Litha Feast: Coffee-Fennel-Juniper Lamb & Solar Honey Iced Coffee

Litha is the longest day. The sun stands at the top of its arc and holds there, as if deciding whether to come down at all. This is the sabbat of fire and full light, the year breathing in before it begins to breathe out. We mark it the way it asks to be marked: outdoors, over flame, with a table that runs late into a dusk that takes its time arriving.

There is a rightness to coffee here that goes past habit. Coffee is a bean that has been roasted over fire. Dark roast especially carries the memory of it: char and resin, with sweetness pulled to its edge. On the solstice, that is the note we want against lamb and smoke. To drink, then: something gold and cold, sweetened with honey, the sun put into a glass while the sun is still high enough to watch.

Two recipes. One for the fire, one for the shade.

The rub: coffee, fennel, juniper

Toast the whole spices first. Fennel, juniper, and coriander go into a dry pan over medium heat, and you wait a minute or two, until the kitchen smells like the inside of a pine wood after rain. Juniper leads. It always does. Take the pan off the heat the moment the fennel turns fragrant, before anything browns.

Grind in a mortar, not a machine. The machine pulverizes. The mortar bruises, and you want the bruise. The oils are released, not erased. Then fold in the ground coffee and the rest. The coffee does not get toasted. It is already as toasted as it will ever be.

Makes enough for 6–8 lamb loin chops.

• 2 Tbsp dark roast coffee, finely ground (we use Coven)
• 1 Tbsp fennel seed
• 1 tsp juniper berries
• 1 tsp coriander seed
• 1 tsp coarse salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp brown sugar

Method:

1. Toast the fennel, juniper, and coriander in a dry pan until fragrant. Cool a moment.
2. Grind them coarse in a mortar. Stir in the ground coffee, salt, pepper, and brown sugar.
3. Pat the chops dry. Rub them lightly with oil, then press the spice mix into both sides. Let them sit at room temperature for thirty to forty minutes, long enough for the salt to begin its work.
4. Grill hot and fast. Three to four minutes a side for medium-rare, with the fat catching and flaring. Rest five minutes before serving.

The crust should be dark, and the inside should be risen. The coffee reads less as coffee than as depth, the floor the fennel and juniper stand on.

The drink: Solar Honey Iced Coffee

Make this the night before, while you think about the fire. The coffee is steeped cold and slow, then sweetened with raw honey and lifted with lemon and a single dried calendula flower, the bloom that turns its face to follow the sun. It tastes the way the longest day looks at four in the afternoon.

Makes about a quart.

• 1 cup coarse-ground coffee, smooth and medium (we use Hearth)
• 4 cups cold water
• 2 Tbsp raw honey
• Zest of half a lemon
• 1 dried calendula flower
• Ice, to serve

Method:

1. Combine the ground coffee and cold water in a jar. Stir once. Cover and leave it on the counter, or in the cold, for twelve hours.
2. Strain through a fine cloth or filter. Be patient and let it drip rather than pressing.
3. Warm a small splash of the coffee just enough to dissolve the honey, then stir it back through. Add the lemon zest and the calendula.
4. Chill. Serve over ice, in the brightest glass you own.

The calendula is not decoration. It is the point: a sun-flower in a sun-drink on the sun's own day. If you keep an altar, one bloom goes there instead, beside the cup.

At the table

Set the dark beside the gold. The lamb has been to the fire and carries the char of it. The glass holds the honey and the calendula, with the long light caught in it. Between them, the whole of Litha: the heat at its height and the sweetness it ripens.

Eat late. Let the chops rest while the coals settle, and the first cool comes off the grass. Pour the iced coffee for whoever is still at the table when the loons start up over the water, if you are lucky enough to have water nearby. The longest day does not need to be hurried. That is the gift of it.

This is the first of our sabbat feasts. The shape it takes here is the shape the others will keep: the fire and the cup, with a place at the table for the season at its turning.

The longest day is ours. Lay the fire early.