Skip to main content

My time in Italy : Coffee

To say, "Espresso runs through the veins of Italians" is an understatement. Regarding hot drink espresso is the first choice; it is part of breakfast and afternoon break.

Espresso 

Let's start with the basic, the espresso. Caffe espresso is the most regular drink, it is synonym to Caffe; when in Italy, it is enough to say Caffe to order an espresso - I guess it is called espresso because it can be finished swiftly like an express. 

It is undiluted decoction that comes out when hot water is forced through coffee power, voila! add sugar as much as you prefer and sip it once and relish; don't go for the second sip, it won't be there ;) such small cup and low content. If you want a long hard punch, go for Caffe Lungo - espresso but more content.

Cappuccino 

My friend cappuccino, 1/3 espresso 1/3 milk 1/3 foam. That is the standard definition of Cappuccino, and it was my go-to drink in Italy. It is very usual to find people having espresso and brioche as their breakfast. So what is brioche? now, that is for a different post.

I have often found myself trying out all different pastries available in the canteen and not just settling for brioche. Here in this image, you can see a bitten blueberry lattice tart, look I'm not into this click before you eat Instagram culture. More often than not I'll complete the meal and then get reminded the I wanted to take a picture for Google review or blog. It's ok, I consider a bite mark personal, now you know it is not a stock image



And if you are going to be regular to a cafe, be nice to the barista; our choice of the cafe was 1886, an in-house cafe run by Glamour, Biella. Look at me I got a couple of hearts, I don't know the language, usually, my colleagues place the order for me, all I do is pay, but I do smile my best as I pay :) impressive I got some material to tease my wife

Caffe Americano

I believe I have been clear, the series is not a review but just sharing of experience. And this is a combination I'd not pay extra for espresso + hot water; many did and I tried once. For that disturbed stomach or faint-hearted who cannot handle the full force of an espresso, here you have diluted version; the cafe was kind enough to provide me with the espresso and water separately so I can decide on the ratio - sophisticated!

Caffe Macchiato

Let's charm up the Indian in you, and we can sit down for a coffee with just decoction and milk, no foam or water. When you miss India, go for this one, this will not taste like the coffee you drink at home or drink in the coffee stall, at least this will resemble the coffee delivered by machine at the office. 

This is essentially an espresso, but with some drops of milk, I intentionally asked for 1/2 decoction, 1/2 milk (through my Italian colleagues) and thus it came closer to Coffee we'd have here in India,

Latte Macchiato

It is exactly as you'd imagine, this is milk with a drop of coffee. And the barista left the ratio of mix up to me and gave a fancy miniature kettle to hold decoction and milk in a long glass.





Fake coffee

There might be some more version that possibly I didn't know about, and I know about two which I don't care to give individual section. Caffe ginseng, herb coffee, very sweet no added sugar required. And Orso, if my colleagues translated it correctly then it is coffee made from barley, usually reserved for people with an upset tummy, these are not given any respect in Italian coffee scene but they exist because of some hippie out there.

Indians Attempt 

To honour my attempt to understand the Italian coffee making, my colleagues presented me with a coffee maker and here is a picture of my attempt, and it is sadly lacking! The espresso looks water down, the taste was also watered down :meh:



My Time in Italy

Comments

Popular this month

Puththu kovilum Putho tilesum, as they are built

Its the grand Aadi season here in Tamil Nadu wherever you go you'd be followed by awful noise from no mercy speakers masqueraded as a devotional song. Yes, this is the first post dedicated to it. Hindu is not a religion but it's idealism, a way to unite people, that's perfectly constructed by assuming separate task to every God, no single God worship. Hindus moved from nature worship to idol worship, but that doesn't mean that we don't have nature worship we have created an idol for them and continued to worship them in a different form. Snake is a beautiful reptile, I have made friend with few too... Our ancestor found the natural law, 'every living creature on earth is important for the ecosystem to be balanced'. Maybe to make sure snakes are not killed fearing their venom they made them as God too! Not just idol snakes, they are worshipped as they are at their  conquered (from rats and termite)   nest or  puthu . Puthu...

Up and Close with Sudalai Madan: The Encounter

Night of 13th April all the preparations for the rituals were done in the temple, Sudalaimadan swamy was decorated with flowers, fruits and coconuts; the dedications reached above his chest. My cousin Sudalai Muthu, senior priest of the shrine reached home by late-night got blessings of his father Late Shanmugam Sundaram also previous head priest and blessed the family members in room dedicated for God, then started towards the temple. People have already gathered in huge numbers and were waiting for the Sudalaimada Swamy's arrival at Temple. Different rituals were offered by people to the Lord in order to get the blessings. As it is believed Sudaimada Swamy, the son of Lord Siva used to consume meat in Kailash for this reason he is sent to earth, where he can satisfy his earthy hunger thereby not polluting Kailash. Sree Aaladi Padmanabha Sudalaimada Swamy Temple, Kumarapuram Offering meat to Sudalaimadan is the most important and watchful event of the festival. Many devotees off...

RJ Balaji in as Vadacurry

Vadacurry is a perfect entertainment package – comedy, a romantic song, an item number, punch, villian, hero, noble cause – as we know, it is a masala movie. Movie revolves around lead male played by Jai and his immediate needs – getting Smart phone, the way he chooses to fullfill his need brings the neccesarily components to push the movie into vibration mode Director Saravana Rajan’s made the movie lighter enough to remove any sort of thrill from the movie, a team which has wide range of experience in providing laughter made this comedy-thriller into comdey-drama. The movie starts with RJ Balaji saying “my name is vadacurry, but I don’t have much to do here (ref. movie is titled as Vadacurry)”. Director gives Jai enough importance that almost any other character in the movie has little role to play, but when you leave the theater you know why its Vadacurry, without RJ Balaji movie might be rusty. Not a star cast unless you are going to consider Jei and Swathi as stars, whom I...

Old is Gold: Vaitheeswaran Koil

My parent’s Shastiapthapoorthi just happened on 8th Oct at Thirukadaiyur, Amritaghateswarar – Abirami Temple , we were so glad that all poojai took place on Nandhi mandapam. My scheduled next stop was my uncle home for virunthu . But after getting boosted with abundant spiritual aura can’t stop myself from stopping for Vaitheeswaran koil on the way, that evening along with my wife experienced the glory of good old times.   Though Vaithyanatha swamy(Lord Shiva as Lingam) is the prime deity, Muthukumaraswamy stole the day, the panchaloga figurine of Lord Murugan in the shrine. Its Urchavar as its referred here since the figure is movable and comes out of the mandapam on special occasions. We went inside temple purified ourselves with holy water in temple pond, worshiped goddess Thaiyal Nayagi then stood in front of Lord Shiva for a very long time, but no poojari-iyer dropped by I’m not sure what special occasion it is on 08-Oct-13, as we saw many move towards closed doors of parti...

why do people sweat more in chennai???

One of the famous ornament of chennai is its summer!. Everyone here would have at least once talked about its effect and the way they affected. People comes out with sweats flowing from the body is the usual scene of chennai noon. The sweat produced is not just due to the temperature of the region. It is in fact due to the high humidity of chennai. To explain this lets see a fact, people in chennai sweats more than the people in delhi where the temperature is higher than the former. This is because of chennai's location. Chennai is located near sea due to which sea water evaporation is high during summer which in turn increases the humidity (Amount of water vapour present in air). Normally human blood temperature is about 35 deg Celsius. If the outside temperature is more than that, then our system tries to automatically cools down by releasing sweat from the body. The sweat which is released cools the surrounding heat by converting into vapour thereby reducing the body te...