KAAPI

KAAPI

Coffee: a drink made by brewing coffee beans which are berries of coffee plant. One of the most popular beverages in the world, it is said to have been smuggled out of Yemen in 1670 by Sufi Saint Baba Budan and planted on the slopes of a hill in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka. This hill later named Baba Budangiri after him. Now coffee is part of the South Indian culture. Who knows what we might have been drinking if the Baba had not brought coffee to South India? Extract of roasted and ground tamarind seeds, perhaps.

Coffee powder: Made from coffee beans roasted and ground. Sometimes it is blended with roasted chicory powder (the root of the chicory plant is a coffee substitute and additive) to enhance flavour and colour though a purist would scoff at chicory. Different pure coffee varieties like Arabica and Robusta and coffee-chicory blends available in the market. Custom blending is also done by many retailers to suit your preference.

In the olden days, roasting and grinding were done at home. Every South Indian home had a mini roasting cylinder in which coffee beans were placed and the cylinder rotated over a charcoal fire. A week’s requirement would be roasted and stored. A mini grinder was fixed to the kitchen shelf in which one cup-full of beans, enough for the day’s consumption, would be ground every day.

Coffee Decoction: The coffee liquor or essence or decoction is extracted by passing boiling water through a layer of coffee powder placed in a filter. For South Indians, this is a ritual which has to be learned and perfected, no matter what.

Kaapi: South Indian for coffee.

Tumbler-Dabara (or davara): A tumbler is a drinking glass, a straight or slightly tapered cylinder without a handle. May or may not have a rim. South Indian coffee tumblers paired with dabaras have rims. A dabara (or davara) is a shallow cylinder with a flat rim. Commonly made from Stainless Steel or ‘Eversilver’. ‘Eversilver’ is Tamil for stainless steel, probably derived from a popular brand name in the good old days. Together, tumbler and dabara make good style statement. Together, with good strong filter coffee inside the tumbler, makes for good hospitality.

South Indian filter kaapi is best had strong, i.e., ‘first’ decoction (decoction obtained from the first filtration; many homes, which don’t place much importance on good coffee or civil hospitality, have a second and even a third filtration), mixed with freshly boiled milk, a spoon of sugar added to just mask the bitter taste, in an ‘Eversilver’ tumbler-dabara.

1.       Wash and clean both tiers of two-tier Eversilver coffee filter and the tamper. Let them sparkle.

2.       Top tier is for loading the makings. Bottom tier collects the decoction. Tamper is for tamping.

3.       Wash and clean Eversilver tumbler and dabara. Let them shine.

4.       Tumbler-Dabara is like cup-saucer, but better and more versatile. Very nice. Stylish.

5.       Stack top tier over bottom tier.

6.       Boil water, enough quantity to fill top tier of filter.

7.       Fill about one-fourth or one-third of top tier of filter with roasted and ground coffee powder.

8.       Tamp coffee powder down lightly with perforated-disc-with-stem tamper provided with filter.

9.       Pour boiling water over coffee powder till it fills up top tier.

10.   Give filter smart tap with a spoon to start filtering process. Close filter lid.

11.   Pick up newspaper, read headlines backwards. Or count down from 300. Time.

12.   Decoction ready.

13.   Pour decoction from bottom tier of filter into tumbler. Fill about 25.40 mm from bottom.

14.   Top up with freshly boiled milk, steaming hot. Fill up to top, leaving 19.05 mm to 38.10 mm free for any “adjustments” like more milk, more decoction, more froth, etc.

15.   Add sugar.

16.   Place tumbler in dabara.

17.   Coffee ready for backing and forthing.

18.   Pour coffee from tumbler to dabara and back and forth to cool it and to dissolve sugar.

19.   Taste. Do necessary adjustment.

20.   For more froth, increase distance between tumbler and dabara while backing and forthing.

21.   To stretch the coffee, take tumbler farther and farther away from dabara as you pour.

22.   Keep watchful eye while stretching. Keep mop handy.

23.   Enjoy.

24.   Wash and clean tumbler and dabara when finished.

25.   Mop floor if necessary.

(India changed over to the Metric system about half-a-century ago, throwing the whole country into a state of utter confusion for some time before the good citizens re-collected their wits and started inventing conversion tables. But the old British units are still being used for measurements. For instance, the amount of rain falling on a particular day, any day, whether Tuesday or Friday does not matter, is generally measured and spoken of in inches. Some people also measure heavy rain in terms of domestic animals and buckets. Levels of certain liquids, esp. of the life-saving variety, poured into glasses, are measured in terms of fingers, such as two fingers of this or a healthy dose of four fingers of that. Coffee decoction falls under the beverage category, second only to life-saving, and its measure is generally in “inches”. But I am trying to be properly metric in these matters and have therefore indicated the dabara diameter, levels of decoction and milk in tumblers, etc. in millimeters (mm), correct to second decimal place. For those who are wary of decimals and chary of calculating up to second decimal places, 25.40 mm equals one inch. 19.05 mm is three-fourths of an inch. 38.10 mm is one-and-a-half, 76.20 mm is three and 101.60 mm is, what else, four inches. I hope I made myself clear. Now let me go. I have to inch along to another article.)

-          © Shiva Kumar, September 2015