Aihuxi.129
net.cooks
utzoo!decvax!harpo!mhtsa!ihnss!ihuxi!otto
Tue Apr 13 00:41:34 1982
A Utensilemacs s.netout and a Recipe for It
One utensil I use quite a lot and recommend to others (although to a
necessarily select audience) is an authentic Ibrik for the making of
Turkish/Greek/Armenian Coffee. I got mine by going to a good coffee
shop in Philadelphia, describing what I wanted. They found it a
supplier's catalog, and I had mine a couple of weeks later, costing
something like $10. (This was a few years ago.)
An Ibrik is something like a butter melting pan, with a long handle and
constricted neck. The neck constriction allows the coffee to *foam up*
as it is being prepared, something important in the making of this
type of coffee. Turkish/Greek/Armenian Coffee, prepared in the morning,
is incredibly rich, seductive, and quite an eye opener with no trace of
bitterness. When made with Kona or Blue Mountain beans, it is only
surpassed by espresso (made with the same kind of bean) as the best
coffee in the world. And the equipment needed for making this kind of
coffee properly is much less expensive than the cost of a good home
espresso unit.
Recipes vary for this kind of coffee. Here is mine:
TURKISH/GREEK/ARMENIAN COFFEE
Grind 3 tablespoons of your favorite coffee beans as fine as your
equipment will allow. The best fineness is almost like talcum powder,
but I don't know of any home equipment short of a hand-powered Turkish
coffee grinder that can achieve this. I use a Braun coffee mill set two
settings below Mocha. This seems to work fine. A grinder that uses
whirling blades instead of mill wheels will not do, because a uniform
fineness cannot be achieved. The resulting grounds will not settle
properly.
Put the ground coffee, one cup of water, and (optionally) 3 teaspoons of
sugar into the Ibrik. Put the Ibrik over medium-high heat. Wait until
the coffee begins to foam up the neck of the Ibrik, remove from heat,
swirl the coffee in the Ibrik and count off 6 seconds. Then put the Ibrik
back on the heat, wait until it foams up a second time, pull off the heat
and count to 6. Put the Ibrik back on the heat, wait until it foams up a
third time, and when it does take it off the heat and pour out the coffee
into a coffee cup, grounds and all. It is considered good form (I am
told) to have enough foam to cover the entire surface of the liquid in
the cup. Let the coffee sit undisturbed for a few minutes, letting the
grounds settle to the bottom of the cup. Then drink the coffee, stopping
just before the grounds at the bottom begin to be disturbed.
One cup of this coffee in the morning, and no more coffee will be needed (or
appreciated) for the rest of the day! I have prepared this coffee for
people who don't like coffee and they loved it! Try it before judging
it to be "too strong" or "too bitter" or anything of the sort. The
taste is quite unexpected (unless, of course, you have had this coffee
in a restaurant before).
George Otto
BTL, Indian Hill
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