(no subject)

[camwyn]

Note to self: in olden times they used to use cloves or clove oil as a topical oral anaesthetic. if you inadvertently drop a bunch of powdered clove into your mixture, just get rid of the mixture and start over, do not scoop out what you can and go 'enh, it'll be fine'. it will not be fine.

this message brought to you by a first attempt at making raktajino.

Comments

[derien]

Y'know, I knew raktajino was not a 'real' thing, that it was something invented in a sci-fi series of some sort, but I couldn't place where. I had to google it. (well, duckduckgo it - what's the short for duckduckgo? dukduk?) Initially I thought it was one of the alcoholic drinks mentioned in Lois McMaster Bujold's 'Vorkosigan' series, but I thought all of hers were based on real things that exist now. (Also I know you don't drink alcohol.) I may have been thinking of Raki, a Greek alcohol which is anise-flavored. Also may make your mouth all numb. [ETA "It is used to make rakomelo, which is flavoured with honey and cinnamon. Rakomelo is served warm during winter months."]

Klingon coffee? Maybe enough clove to make your whole mouth go numb IS the way it's supposed to taste. :)

[camwyn]

Nah, if your mouth went numb you wouldn't be able to pick up on the cinnamon or smoked paprika or cayenne. Depending which recipe you're looking at, any two of those three may be included along with nutmeg and a whole lot of sugar.

Apparently when Ronald Moore was working on Star Trek, before neoBSG was even a gleam in anyone's eye, he really liked the John M. Ford book The Final Reflection and its take on Klingons. He particularly liked the idea that you had this proud warrior race that had a sweet tooth, and that went out of its way to get their hands on Terran coffee. The 'Worf likes prune juice' thing was a direct callback to the Ford book even if other material in the text was later contradicted by canon, but they also did 'raktajino is ridiculously sweet' as a callback of sorts. I don't think there's an official recipe unless the ones used at the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas count, but most fan recipes for raktajino include espresso or Turkish coffee, a significant amount of sugar, a dose of dark chocolate, and spices. Also cream or powdered milk is pretty common, partly because the assumption is that the drink is thick and partly because non-Klingons on DS9 tended to order it with various forms of dairy.