Turkish coffee

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The other day, badly in need of a good jolt of caffeine, I remembered a recipe for Turkish coffee from a great book I reviewed last year: Ana Sortun’s ‘Spice’ (HarperCollins, 2006). So I found the coffee pot I’d brought back from Istanbul and made a batch in the Test Kitchen. Turkish coffee is fantastic stuff, brewed by repeatedly heating a mixture of finely ground coffee beans, water and sugar so that it rises up in the pot and then sinks back down. Sortun not only gives a recipe, but tells you how to read your fortune in the grounds too. A pattern of dots means that you’re spending too much money; a circle predicts good fortune; a leaf fortells new friendship. I’m not really sure what this one meant -- maybe that there’s a happy, dancing frog in my future.

-- Amy Scattergood