The Gastronaut. The Journey Begins.

Good morning.

At the breakfast table, setting up my creative day. My coffee today? Greek. Greek with a spot of milk and honey instead of sugar. Did you ever have Greek coffee? It is made in a briki.

It is always served in a demitasse cup.

A successful boil and pour leaves a layer of foam on top of the coffee when poured into the cup and served. The foam is called “kaimaki.”

The Kaimaki Technique

Ask 100 random Greek coffee drinkers how they achieve a kaimaki on their coffee each time they pour it from the briki, and you will hear 100 different techniques explained. In detail. Along with their views on unrelated things you never intended to ask.

A Word to the Unsuspecting.

Sip the coffee until you reach “ground level.”

NO – I don’t mean sip it while you take the stairs. I’m talking about the coffee grounds. There is no filter in the briki and the grounds have to go somewhere.

The demitasse cup will have the thick sediment of grounds at the bottom—visible only when you have sipped away most of your coffee and are down to grounds.

The grounds? There are professional coffee ground readers known as “flitzanoudes” that ‘read’ the grounds of your cup once it has been turned over and allowed to settle. Greeks have been fortune-telling for centuries.

But beyond the professionals there are the ones that inherit the talent and the secrets. Every town, neighborhood, and family has its expert coffee ground reader and its evil eye undoer (xematiasma). All you need to do is ask and you will be led to the appropriate auntie or grandmother for the circumstance. We can’t even drink coffee or get evil eyed without a scandal brewing because everyone finds out. It’s a thing. Whatever. It is what it is.

Ready for coffee?

The Standard = For one serving, you will need a demitasse cupful of water, one teaspoon of Greek coffee, and 1 or more tsp of sugar (or no sugar at all). And a briki.

Into the briki they go: water, coffee, and sugar. Stir well over heat. Remove when the gently boiling coffee begins to rise and ‘swell.’ It actually looks like its rising like a rising wave or rising lava—you see the boiling coffee in the briki gently lifting up with bubbles on top. But be careful. It looks like it will be slow to rise—but it’s quite fast, actually! So as it blooms, take the briki off the heat.

Pour the coffee immediately into the cup. The demitasse is the size you need.

So, my coffee? Slightly heretical, although I just think it’s fusion.

I use my mug. That isn’t unusual today; a larger Greek coffee, or a double, is also known as a ‘coupato.’

My ‘double dose’ is about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mug (American coffee-size standard mug), 2 tsp. Greek coffee, and 1 tablespoon of Greek honey. Into the briki they go, stirred on highish heat till it swells up like the sea. If I’m in the mood, I add a splash of milk to it and a crushed cardamom or two. Heretical. Until they try it. Then it’s addictive.

With my coffee today? I tore a chunk of what was left from yesterday’s loaf (a rustic country-style loaf) with a slather of butter.

The book I chose to peruse over coffee? The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

And I came across a paragraph that shook me. It came across so differently when I saw it this morning. It disturbed me, sadly. It felt so real. So applicable to so many situations. Anyway, the paragraph refers to a set of inseparable twins, Estha and Rahel—so close, so intuitively close to each other in childhood—but then they were separated by circumstances. And Rahel used to call the two of them ‘we’ growing up. And this paragraph I chose to note zooms into the twins’ lives later on.

A note to make the excerpt a bit more in context: The ‘she’ in the excerpt refers to Rahel; it feels and sounds disassociated, as ‘she’ is Rahel, and Rahel is thinking about herself and her brother—the twin unit—and calling her and her twin ‘them. ‘That ‘disassociated’ ‘blow’ from referring to her and her twin brother as ‘us’ to ‘them’ is perfect for the narration—you really feel how the twins were broken on so many levels. Ammu, in the excerpt, is the twins’ mother.

Right? Is that a frightening realization? That you have grown apart from someone you love. That you are so broken. That you have reached an age where dying has become ‘viable’? And the ‘boundaries’? Powerful.

Speaking of powerful, today I need to make focaccia—and that’s a ‘powerful’ bread. But I have a fusion focaccia in mind that is a tweaked version of authentic Greek Liopsomo, which is an olive bread. I use two different types of flour. Type M, which is a yellow wheat flour, and plain white all-purpose flour.

I will post again later with the tale of the focaccia.

Until then, I’m signing off…a busy day ahead. But I will be back with the news of the focaccia, and if I find anything ‘collectible,’ believe me, I will share it here…

Today’s post was brought to you from a kitchen in Greece that smells of coffee and cardamom, and the music of the oud fills the air. (My dough is finicky—it’s jazz, oud or 70s—for a good rise and bounce.) Try this playlist…it’s amazing for kitchen backgrounds.

See you later with the focaccia…