Extroverted and Introverted Espresso

It is quite a few months ago – while enjoying a small space and a wonderful coffee – that I was reminded that extravagance and simplicity, as a form of expression, are not at all related, but in their contents they are not necessarily different and even at times it might be impossible to differentiate between the two. Hence I wish to speak in this context from an extroverted and an introverted  espresso way.

Around the middle of the 19th century the French had shown the idea of an espresso machine. They displayed a prototype at the 4th World Fair in Paris, back in 1855. It was not until 50 years later, however, that Desiderio Pavoni and Luigi Bezzara introduced

What happened with coffee along the way?

Many, many, many years ago some people in Africa – mainly in Ethiopia – started making drinks out of roasted beans. While some took the pulp of those berries and made wine, others made hot drinks with its pulp and threw away the seeds. There have been various uses for the fruits of coffee plants, but wherever one reads, it seems as though Africans, Asians and Americans alike have all taken the drinking path and always a sweet one, when it comes to coffee.

Everyone DRINKS Coffee. Why?

Ethiopians could have roasted their beans back then with spices as they do today and used it for some dark soup with meat and other cereals, which could have become a typical Ethiopian dish. Or they could have mixed it with Teff – the nutritious grass native to the northern Ethiopian Highlands – and made some typical African or Ethiopian flatbread with it. It could have even been mixed with Teff for their production of beer, obtaining some strange or perhaps beloved African Dark Beer, which could have become a world famous product.

It is in Europe where coffee – just like cocoa – was mixed with milk and cream to begin with. The Aztecs used only water and spices for their symbolic cocoa beverages and the Viennese did not really show a particular craze for Coffee, until the pole Kolschitzky started mixing it with milk for his guests.

More and more acclaimed Chefs use coffee to spice meats and sauces, instead of sticking with the beloved taste for desserts. Is it only chance? Is it imposed by nature itself? Is it the most agreeable alchemy for the palate that led us along this cultural path? A few days ago I tried an absolutely sugarless mixture with vanilla. As a friend of mine put it up to her nose, not knowing at all, that it contained vanilla, she immediately perceived sweetness in the scent. For this reason I started asking myself, if it is indeed an imposed nature’s path, the more agreeable composition for our olfactory sense, or is it just that we have accustomed ourselves to this particular composition?

Experiment yourself a bit!