2. Cover the container and steep for 24 hours at room temperature, then another 24 hours in the fridge.
3. Using a fine mesh strainer or colander lined with coffee filters or cheesecloth, carefully strain the mixture into a clean pitcher or container, pressing down on the grounds and leaves to extract as much liquid as possible. Feel free to strain it a second time for a more grit-free mixture.
4. Now you have pandan cold brew concentrate to use however you like!
5. However, we’re making the Brew-ha #1, so fill a glass with ice (if making the iced version) and add the cold brew concentrate, coconut water, and coconut milk in a 1:1:1 ratio. Stir and enjoy!
6. If you’d prefer it hot, heat the concentrate and coconut water together until steaming and pour into a mug. Steam and froth the coconut milk and pour on top, in a fancy pattern if you so please.
Keep reading for a special preview of
Blackmail and Bibingka
Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!
Chapter One
Adeena, can you please shut that off? If I have to listen to that Mariah Carey song one more time . . .”
I scratched out the third mistake I’d made while trying to finalize the menu for the annual Shady Palms Holiday Bash. It tied with the Founder’s Day Festival as the biggest event in my tiny town of Shady Palms, Illinois (population 18,751), and this was the first year my business—my dream—the Brew-ha Cafe would be participating. Considering what a mess the Founder’s Day Festival had turned out to be, I really needed to wow at this party. Despite obsessing over it for the past month, I had less than two weeks till the big party and hadn’t finalized anything.
My best friend and business partner, Adeena Awan, turned the cafe’s speaker system down to a decibel that didn’t make my ears bleed. “Way to be a humbug, Lila. Ms. Mariah cannot and will not be silenced. Her lambs will make sure of it.”
“Hon, you don’t even celebrate Christmas. Why do you have all of these?” Elena Torres, Adeena’s girlfriend and the third and final member of the Brew-ha Cafe crew (aka our voice of reason), scrolled through the cafe’s playlist on Adeena’s laptop. It currently had no fewer than ten Christmas music compilations that she’d had on repeat since December first. It was only December fourth, and I was ready to ban her from programming the shop’s playlists ever again.
Elena raised her eyebrows at the mix of both religious and secular Christmas songs. “Were you secretly raised in an intensely Catholic family like me and Lila? Because this is a lot.”
Adeena laughed and handed Elena her morning cup of yerba buena tea. “No, I just like the music. It started as me being rebellious as a kid. Well, as rebellious as you could be in my house. You didn’t grow up here, but Shady Palms has a pretty big Muslim and Jewish population, so it was really easy to keep Christmas out of schools. But there were still all the commercials and Christmas specials on TV, so I got kind of obsessed with the holiday. I’m mostly over it now, but I still love the music and movies. And also the parties because Lila’s family goes all in on the holiday.”
Despite my “humbug” response, as Adeena put it, I really did love the holidays. The food, the parties, the gifts, the karaoke, the fantastically cheesy and comfortingly predictable holiday romance movies . . . What wasn’t to love? Though I was finding it hard to get into the holiday spirit ever since my long-lost cousin Ronnie came back into our lives a few days ago. Fifteen years of nothing, only for the prodigal son to show up on our doorstep like nothing had happened, saying he’d bought a winery just outside of town and would be staying in Shady Palms for the foreseeable future.
“Overjoyed” might be an understatement regarding Tita Rosie’s reaction to seeing her only child again after more than a decade. If she wasn’t filling his plate with third and fourth helpings, she was touching his face and bursting into tears, as if she couldn’t believe he was real.
I couldn’t believe it, either.
Considering everything he put her through, the kindest thing he did for our family was leave, just like his father before him.
“Let them go,” Lola Flor had muttered when I was a kid, as we watched first Tito Jeff and then Ronnie abandon us, Tita Rosie sobbing alone in her room each time. “The Macapagal women will do just fine without them.”
My grandmother had been right. Maybe it had taken awhile, but the Macapagal women thrived without them. Tita Rosie’s Kitchen, our family restaurant, sat right next door to the Brew-ha Cafe and was now doing so well that people from all over the Midwest came down to Shady Palms just to enjoy my family’s food. That’s right, our hole-in-the-wall restaurant was now a tourist destination. Thanks to that, we finally had enough money to hire outside help and, get this, my aunt and grandmother could actually take a whole entire day off.
My beloved Brew-ha Cafe wasn’t quite there yet, but was still on track to turn a profit within the next couple of years. We had a rough start back in the summer, but thanks to Adeena’s barista skills, my baking wizardry, and Elena’s plant witchery, we’d started to establish ourselves as the hang-out spot for the below-forty crowd. We also appealed to anyone who appreciated quality drinks, Filipino-inspired bakes, and an array of plants and organic bath and beauty products.
As I doodled in the edges of my notebook, trying to figure out what was easy to bake in bulk yet still had enough pizzazz to draw a crowd among the twenty or so tables and stalls that would be at the holiday bash, Adeena came over with a tray holding three small cups filled with a creamy concoction dusted with cinnamon.
“Tasting time!” she said. “This is the atole recipe I plan on serving at the big bash. Elena’s mom gave me the recipe and I added my own tweaks. What do you think?”
I picked up a cup and took a big sniff, little curls of steam enveloping my face. Along with the cinnamon, I detected a touch of vanilla and a faint scent that I couldn’t immediately place until I took a small sip.
“Corn! Is this thickened with masa harina?” I asked.
Elena nodded. “Yup! It’s pretty typical for breakfast, especially around Christmastime. I’d asked Adeena to make champurrado, the chocolate version, but she said there was also a Filipino dish called champorado that was rice-based, and we didn’t want the customers to get confused.”
“Aww, that’s sweet. And a good idea, since I think my family will be serving champorado at the big bash. I love this, Adeena! Are we all set with the beverages?”
“Think so. There’s Elena’s atole, my chai, and of course the house blend with bags of my hand-roasted coffee beans to sell alongside it. You sure you don’t want to include one of your drinks?”