Recently learnt more about how to make Turkish coffee

[Terje]

We have this new girl at work whose mom is from Egypt and her dad from Eritrea and apart from being so beautiful it can make a grown man cry like a baby she also knows how to make excellent Turksih coffee.

Stir it very slowly, don't turn the heat up too much and only let it come to a very light boil, if even that much. The trick is not to destroy "the face of the coffee" she said, the foam on top. Pour it up carefully, fill the cups halfway first "so each cup gets a face" and then pour the rest.

She's single BTW.

[Gouezeri]

Any chance of a pic...? Not the coffee... the girl, the girl!!!

[CakeBoy]

Please tell her that I love her and am a very deserving case

[Belgik]

...piece a cake, boy!....

[Gouezeri]

Please tell her that I love her and am a very deserving case

Fruit cake?

[CakeBoy]

Please tell her that I love her and am a very deserving case

Fruit cake?

Absolutely! But I'll be any type of cake she wants LOL

[larsb]

Stir it very slowly, don't turn the heat up too much and only let it come to a very light boil, if even that much. The trick is not to destroy "the face of the coffee" she said, the foam on top. Pour it up carefully, fill the cups halfway first "so each cup gets a face" and then pour the rest.

(Is this a dating service or a coffee forum? Fortunately, I'm not single, so I'm able to focus on the coffee here.)

Terje, more details, please! I recently purchased an ibrik (or whatever the perferred word is) and I can't get the froth quite right. I believe I'm careful about using low heat, as it takes five minutes or so for the coffee to start frothing. How to proceed to get the perfect froth? It would seem that only a few seconds of boiling would do the trick. Longer than that, and the froth seems to dissolve. How should I handle the subsequent boilings?

[zix]

larsb, I don't know how important this may be, but someone said that when making turkish coffee the beans need to be really really fresh, as in "I roasted them five minutes ago". Perhaps this is not true, I wouldn't know, but it may affect frothing in any case.

[Terje]

Well, really freshly roasted beans seem to help quite a lot. Freshly roasted as in "not even five minutes ago". Whether or not the grind is extremely fine seems to be less important. At home I grind it with my Zassenhaus and honestly making really finely ground coffee with that one gets boring already the first time. So I used about the same grind as I would for the moka pot and that seems to work just fine.

And the way Nadya, the beautiful girl at work, did it was to just let it come to a boil, or not even that far. As soon as the surface starts bubbling the froth is "torn", if you see what I mean. How should you handle the subsequent boiling? What subesequent boilings? I know, I've read it in books too but here was Nady in front of me showing me how to do it and there was no second boiling at all, hardly even a first one. And I couldn't argue with her over that, the taste of the coffee was a very strong argument and her beautiful eyes would have stopped me anyway.

[larsb]

Ok, thanks. Yes, I understand you perfectly about the torn froth. I'll try it again with 0.8 boilings and report back.

[larsb]

Yep, a single careful boil seems to do the trick.

[espressomattic]

Just from my experience in the middle east if I may:

The local arabs in Israel only ever bolied it the once and never to the best of my knowledge boiled it up twice. It was a case of watching it bubble up then turn the heat off and serve. One thing they also did was to add the sugar when they put the ground coffee in at the begining.

Obviously you need a huge Hookah and some apple tobbacco to really appreciate this stuff. I no longer drink it as a bad experience put me off (Drinking mugs of it when I returned from my travels and the following heart palipatations)

[larsb]

Yes, putting the sugar in at the beginning is usually recommended in online texts. I usually don't take any sugar in my coffee, but I like turkish coffee with sugar and cardamom.

[Beanie]

Mmmm... yum... bringing back lovely memories of Istanbul

I do remember them asking if we wanted our coffee sweet or medium-sweet... because it's sugared during the brew... although each cup always came with extra sachets of sugar

[espressomattic]

When I used to brew it at home I used to have it sooo sweet. It's a wonder my nerves are intact, moved onto Cortados for awhile after that. A friend made me doubles with condensed milk. Needless to say I no longer 'do' sugar!