Café No-bucks

As I write, I am drinking a cup of home made coffee. And it hasn't cost me anything, except for the electricity to heat the water. A combination of the credit crunch, being a skinflint and a desire to escape the clutches of the over-powerful Tescos has led me to start to explore the world of foraging. More on that is very likely in future blogs, but for now, back to the coffee.

During WWII the nation's coffee supplies were cut off, and you can only imagine what that would have done to the nation's morale! A coffee substitute was made from acorns instead by chopping them up and roasting them (I don't know who discovered that worked, but I'm guessing it was very old knowledge that had fallen into general disuse).

So I got curious and had a go. You need to remove the outer acorn shells with a sharp, serrated knife, then chop the nut into small pieces. You're meant to roast the pieces twice, chopping smaller after the first roast. I roasted mine once, as I left them in the top of the oven for a bit longer than intended - around 15 mins, probably. The result was a charred-looking mess which both smelled and tasted a lot like coffee. The bits ground down well enough in the pestle and mortar & looked something like instant.

So far so good. What about when you make it into a mug of 'coffee'? It tastes very good actually. I may even prefer it to the real version, as there is not the same sharpness to the taste. I have no idea about the caffeine content though or other side effects but I'd rate the experiment as a success. The only downside appears to be - apologies squirrels - it takes about 5 acorns to make a spoonful of the coffee powder, so I will have to work quite hard to make a useful supply.

Post scripts: I have found articles afterwards saying that you are supposed to leach the tannin out of the acorns by soaking or boiling them, because they contain too much - my recipe didn't say anything about that! I also found some recipes for coffee alternatives from the American Civil War, which may be of interest to some readers.