I gotta be honest... once in a while a man just has to enjoy his hammock... just hanging out doing
nothing. It's beautiful fall here in Minnesota. I mean we're in peak fall down here in the cities
what i'm gonna do is i am going to make a turkish coffee yeah kind of been in the coffee lately once
you start going down the espresso rabbit hole it's a deep hole it turns into a wombat hole it turns
into a badger hole it turns into a dark bowl. I have here my ibrik it's a turkish coffee maker
and i've had this boy i probably had this 25 years because uh i lived in Greece when i was a child
i went to the first grade there kindergarten we went there in 1962 and we stayed until pretty
much the end of 1965 the beginning of 1966. we lived outside of Athens and Kafficia. My Dad was
a navy chief he was stationed in Nea Makri which is over the mountains and me being a redheaded kid
i was like i was like a greek god well there just weren't a lot of redheads in greece so some of our
greek neighbors used to borrow me for the day and they take me out to get turkish coffee it's a fine
powdery ground coffee you put in there always had a little bit of sour cherry juice that's the way
it was served to me as a child so i'm gonna make some right here on my fancy feast
and have myself a little sophisticated cup out here in my demitasse that is what i'm gonna do
lollygagging and then getting slightly jacked up i'm using my Medalia D'oro
yeah whole bean and i'm gonna take him while i grind it now so here we go come on
for today with my turkish coffee because it's my tried and true and i always have this uh when i'm
backpacking Medalia D'oro these are the whole beans or as i like to call it Meh-Dagg-lea Doro
yeah this is not the instant that i normally use
these are the whole dark beans but i really like this and it makes a good dark brew and it's
going to be great for this turkish coffee and i'm getting my little turkish coffee pot ready i use
eight ounces of water in my ibrik now turkish coffee you use about a teaspoon of sugar for
roughly every three ounces of water it's supposed to be sweet and there's one i'm gonna go with
two and a half stir it in a little bit so right now all i have in there is the sugar
and the water next i'll grab my beans because the turkish coffee it is a sweet by nature
gotta be sweet because you grind your grinds super fine like powdered sugar like dust in the wind
and then you boil it in that pot you let it bubble up go down bubble up go down bubble up one more
time go down let it sit a while so the ground settle pour it off in your cup let it sit again
it's a sweet coffee but when we lived in greece we always had the greek sour cherry juice and
i cannot find that anywhere nothing like what it tastes like in greece so i'm going to make
a little syrup out of just maraschino cherries and a little bit of the juice and just having
that hint of cherry juice in there for me brings me back to Greece okay. Cleese the pora calo.
now i'm going to go ahead and add my Medalia D'oro espresso roast total of coffee bean
into my breville smart grinder pro and put a little bit in there so for this i'm going
to go ahead and change my grind setting and go way down to like grind size two and uh let's see
19 grams i have to crank that up a little bit and i need a little bit more than that
i'm going to go for 25.
that came out just dusty and it's powdery and it's just it just feels like
even finer than powdered sugar but it's got that consistency right there but i'm cooking a little
bit of a maraschino cherry juice and kind of smashed a cherry or two up and a dash of sugar
in there i don't really know what i'm doing here i'm just kind of guessing at it trying to make
this just a little thicker but either way it'll work tastes like cherries that's all that matters
these little double shot glasses right here this is from when we lived in greece
and my parents got these at the American hotel where we stayed outside of Athens and Kafficia
i remember them vividly and i'm so glad to have them so i think this will suffice
as a little shot of cherry juice i think that's gonna do it the true sour greek cherry juice
man this is nothing like it it would be thick and just like take a long time to pour it was
the thickest gurgliest sweetest stuff ever. so i have just shy of nine so i'm gonna put a lot so
here's a big heaping go ahead and drop this in i'm gonna do another heaping
i'm doing another because i like it strong all right
all right there's my little ounce container of HEET in the yellow
bottle so i'm not sure how much it's going to take not that much
so i don't know put a little a little over half in there and light it up
okay that is burning now we're gonna let this start heating up and we're going to let it
come to right before a boil it'll start to bubble up in foam and then when that happens i'm going
to take it off and let it settle i'm going to put it back on let that foaming happen again
take it off let it settle put it back on let that happen one more time pour it off let that wait for
about five minutes so those grinds just all go to the bottom and i got some nice clear coffee
so we got that sitting there we're gonna we're gonna watch a ball
together
all right we're still waiting a little bit for that first foam and now it's starting to kind of
start to kind of bubble up around the edges and that's my
that's my sign it's getting ready for the first round
it's kind of starting to foam up i'm going to let it come right to the
edge just like that
take it off
now we'll just let that settle a second we do this three times whew
all right we're gonna put that back on now
third time whoo look at that one that's a nice foamy one
and we'll put that on one more time
now that's a good foam
and i have my sweet little demitasse here i get my spoon hung up down here
let's take that coffee just kind of tamp that down i'm gonna pour it off into the cup
and we're gonna let that sit
for four or five minutes look how dark that is
i can actually see myself in there that is dark and beautiful
and what i remember as a kid a lot from greece there's these pots and
it have all that foamy coffee stuff right up around the edge like that
and all those grounds those fine grounds will sink to the bottom of that pot as well
and then we'll pour in a little bit of the cherry juice and have ourselves a lovely turkish coffee
the one thing me and Meg have been doing during this pandemic particularly this summer is playing
a lot of badminton man and got our own set been practicing been having a lot of fun with it
it's been sitting a little bit
oh yeah oh i like to add this
Man that tastes exactly how i recall it and you know if you want to get one of these ibriks
you you can find them online any good coffee store has them high-end coffee suppliers you
can get them on amazon they're not expensive it's just a little copper pod but you kind of
have to have this sort of little pot to make this coffee now i'm going to pour in the uh oh that did
thicken up nicely just get a little bit of that in there that was the ticket when i was a kid
hmm let's see if we got something here
effkaisto para calo!
it's great there's just a little bit of that dusty
texture and kind of feel it on your teeth it's like a little light just a little light dust
and all that fine coffee now is settled to the bottom of this cup there'll be a bunch in there
when i finish it just like there is at the in the end of this pot
but there's those dusky little dusty coffee grinds along with some of my cherry bits
and well actually a lot of cherry bits right there
like a little dessert i'm gonna eat that our cherry
juice and grease the sour cherry juice never had the pulp in it
yum yum yum oh it's coffee time coffee time in the beautiful hood
sha ba dabba daa....hooo hooo hooo Whoooo Buddy))))
All secure in sector 7.
so
this is a little coffee brew called the Roman Holiday
oh man is that that's almost like a milkshake i mean it really is
with the taste of espresso down in there a little bit of lemon
it's the closest thing to making like a uh an espresso martini but it's called the roman holiday
and i made one for meg this morning and she really enjoyed it
but just you know we come under the specialty coffee thing but what a great what a great taste
do i feel like i'm in rome yes but i am dressed wrong for it
and it just has that just has that wonderful light lemon taste in there backing
those other flavors just that hint of lemon behind it with the espresso taste that nice foam
man well i better go run a few laps or something because i'm all jacked up
that kind of hurt i forgot i'm old