One Cup Kaapi Please

What would have happened if Baba Budan, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, hadn’t discovered coffee and smuggled beans from the port of Mocha to Mysore? What would have happened if India’s first coffee house never opened in 1780 in Madras? What if ancient South Indians hadn’t tried this ‘intoxication from the west’?

Sure, we’d be sitting here with as many options as Google search gives us, but the taste of South Indian Filter Coffee would have never reached your taste buds. We at FHM don’t like to think of such blasphemies coz frankly they just scare us.

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You know what they say -You can take a Madarasi out of Rajajinagar but you can’t take replace a cuppa Filter Coffee with a blend of Mocha-Java.

Yes, it’s been a certain number of years since you migrated west, or since West came East and Coffee Bean & Barista reduced the effort billions made every morning. While the addictions for frappes and lattes have replaced the taste of a freshly brewed cup of meter coffee, you no longer stand over the stove.

Instead, you now stand in a queue and wait for your dose of wake-up in a spill-free cup. You now notice that you’re struggling to reach on time and often feel like you need another shot of espresso. Of course it slipped your mind that you would have been functioning correctly if you had a cup of filter coffee.

But in an era of video conferencing, 100 MBPS downloading and tweeting, it is apparently a tad too much to ask for a ‘customized’ cup of coffee. Enter smarty pants who don’t believe that less is more and provide Ethiopion Yirgacheffe’s in hip locales of cityscape.

Ask Riyaaz Amlani, CEO & MD, Mocha “The Indian coffee drinker is experimenting, nowadays the consumer is exposed to more varietals of coffee and different ways of brewing more than ever before.”

The horror! Imagine your Paatti‘s face if you told her a cup of coffee now comes in a paper pack. And to think your Paatti was only accepted by your Thaatha’s family only after she brewed a pot of perfect filter coffee.

Perfection… and the pursuit of it got lost in thirteen hour long office days, take-out and instant coffee.

In a country that’s amply rich with corruption, what we also have in bounty is culture. And somewhere down the line, filter coffee became its synonym.

Yet, somehow, between cable television and luxury cars, we never equated it to the staple native drink. Instead, we pay homage to Italy and indulge in a cup of cappuccino every day.

Amlani agrees-“Although largely considered a tea-drinking nation, filter coffee has always been part of Southern social and culinary tradition but a cappuccino is one of the newer ways to consume this time honored beverage, which has become popular in the recent times.

For those who were more fortunate, you might remember the perfect start of a perfect day. Before any retailers found coffee plantations, coffee beans were offered at the end of every nameless street.

Brewed in two cylindrical cups (one of which has a pierced bottom to be nested into the top of the other), load the upper cup with coffee and 2 tablespoons of chicory. With the press disc left in place and the upper cup posted on the top, pour boiling water. With the lid firmly placed on top, the trick is to slowly drip the coffee into the bottom. You see, the nature of chicory makes it hold onto the water, compelling to extract the flavor. A finishing touch of milk and jaggery (according to taste), a steaming cup of hot coffee is ready.

With your dabarah being replaced by china cups (or worse, paper cups), and a nine page menu full of coffee blends to try, you’d think why Madras Filter Coffee never made the cut.

While it’s a personal favorite of Amlani’s, he says Mocha offers something close.” In fact at Mocha, we serve all our gourmet coffees in a French press, which is the closest to the filter method and in terms of body and flavor, we also carry something similar with the New Orleans Blend.”

We at FHM think some things should be left to your rasoi instead of theirs.

So the next time a waitress walks up to you in a hip café of your cityscape don’t forget to go for “One kaapi please”.

HIT CULINARIES FROM DOWN SOUTH

Appam – Hailing from Kerala, this Kallappam is made of rice batter tastes yum with Kadala curry, Mutton or Vegetable stew or even egg roast.

Chicken Chettinad- Southies do know spice and bring it to the table with their Chettinad Cuisine. The king of this cuisine is their chicken which is cooked with poppy seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds giving a taste you won’t forget.

Masala Dosa- What would happen to us without a dosa? It was good we never found out. Made from rice and lentils, almost everybody loves a crispy masala dosa.

Idli Vada- Steaming idli’s and vada’s accompanied with coconut/ mango chutney and tasty sambhar equals a perfect snack.

Know your coffee

Known as drip coffee since the water passes through the grounds solely by gravity and not under pressure or in longer-term contact.

The distance between the pouring and receiving cup leads to the coffee's another name Meter Coffee.

Another reason for calling it degree coffee is that chicory beans were used to make the coffee. The South Indian pronunciation of chickory became chigory then digory and finally degree.

The name derives from the filter used for making the decoction.

Interestingly, there is a Kannada name for coffee Boondh Bisneeru. Bisneeru sounds a great deal like bisi neeru meaning hot water.

The Srilankan Tamil name for coffee is Kottai Vadineer.

The most commonly used coffee beans are Peaberry (preferred),Arabica, Malabar and Robusta grown in Malabar (Kerala), Chikmanglur (Karnataka) and Nilgiris ( Tamil Nadu)

Instant Filter Kaapi

If there can be instant cappuccinos, there can be easy-to-make filter coffee. Bru green label and Tata Coorg Filter Coffee are the largest brands in filter coffee. Local brands like Narasus and Kalmane Coffee chain also are known for their filter coffee.

From the January 2011 issue of FHM India.