Oh, fuck me. Building on the previous post about condensed milk in coffee. Last night our gas was cut off for various reasons, spoking out from the central point that Australia is rotten with fucking shysters. So anticipating I wouldn't be able to make coffee in the morning due to our stove being, usually thankfully, gas powered, I froze some leftover espresso so as to make some sort of iced coffee concoction today. This is what I made:
- three shots of frozen espresso
- two cups of milk
- three tablespoons of condensed milk
Blended.
I have a feeling - and I don't want to invite the wrath of the gods here as it's just a suspicion and as, frankly, drinking something this delicious is actually a deeply humbling experience - I have a feeling that I've discovered the nectar of nectar-and-ambrosia fame. Next time I'm going to try adding a banana and some chili pepper and that might be the ticket. I'll let you know in 30 years or so if I've aged at all.
But the simple recipe above resulted in something that I'm sure I've tasted before, and I even recall where, since it was pretty recent. It was at the Jurong bird park in Singapore, where the cafe (which was shockingly cheap considering that bird park is the international weirdo twitcher Mecca equivalent of Disneyland), served some shockingly cheap iced coffee concoction that I nearly didn't order because it said 'iced kopi' on the menu, and as I didn't know that 'kopi' was the Malay or whatever word for coffee at the time I was concerned it might be some sort of iced fish or iced root vegetable. Anyways, it was no ordinary iced coffee, and I loved it, and I couldn't work out how they'd done it, and the internet wouldn't tell me, and it turns out this was how - with milk and strong coffee and condensed milk.
Sigh. That makes me fucking happy.
Visualizzazione post con etichetta coffee. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta coffee. Mostra tutti i post
martedì, gennaio 18, 2011
giovedì, gennaio 13, 2011
You're the condensed milk in my coffee
Singapore gave me the best culinary week of my life; fuckin' beautiful memories, and a real motivation to keep my job so I can make more trips there on the company dime, and hopefully eat much, much more. Also would like to reserve the option of moving there for work if the F-word ever dumps me. Australia is good in many ways but if I can't have him I at least want fuckin' unlimited Asian food, and this place, as mentioned, is so. Goddamn. Caker.
(And Australians care about food the way cakers do, which is, they fuckin' don't. Their national dish is fuckin' 'meat' pies whose fillings are guaranteed to be at least 25% flesh, and if there's anything less fucking suitable for this climate than those disgusting little hockey pucks, it's roast lamb - the other national dish. And don't get me started on their fucking desserts; if all you saw of Australia was its dessert tray you'd reckon you were at a fuckin' church social in the Hebrides or one of the poorer parts of Scandinavia after the local Nokia factory packs up and moves to China. Well. Anyways. The Australian cities are apparently way better, with enough Asians and olive-skinned types in them to get to that critical mass where the food is really good, like in Toronto or Vancouver. But being babied and cosseted in Singapore after the annoyances of Brussels, etc., may have ruined me for any other urban conglomeration.)
Anyways again. Now is not the time to speculate on Plan Bs in the event the love of my life breaks my fuckin' heart and consigns me to a cold-hearted but pleasure-saturated life of lascivious gluttony, wherein I jog along the sterilised beach all morning so as to eat all afternoon and get a little work done in the evening in a country where almost everybody loves food as much or more than I do. Now is the time to tell you that one of the more tangible gifts Singapore gave me is putting condensed milk into my coffee - I thing I learned from the Vietnamese restaurant close to my boss's old office, Viet Express, which is one of only two restaurants I made two trips to during the week, it being so fucking good*.
The Spanish do something similar, I know, though I didn't try it when I was there - a cafe bonbon or bombom or however you say 'candy' in Spanish, which is half espresso, half condensed milk. At the Viet Express, they served a sort of strong, espresso-ground drip coffee, with a dose of condensed milk next to it - not quite half/half but almost. As for me, I just add a big oozing tablespoonful of condensed milk to the equivalent of three shots of espresso and that makes my afternoon fucking magnificent. The coffee gets exactly the right sweetness with an added caramel velvetiness. I recommend it strongly if you're a sugar-in-your-coffee sort of person.
*The other was the Thanying Restaurant, a fucking delectable Thai restaurant in Amara hotel which honestly - my family's finer efforts excepted - debatably served me the best food I've ever eaten. Ever. And I have eaten a lot of food. We took a business contact there for lunch and I nearly died of pleasure, so I took the F-word back in the evening. Going there also gave my boss the chance to deliver one of the funniest bits of attempted cultural education I'd heard since 2003: "Thai people are the nicest, warmest, gentlest people in the world, until they start hitting you."
(And Australians care about food the way cakers do, which is, they fuckin' don't. Their national dish is fuckin' 'meat' pies whose fillings are guaranteed to be at least 25% flesh, and if there's anything less fucking suitable for this climate than those disgusting little hockey pucks, it's roast lamb - the other national dish. And don't get me started on their fucking desserts; if all you saw of Australia was its dessert tray you'd reckon you were at a fuckin' church social in the Hebrides or one of the poorer parts of Scandinavia after the local Nokia factory packs up and moves to China. Well. Anyways. The Australian cities are apparently way better, with enough Asians and olive-skinned types in them to get to that critical mass where the food is really good, like in Toronto or Vancouver. But being babied and cosseted in Singapore after the annoyances of Brussels, etc., may have ruined me for any other urban conglomeration.)
Anyways again. Now is not the time to speculate on Plan Bs in the event the love of my life breaks my fuckin' heart and consigns me to a cold-hearted but pleasure-saturated life of lascivious gluttony, wherein I jog along the sterilised beach all morning so as to eat all afternoon and get a little work done in the evening in a country where almost everybody loves food as much or more than I do. Now is the time to tell you that one of the more tangible gifts Singapore gave me is putting condensed milk into my coffee - I thing I learned from the Vietnamese restaurant close to my boss's old office, Viet Express, which is one of only two restaurants I made two trips to during the week, it being so fucking good*.
The Spanish do something similar, I know, though I didn't try it when I was there - a cafe bonbon or bombom or however you say 'candy' in Spanish, which is half espresso, half condensed milk. At the Viet Express, they served a sort of strong, espresso-ground drip coffee, with a dose of condensed milk next to it - not quite half/half but almost. As for me, I just add a big oozing tablespoonful of condensed milk to the equivalent of three shots of espresso and that makes my afternoon fucking magnificent. The coffee gets exactly the right sweetness with an added caramel velvetiness. I recommend it strongly if you're a sugar-in-your-coffee sort of person.
*The other was the Thanying Restaurant, a fucking delectable Thai restaurant in Amara hotel which honestly - my family's finer efforts excepted - debatably served me the best food I've ever eaten. Ever. And I have eaten a lot of food. We took a business contact there for lunch and I nearly died of pleasure, so I took the F-word back in the evening. Going there also gave my boss the chance to deliver one of the funniest bits of attempted cultural education I'd heard since 2003: "Thai people are the nicest, warmest, gentlest people in the world, until they start hitting you."
martedì, luglio 13, 2010
Oo-er, pu-erh!
Had always been violently pro-coffee, anti-tea, most of my caffeinated life, to the point of choosing bad coffee over good tea, but at a certain point things changed. I think when I was working in Paris all those years ago, at a Korean house, and one of the mothers brought me a cup of something special, and I realized it was like I was drinking flowers. Still it didn't cause any sort of revolution in my behaviour. I don't think I actually bought tea, unless I was expecting limey visitors, for a few years thereafter.
Maybe in practical terms the real turning point was the F-word moving in and bringing his minor obsession with tisanes with him. Or maybe it was me drinking a bunch of mint tea in magrebhin places. Maybe the last time I visited both my grandparents, when I consented to have a cup as I had got snotty enough, coffee-wise, to refuse instant, and I realized the reason I'd always hated tea was because they'd been the ones to introduce it to me - as the fruit of a thrice-brewed, lovingly preserved PG Tips bag - revolting, obviously, and not representative of the institution.
But still, I have remained vastly more pro-coffee than pro-tea. It was the mornings what done it. Unless the day was stinking hot, I needed to start it with a strong, strong latte, either iced or hot; on the very hottest days I could manage green tea, but only on the very hottest. If not, I would get headachey, cranky, and flirty with excessive violence. Nonetheless, we got to the point of drinking a few pots of either green tea or tisane a week. And then it felt like a reasonable investment to drop 50 euros on a tetsubin. Painfully trendy and heavy as fuck, but I had managed to break two china teapots in as many years so it seemed like the only thing to do.
I have found what could be a turning point now, though. In Shanghai we found a tea shop, where we sat for some time after having a long walk in the heat, and where we must have drank twelve different kinds of tea in samples . . . some were lovely and some were gross but my favourite was a six-year-old pu-erh tea which I bought and took home. It is ace. Not only can I drink it in the morning instead of coffee without getting a headache or punching anybody in the fucking face on the way to work, but it also tastes so rich. The sort of same deep, biting richness as coffee, though without coffee's salutary bitterness. Indeed without any bitterness, which despite my being a coffee-head is charming in itself.
In a bizarre, opposite-side-of-the-world echo of my grandparents, the young man working at the shop told me we could brew each bit of tea ten times before it wasn't good any more, which has turned out to be truer than it was for the PG Tips bag. And aside from these ten times, the tea needs to be washed twice before the first brew since it's all covered in weird bacterial shit and dirt from being fermented.
Anyways, this shit is magic. I paid about 20 euros for a great big brick, which I don't think was a round-eye upmark since the prices were posted, and it was twice that in the aeroport, so I imagine it would be ridiculous after being exported. But really, if you ever pass through China treat yourself to some. Will it replace coffee in my heart? Certainly not, especially as we're moving to a chunk of Australia where coffee is cultivated and I bet that it is going to rock like I've never tasted before. But as we prepare our move to a sub-tropical climate I'm damn happy to have found something caffeinated I can drink on hot mornings that will allow me to preserve the life and well-being of the people around me.
Maybe in practical terms the real turning point was the F-word moving in and bringing his minor obsession with tisanes with him. Or maybe it was me drinking a bunch of mint tea in magrebhin places. Maybe the last time I visited both my grandparents, when I consented to have a cup as I had got snotty enough, coffee-wise, to refuse instant, and I realized the reason I'd always hated tea was because they'd been the ones to introduce it to me - as the fruit of a thrice-brewed, lovingly preserved PG Tips bag - revolting, obviously, and not representative of the institution.
But still, I have remained vastly more pro-coffee than pro-tea. It was the mornings what done it. Unless the day was stinking hot, I needed to start it with a strong, strong latte, either iced or hot; on the very hottest days I could manage green tea, but only on the very hottest. If not, I would get headachey, cranky, and flirty with excessive violence. Nonetheless, we got to the point of drinking a few pots of either green tea or tisane a week. And then it felt like a reasonable investment to drop 50 euros on a tetsubin. Painfully trendy and heavy as fuck, but I had managed to break two china teapots in as many years so it seemed like the only thing to do.
I have found what could be a turning point now, though. In Shanghai we found a tea shop, where we sat for some time after having a long walk in the heat, and where we must have drank twelve different kinds of tea in samples . . . some were lovely and some were gross but my favourite was a six-year-old pu-erh tea which I bought and took home. It is ace. Not only can I drink it in the morning instead of coffee without getting a headache or punching anybody in the fucking face on the way to work, but it also tastes so rich. The sort of same deep, biting richness as coffee, though without coffee's salutary bitterness. Indeed without any bitterness, which despite my being a coffee-head is charming in itself.
In a bizarre, opposite-side-of-the-world echo of my grandparents, the young man working at the shop told me we could brew each bit of tea ten times before it wasn't good any more, which has turned out to be truer than it was for the PG Tips bag. And aside from these ten times, the tea needs to be washed twice before the first brew since it's all covered in weird bacterial shit and dirt from being fermented.
Anyways, this shit is magic. I paid about 20 euros for a great big brick, which I don't think was a round-eye upmark since the prices were posted, and it was twice that in the aeroport, so I imagine it would be ridiculous after being exported. But really, if you ever pass through China treat yourself to some. Will it replace coffee in my heart? Certainly not, especially as we're moving to a chunk of Australia where coffee is cultivated and I bet that it is going to rock like I've never tasted before. But as we prepare our move to a sub-tropical climate I'm damn happy to have found something caffeinated I can drink on hot mornings that will allow me to preserve the life and well-being of the people around me.
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