Coffee may be an odd place to begin a blog on recipes and food - beginning at the end with something often drunk after a meal. But coffee starts the day for many of us, and it is the first thing Vangelis Skouras consumes in the books. In fact, the first time we meet him in Death Of A Stranger he has just ordered a metrio - a semi-sweet cup of Greek coffee.
The first Greek cookbook I bought after moving to Rhodes was Rena Salaman’s Greek Food. I still have my well worn hardback copy and it remains the most cherished book on Greek food I own. In his foreward to this 1993 edition, Alan Davidson (author of another prized book on my cookbook shelf Mediterranean Seafood) writes, “Ignite the fireworks, let them soar over the hillside where the author gathers her thyme, and over the Athenian markets which she so vividly and evocatively describes.” It is a joy that is easy to share when you leaf through the pages of Greek Food with its expressive Philip Thompson illustrations and scene-setting descriptions not only of how to prepare the dishes, but their cultural context. While the chapter on Kafe is at the end of the book, Rena Salaman sets out the prescribed times of day for coffee as morning, mid-morning and mid-afternoon, which accords pretty much with Vangelis’s intake, although he usually stops at two cups in the earlier part of the day.
The essential piece of equipment for Greek coffee is a briki - traditionally a small brass or copper pot - and it is impossible to make in any larger quantities than 3 or 4 small cups. My most used briki is an engraved brass pot with a detachable wooden handle that I bought at a specialist Greek coffee shop on Socrates Street in the Old Town of Rhodes. The pot has a ‘2’ inscribed on its bottom, but if it yields 2 cups they are very small ones. It makes a good, generous solo cup - enough to fuel a morning’s writing.
For my one cup, I put one teaspoon of Greek coffee in the briki with half a teaspoon of sugar. I like my coffee with just a little sweetness, perhaps a bit less than the metrio you would be served in a kafeneion. The brave drink their Greek coffee sketo (without sugar) and those with a sweet tooth have a glyko. I fill a small cup with cold water and tip it into the pot onto the coffee and sugar. Much stirring follows over a very low heat until the coffee and sugar are well mixed. The coffee is then left to its alchemy - but don’t let go of the briki as it will easily tip over and all your work will be for nothing. When the coffee comes to the boil the foam rises fast - another reason for holding on tightly to the briki. As the foam reaches the lip of the briki I quickly remove it from the flame and pour the contents into the waiting cup. There are those (Rena Salaman included) who say to leave the briki to stand for a moment to let the grounds settle at the bottom before pouring. While this makes sense, I have found that in standing the precious foam has a tendency to dissipate and I would rather deal with the mud of grounds at the bottom of my cup than lose any foam. I am also usually just too eager for that cup of coffee by then to wait!
Apart from the right equipment, speed is the defining factor in making a good cup of Greek coffee. Slow speed. The lower the heat and the longer the coffee takes to come to the boil the better the cup. The ultimate is to make Greek coffee over sand heated on a special hot plate, a method that has been around for several centuries, but one I have yet to witness in person - maybe on my next research trip to Greece…
Brikia
