dotCross Coffee Project

Aaron Goh (left) and James Goh (right), the founders of the dotCross Coffee Project, a student-run coffee appreciation project in Hyde Park. They held a coffee tasting session for us and shared a little bit about their project.

They started out the year with 16 pounds of coffee beans, but they are continually acquiring more through friends or on their travels.

Their goal is to create a coffee culture in Hyde Park and get people to appreciate coffee better. In the meantime, they are having a lot of fun learning about coffee. This batch is New Mexico Pinon Coffee, one of James's favorites. (He just thinks it's a cool non-traditional coffee drink)

James and Aaron purchase their beans unroasted (which is actually cheaper) and then roast them themselves.

Home-roasting machine like this one allows even roasting by rotating and stirring the beans while they are heated.

This is a batch of darker roasted beans. Some of the beans are roasted with butter and sugar.(we'd don't add any to our roasts! It's just referring to a traditional Southeast Asian brew (which has butter-sugar roasted coffee)

They write down the process for each cup of coffee they make so that they can learn from each experiment.

This electric kettle allows them to control the water temperature - usually it is set to 198-200 degrees Fahrenheit. Water that is too hot can diminish the flavor of the coffee.

Using a scale allows precision in the number of beans, as changing the number of beans by even just a few can make a huge difference. For this cup they used 22 grams.

Once they measured the right number of beans, Aaron evenly ground the beans using a coffee grinder.

This aeropress fusion brewer puts the ground beans in contact with hot water for a set amount of time. 

They extract the flavors out by pressing it through. Preheating the equipment used for brewing reduces the heat loss in the process, making the coffee taste better. This is especially true for French press.

James drinks about 3 cups of homemade coffee a day. When he is not at home, some of his favorite coffee shops on campus are Cobb and the Divinity School cafeteria. Cobb isn't James' favorite cafe - we stand by the Div school, but Cobb is just a place James is often at cause it has food.

The next coffee item on the menu is Guatemala La Cascada from Bridgeport coffee, which had a cherry and grape flavor.

This cup is prepared using a Hario V60 Ceramic Coffee Dripper.

Putting just a little bit of water in at first lets the browns expand, giving the coffee more flavor. Carbon dioxide coming out of the beans creates the foamy structure, called blooming.

This board has served them well on how to get a coffee right. They write down different beans and figure out the best settings for each. The sticky note is here to tell how to get good espresso. Each good shot of espresso makes their day.

Aaron and James bought this espresso machine second hand for about $200. It's tricky to make a good cup of espresso, but worth the effort.

Getting the milk right is an art in itself and is easier to get wrong. Aaron likes to make an analogy to wine to stress the sophisticated nature of coffee.

James and Aaron usually don't like to mix coffee with anything, as they think it cuts out a lot of flavor.

James told us that the usual coffee at any diner  has bitter flavor, because it is overextracted, whereas hand brewed coffee gives more control over the coffee you get and guarantees better flavors out of it.

We should appreciate coffee as a beverage in its own right, not as means for caffeine says James as we finish up with our delicious tasting session. To learn more about their project go to: http://dotcross.tumblr.com/

UChicago freshman Robert Lipman, founder and chef of The Hearth underground restaurant, allows Shotosnap to follow him on his mad dash preparing a "Just Dessert" dinner for 10 lucky students.

 In preparation for his February dinner "Just Desserts" Robert Lipman peruses his cook books in search of the perfect recipes to prepare for his guests. He spends approximately five hours in C-Shop to do so.

                                       

After students register for a dinner on his website, he randomly selects students from the list, meets them on the Quad, and tells them when the dinner will be. He does not, however, tell the students the dinner's location.

For his February dinner, Robert had approximately 500 students sign-up. As he likes to joke, "It's harder to get into one of my dinners than it is to get into this school!"

In order to get the best ingredients, Robert travels downtown to the grocery store Mariano's where he and his grandmother, Marilyn Lipton, buy ingredients.

To kill two birds with one stone, Robert and his grandmother also add some items for home.

Mariano's is a high-end, Illinois-based grocery store.

After their shopping adventures, Robert always grabs lunch with his grandmother who lives in an apartment building next to Mariano's.  

Robert is the only member of his grandmother's family who lives in Illinois.  

Even if he is not preparing for a dinner, Robert still visits his grandmother every weekend.  

Despite the fact that his recipes often come from 5-star restaurants and require specific equipment, Robert cooks everything in his house's kitchen in the basement of Hitchcock.  

On average, Robert will spend 16 hours cooking and preparing each dinner.

Recently Robert purchased four new sets of dishes, allowing him to now serve ten people at his dinners.

Robert is a Questbridge student and puts every dollar students pay for the dinner into the ingredients.

When asked what inspired him to start the Hearth, Robert explains that his mother, who used to write cookbooks for a living, is the reason for his love of cooking.

Robert does not plan to cook professionally after school.  Rather, he is majoring in Economics in hopes of working in investments.  

After Robert prepares his meal, he packs his dishes and the food into his suitcase and hauls it to the dinners location.  For February's dinner, he selected a study room in the Regenstein Library.

Students hardly notice the dinner's set-up.  Robert even manages to sneak a mini-refrigerator into the Reg.

With the clock ticking down, Robert readies the room with custom menus and flowers then runs down to the lobby where he meets his guests.

At this point, none of his guests know exactly where the dinner will be held. 

Once the surprise of the location and table wears off, dinner guests quickly become acquainted with one another discussing majors, hometowns, and summer plans.  

The first course, Dry caramel and salt from the restaurant Alinea.

Since Alinea is one of Robert's favorite restaurants, he hopes to one-day host a dinner based on dishes served there.  

The second course, Valnødde pulver og is; Tørret fløde og tørrede bær, from Noma is a big hit among guests.

The "Just Desserts" dinner featured three separate ice creams made by Robert.  After tasting this dish, many of the guests described it as a cross between almonds, butter, and cream.   

Third-year Lauren Kelly-Jones, a student representing UChicago Admissions at the dinner, enjoys her ice cream. Continue reading on the next page -->

Lauren really enjoyed her ice cream.

For the next course, Robert serves a Chocolate wine he created using one of his professor's centrifuges.

“Millionaire Shortbread” accompanies the wine. 

Throughout dinner, Robert plates and explains each dish and does not eat with the guests.

 “Berry salad” inspired by Eleven Madison Park. 

Robert's dinners often last hours after the food is consumed, talking and laughing with full stomachs.

At each dinner, Robert often tries to throw in surprises for his guests.  For "Just Desserts" the guests are surprised with a performance by Unaccompanied Women.

Unaccompanied Women serenades the guests with an assortment of romantic and cheesy songs.

After their performance, Robert treats the ladies to some of his homemade ice cream and sherbet.  

The final dish in Robert's dinner, Chocolate Fondant with Coffee Cream and Chocolate Dentelles by The French Laundry, is Robert's favorite dessert.  As he confessed, the first time he tried this dessert, he cried it was so wonderful.

The aftermath of a successful dinner.  Clean-up takes an hour and a few trips to Hitchcock to complete.

Mounds of dishes are piled in Hitchcock's sinks where Robert determines he will do them after returning from a quick trip to fourth meal.  He has yet to have dinner.

Before making the journey to Pierce, though, Robert decides to take a quick breather on the floor.

Needless to say, organizing, preparing, and cooking one of Robert's dinners is exhausting work. To learn more about his restaurant go to: http://hearthunderground.com/