The Post Bender

The Post Bender is the perfect iced coffee drink for the morning after a night of excess. Fresh ginger is well known for its restorative influence on a queasy stomach and its ability to jumpstart circulation, so including it in a coffee drink for the morning after a night of excess is bound to help. Add a little molasses for a natural sugar boost and some deep, dark porter and you might well be on your way to recovery.

From the stalls of Asia to the street markets of France and the outdoor grills of Portugal and Peru, and just a few places in between, I’ve eaten a lot freshly prepared, deliciously seasoned local food in my life. I’ve spoken before of buying queso de mano from a little guy walking between cars in rush hour traffic in Venezuela and pulling over suddenly to buy curry roti in Trinidad. You can read more about it here, along with a recipe for deep fried bananas. I love street food! I tell you all this by way of introduction to a new cookbook being released this month that celebrates the most mobile of street food with 100 recipes for great dishes from food trucks in the US. It’s called Food Truck Road Trip - A Cookbook and every page, every recipe is a feast for the eyes. It’s going to take me a while but I’d like to try each one!

To research, photograph and write the book, authors Kim Pham, Philip Shen and Terri Phillips packed their bags, loaded up the car and they traveled across the United States to visit the cities and taste the food and hear the stories behind some of the best food trucks around.

But their journey started long before that with a blog called Behind the Food Cart, winner of the Saveur magazine’s Best Culinary Travel Blog in 2013. Their focus has always been the people behind the scenes on the food trucks and each little history and snippet from the cooks and chefs made me think of the recently released movie Chef.  They’d ALL make great movies, from the former attorney who gave up a life of anger and complaints to make gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches to the advertising executive who quit his job to become an executive chef to the plumber who found himself unemployed in the recession and is now serving award winning orange cake from his truck in New York. Seriously. Even without the food, this book is inspirational for the personal stories of dedication, perseverance and love of culture and fine ingredients.

You can buy your own copy of Food Truck Road Trip right now – The recipes are all originals from the actual food truck recipes, not inspired by or adapted from, but shared by the creators for inclusion in the cookbook.

Today I am sharing a cocktail recipe from Hubbub Coffee Company in Philadelphia. Owner Drew Crockett believes that coffee is a way for us to interact with friends and people we have yet to meet and I completely agree with him. I chose this recipe because I love coffee - especially meeting friends to drink it - and I was intrigued by one of its ingredients: porter, a beer with chocolate presence. I did a little research and found one called London Porter here that fit the description perfectly. The recipe is supposed to serve two but I made it in a glass mug and drank the whole thing. Whoops. The leftover syrup keeps nicely in the refrigerator for future drinks.

The Post Bender - from Food Truck Road Trip by Kim Pham, Philip Shen, Terri Phillips. Printed with permission of Page St. Publishing.

Hubbub Coffee Company—Drew Crockett—Philadelphia, Pa

Serves 2  - theoretically :)

Ingredients
For the simple syrup:
1 tablespoon or 22g molasses
1 teaspoon zested ginger (I grated mine on the side with the small holes.)
1 1⁄2 teaspoons (6g) sugar
1⁄4 cup or 60ml water

To assemble:
1⁄2 cup or 118ml freshly brewed coffee, at room temperature
1 (12-oz or 340ml) bottle porter beer (has strong chocolate presence)

Method
To make the simple syrup, combine the molasses, ginger, sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Stir to make sure all the ingredients are combined and the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Pour in the coffee.

Then add 2 to 4 tablespoons or 30 to 60ml of the simple syrup and shake vigorously.

Strain into 2 cocktail glasses and top with about 3 ounces (90ml) of porter each.

(I put a little light brown sugar around the rim of my mug and strained all the coffee and two tablespoons of the syrup into it, topping up with about 4 oz or 120ml of porter.)

I’ll definitely be making this one again. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I received one copy of Food Truck Road Trip - A Cookbook for review purposes. No other compensation was received. This post contains Amazon affiliate links.