There is a week in September when iced matcha stops making sense. The drink is the same, the weather has moved, and it starts tasting thin.
This is what I make instead. Black sesame, matcha, hot milk. It is darker and heavier than a standard latte, faintly savoury under the sweetness, and it holds up as something to drink in the late afternoon rather than only at eight in the morning.
Kuro means black.
Sesame base
Makes enough for 6 to 8 drinks. Keeps one week, refrigerated.
- 100g black sesame seeds
- 60g honey, or maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons neutral oil
- Good pinch of fine salt
Toast the seeds. Dry pan, medium heat, moving constantly, three to four minutes. You are listening for them to start popping and smelling like sesame rather than like nothing. Black seeds hide their colour change, so go by smell. Burnt sesame is bitter in a way nothing rescues, so take them off early if you are unsure.
Cool them completely. Warm seeds turn to a greasy sludge in a grinder.
Grind. A spice grinder or small food processor, in bursts, scraping down. It goes from powder to a coarse paste to something glossy, and that takes longer than you expect. Two or three minutes total. Add the oil once it starts clumping.
Add honey and salt. Blitz again briefly. It should be thick, spoonable, and just barely pourable.
If you would rather skip all of that: shop-bought black sesame paste, sold as neri goma, works well. Buy the unsweetened kind and stir in the honey and salt yourself.
The drink (makes one)
- 2 heaped teaspoons sesame base
- 4g culinary or barista matcha, sifted
- 60ml water at 70–80°C
- 200ml milk, dairy or oat
- Optional: a few toasted sesame seeds on top
Warm the base into the glass. Spoon it into the bottom of a heatproof glass with a splash of the hot milk and stir until it loosens into a smooth dark syrup. Doing this first stops it sinking into a solid lump at the bottom, which is the one thing that goes wrong with this drink.
Whisk the matcha. Sift, add the water, whisk fast in a W motion for fifteen seconds until it is smooth and lightly foamed. No clumps on the surface.
Steam or heat the rest of the milk and pour it over the sesame base. Stir once.
Pour the matcha over the top. Slowly, over the back of a spoon if you want the layers to hold. It sits as a green band over the dark milk for a minute or so before it merges.
Stir before drinking. The layers are for looking at.
Some variations you could try:
Oat milk suits this better than most matcha drinks. Its sweetness and body work with the sesame instead of flattening it, which is not always true with plain matcha.
Culinary or barista grade, not ceremonial. There is a lot going on in this glass. Ceremonial matcha's whole quality is subtlety, and subtlety loses to toasted sesame every time. Save the good tin for a bowl of usucha.
It works iced, though it needs the base loosened with a little hot water first or it seizes in cold milk. Shake rather than stir.
