate