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Turkish Coffee
This coffee should be made over an alcohol lamp in a brass Turkish pot, of pulverized coffee. Put in pot as many after-dinner coffee cupfuls of water as you desire, and bring to a boil. On top of the water, drop a heaping teaspoonful of pulverized coffee to each cup of water, and allow it to settle. Then add powdered sugar, one, two, or three teaspoonfuls to a cup, and bring to a boil three times. Pour into the cups and allow the grounds to settle before drinking.
A workable ibrik method, though the sequence here is unusual in putting the coffee onto already-boiling water. A few notes on vessels, grind and quantities.
- The potThe "brass Turkish pot" is an ibrik or cezve, narrow-necked and long-handled, still sold in copper or brass with a tin lining. Any small deep saucepan will work, but the narrow neck is what traps the foam and helps the grounds fall back.
- Heat sourceAn alcohol lamp gives a low, steady flame, which is the point. On a gas or electric hob use the lowest setting you can hold a boil at; rushing the heat scorches the coffee and kills the foam.
- "Pulverized coffee"This means ground to a flour, finer than espresso. Blade grinders and most burr grinders will not reach it; look for coffee sold as Turkish grind, or use a hand mill set as fine as it goes.
- Cup sizeAn after-dinner coffee cup is roughly 2 to 2.5 fluid ounces, about 60-75 ml. Measure the water with the actual serving cups, as the recipe intends, rather than with a standard measuring cup.
- SugarOne teaspoon per demitasse is the usual middling sweetness; three is very sweet indeed by modern taste. The recipe adds it after the coffee has settled and before the boils, so that it dissolves during brewing rather than being stirred in at the cup.
- The three boilsThis is the hinge. Bring it just to the point where the foam rises to the rim, pull it off the heat, let it subside, and repeat twice. If it boils over, the foam is gone and cannot be recovered.
- PouringDivide the foam among the cups first, then top up with the liquid. Let the cups stand a minute or two; the last quarter inch is sediment and is not drunk.
- YieldDepends on the pot; a small ibrik will hold perhaps three to four demitasse cups. A full pot is difficult to boil evenly, so make two batches rather than one large one.
Coffee brewed unfiltered with its grounds is among the oldest methods still in daily use, carried from Yemen through Ottoman territory in the sixteenth century and spread across the Balkans, the Levant and North Africa, where the same drink answers to Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Arabic names depending on who is pouring. An exotic after-dinner coffee served in tiny cups from a brass pot gave the end of a dinner a bit of theatre, and the alcohol lamp would have allowed it to be made at the table in front of the guests rather than in the kitchen.