Recipe:
Today, Mexico's best coffee is ripened and dried along the roadways in the cloud-blanketed highlands of Chiapas and over through Veracruz and Oaxaca. The prime beans are usually roasted a little darker than ours - almost a Viennese roast - and they brew a nice, medium-bodied liquid with some spunk. They tell me it's the second-class beans that get roasted darker, to a mahogany black with a shining sugar coat.

The steam-powered espresso machines in the city cafeterías extract a trio of ethnic brews: espresso, straight, foamy and Italian; café con leche, mixed with hot milk, French-style (but so common one would mistake it for purely Mexican); or americano, simply diluted with water. The more rural brew leans toward the Spanish, the history books say, but it seems like a Mexican-flavored campfire version to me. Café de olla at its best is pot-boiled in earthenware with molassesy piloncillo sugar and spices like cinnamon, anise or cloves. These days, many traditional city restaurants offer the dark, delicious drink more regularly, served in old-fashioned earthenware mugs at the end of the meal. Ingredients: 4-5 ounces piloncillo*, roughly chopped or 1/2 to 2/3 cup packed brown sugar, plus 1 teaspoon molasses 2 inches cinnamon stick A few aniseeds (optional) 2/3 cup (2 ounces) Viennese-roast coffee, medium to coarse grind *Unrefined sugar that is pressed into cone or disk shapes. Also called panela. Boiling and steeping: In a noncorrosive pan, combine 1 quart water, the sugar, cinnamon and optional aniseed. Bring slowly to a boil, stirring to melt the sugar. Stir in the coffee, remove from the fire, cover and steep for 5 minutes. Straining: Strain the coffee through a fine-mesh sieve into cups or mugs and serve immediately.

Makes 4-5 servings. Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico Rick Bayless with Deann Groen Bayless