Turkish coffee
Turkish coffee, also known as Greek, Arabic or Armenian coffee in their respective countries, is coffee prepared by boiling finely powdered roast coffee beans in a pot, possibly with sugar, and serving it into a cup, where the dregs settle. It is common throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus, and the Balkans, and in their expatriate communities and restaurants in the rest of the world.
Coffeehouse culture is highly developed in the former Ottoman world, and this is the dominant style of preparation.
History
Coffee has its origins in Ethiopia and Yemen. By the late 15th and early 16th century, it had spread to Cairo and Mecca.[1][2]
The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports the opening of the first coffeehouse in Constantinople:
Until the year 962 (1554-55), in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus, came to the city: they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtalkala, and began to purvey coffee.[3]
Various legends involving its introduction at a "Kiva Han" in 1475 are reported on Web sites, but with no documentation.[4]
Coffee has affected Turkish culture so much that the word breakfast (kahvaltı) in Turkish literally means "before coffee" (kahve-alti kahve:coffee altı:below/before). In recent times, Turkish Coffee in Turkey has partly lost its popularity in favor of tea, instant coffee and other modern coffee variations.
Name
In Turkey, it was known simply as kahve (coffee) until instant coffee was brought in during the 1980s. Today younger generations refer to it as Türk kahvesi (Turkish coffee).
Outside of Turkey, it is often called "Turkish coffee" in the local language: τούρκικος καφές (Greek), turska kava (South Slavic), Romanian cafea turceasca, but also under the various national names, which are used to avoid the political and cultural implications of mentioning the former imperial power, the Ottoman Empire, and the current Turkish state. It is called "Armenian Coffee" (Հայկական սուրճ Haykakan surj), "Greek coffee" (ελληνικός καφές), and "Cypriot coffee" (κυπριακός καφές), in Armenia, Greece, Cyprus, respectively.
In Greece, this change was precipitated by the 1974 Cyprus crisis:
...after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974, when Greco-Turkish relations at all levels became strained, τούρκικος καφές became ελληνικός καφές by substitution of one Greek word for another while leaving the Turkish loan-word, for which there is no Greek equivalent, unchanged.[5]
As Browning points out, the words for "coffee" and "coffeeshop" remained unchanged in Greek as in the other Balkan languages, using the Turkish forms kahve and kahvehane: Greek καφές, καφενείο (earlier καφενές)[6]; South Slavic kava, kavana; Albanian kafe, kafene.
In Croatian and Serbian communities, it may be called simply domaća kava 'domestic coffee' or kava 'coffee'.
In Israel, such coffee is commonly referred to as 'cafe botz' or mud coffee because of the sludge or mud at the bottom of the cup.
Equipment
The necessary equipment to prepare Turkish coffee consists of a narrow-topped small boiling pot called an ibrik, cezve, or džezva (basically an ewer), a teaspoon and a heating apparatus. The ingredients are finely ground coffee, sometimes cardamom, cold water and (if desired) sugar. It is served in cups (fincan or fildžan) similar in size to Italian espresso or Japanese sake cups. Some modern cups do have handles. Traditional cups did not, and coffee was drunk either by handling the cup with the fingertips or, more often, by placing the cup in a zarf, a metal container with a handle.
Traditionally, the pot is made of copper and has a wooden handle. The size of the pot is chosen to be close to the total volume of the cups to be prepared, since using too large a pot causes most of the precious foam to stick to the inside of it. Also, a certain depth of water is necessary in order for the coffee particles to sink. The teaspoon is used both for stirring and measuring the amount of coffee and sugar. The teaspoons in some other countries are much larger than the teaspoons in countries where Turkish coffee is common: The dipping parts of the teaspoons in these countries are about 1 cm long and 0.5 cm wide.
For heating, an ordinary stove burner is sufficient, but an overly strong heat source is undesirable, as the brewing time needs to be at least five minutes. As an alternative, the heating source can be a tray about 10cm (4in) deep filled with sand. The tray is placed on the burner. When the sand is hot, the coffee pot is placed in the sand. This allows for a more even and gentle heat transfer. The coffee prepared this method is called la nisip ("on sand") in Romania.
Preparation
As with other ways of preparing coffee, the best Turkish coffee is made from freshly roasted beans ground just before brewing. A dark roast is preferable but even a medium roast coffee will yield a strong aroma and flavour. The grinding is done either by pounding in a mortar (the original method) or using a mill (the more usual method today), and the end result is a fine coffee powder. Beans for Turkish coffee are ground even finer than the grind used in pump-driven espresso makers; therefore, Turkish coffee should be powdery. It is the finest grind of coffee used in any style of coffee making.
For best results, the water must be cold. Therefore, if sugar is desired, an easily dissolvable form should be chosen.
The amount of water necessary can be measured using the cups. The coffee and the sugar are usually added to water, rather than being put into the pot first. For each cup, between one and two heaped teaspoons of coffee are used. In Turkey, four degrees of sweetness are used. The Turkish terms and approximate amounts are as follows: sade (plain; no sugar), az şekerli (little sugar; half a levelled teaspoon of sugar), orta şekerli (medium sugar; one levelled teaspoon), and çok şekerli (a lot of sugar; one and a half or two levelled teaspoons). The coffee and the desired amount of sugar are stirred until all coffee sinks and the sugar is dissolved. Following this, the spoon is removed and the pot is put on the fire. No stirring is done beyond this point, as it would dissolve the foam. Just as the coffee begins boiling, the pot is removed from the fire and the coffee is poured into the cups.
A well-prepared Turkish coffee has a thick foam at the top (köpük in Turkish), is homogeneous, and does not contain noticeable particles in the foam or the liquid. This can be achieved only if cold water and a low heat are used. Starting with warm water or a strong heat does not leave enough time for either the coffee to sink or the foam to form. It is possible to wait an additional twenty seconds past boiling, which makes a homogeneous and delicious coffee, but the foam is completely lost. To overcome this, foam can be removed and put into cups earlier and the rest can be left to boil. In this case special attention must be paid to transfer only the foam and not the suspended particles.
There are other schools of preparing Turkish coffee that vary from the above. One such method involves starting with hot water alone, then adding and dissolving the sugar. The product is in essence a sugar syrup with a higher boiling point than water. The coffee and cardamom are added, and the mixture is stirred. It is then brought to a boil and just before serving is removed from the heat for a few seconds and returned to it, being brought to a brief boil a second time. This double (and sometimes triple) boiling is an essential part of the process, both ceremonially and — as connoisseurs claim — on the palate.
Drinking and Tasseography
Turkish coffee is drunk slowly and is usually served with a glass of cold water (to freshen the mouth to bitter taste the coffee before sipping), though sometimes, especially after dinner, with a small glass of mint liqueur. It is also served with Turkish delight traditionally.
All the coffee in the pot is poured into cups, but not all of it is drunk. The thick layer of sludgy grounds at the bottom of the cup is left behind. The cup is then commonly turned over into the saucer to cool, and then the patterns of the coffee grounds can be used for a kind of fortune telling called tasseography (Template:Lang-tr, Template:Lang-gr (kafemanteia)), or tasseomancy. The drinker of the coffee cannot read his or her own cup.
Many interpretations for symbols exist, but one common thread is the color of the symbols. Since most cups used are white or ivory and the grinds are dark, good contrast exists for the symbols. White is considered as a "good" symbol foretelling of generally positive things for the drinker, while the grinds are considered to form "bad" symbols.
Symbols can be many things including people, animals, and inanimate objects. Usually, the fortune teller will group nearby symbols together for a prediction
Turkish coffee grounds are sometimes flavored with cardamom, eliminating the need to have the spice added during preparation.
Notes
- ^ Bonnie K. Bealer, Bennett Alan Weinberg, The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug, Routledge 2001, p.11. ISBN 0415927226.
- ^ Alain Huetz de Lemps, "Colonial Beverages and the Consumption of Sugar" in Massimo Montanari, Jean Louis Flandrin, ed. Food: A Culinary History, p. 387
- ^ Quoted in Cemal Kafadar, "A History of Coffee", Economic History Congress XIII (Buenos Aires, 2002) full text
- ^ e.g. [1], [2], [3]
- ^ Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, 1983. ISBN 0521299780. p. 16
- ^ Babiniotis, Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικης Γλώσσας
External links
- Turkish Coffee Information Site
- About Turkish Coffee at Turkishcook.com
- Turkish Coffee Tutorial at Ineedcoffee.com
- Turkish Coffee - A Historical Background
- Brewing Turkish Coffee article and discussion at Coffeegeek.com
