Coffee in Twilight

The Spanish-Catalan almendras garrapiñadas and the French praliné share a single technique: roast the almond, caramelise sugar to amber over the kernel, cool to a brittle shell. Coffee in Twilight uses the Marcona — the round, sweet, oil-rich Spanish almond from Andalucía and Valencia, the only almond seriously used in haute Spanish charcuterie boards — and threads finely ground coffee through the caramel. The almond is the lead and the caramel coat is structural rather than dominant; the praline-warm body of the kernel speaks first, the chlorogenic-acid bittersweet of the coffee threads through, the burnt-sugar butterscotch closes the loop. Twilight is the colour: amber-brown to dark-amber, with a faint coffee-glaze sheen.