Viennese Coffee Saga 2 (Stories & Recipes) Viennese Coffee from Chef Ina Garten

Vienna Coffee Saga 2 (Stories and Recipes) Viennese Coffee from Chef Ina Garten

Category: The drinks

Kitchen: austrian

Vienna Coffee Saga 2 (Stories and Recipes) Viennese Coffee from Chef Ina Garten

Ingredients
Espresso coffee	6 cups of 30 ml
Sugar	3 tsp
Vanilla extract (vanilla sugar)	1 tsp
Hot water	1/4 cup
Ice cubes	2 cups
Ice cream sundae or coffee	4 large balls
Cocoa for sprinkling dessert

Cooking method

Vienna is not only the musical capital, but also the coffee capital of Europe. And if you don't see your life without coffee and travel, then you should definitely go to this city to enjoy the coffee atmosphere. However, you need to be prepared: know what to drink, how to drink, where to drink and how to communicate with Viennese waiters and coffee lovers.
Residents of the city have acquired a drink that they idolize and the traditions of drinking which they honor almost as a shrine. But not everyone knows what Vienna itself gave the coffee.
Meanwhile, some of the traditions of coffee drinking were laid down here. For example, it was in Vienna that coffee was served along with whipped cream. And it was Viennese cafes that brought fashion to coffee tables made of wood and marble, as well as rounded chairs, which were created by the Frenchman Michel Tronet. These features have become characteristic of all European cafes where you can enjoy the time with a cup of coffee.
Since the flourishing of Viennese cafes at the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, a special bourgeois-democratic atmosphere reigns in these establishments, the waiters are usually Austrian-friendly and happy to offer visitors cottage cheese or apple strudels, handmade sweets, mouth-watering cakes "Mozart" "(we have come up with an alternative to him in the form of a Prague cake) and aromatic coffee. Modern Vienna offers many choices for cafes, restaurants, coffee shops and bars, and a huge variety of hot drinks that everyone loves. And wherever you look, everywhere coffee will be served on a neat silver tray, with cold water in a glass and a spoon on it - in Vienna they pay attention to such details. In addition, it is in the Austrian capital that the Coffee Museum is located, where you can learn everything about the history of this drink.
Vienna, like any other European capital, is full of all kinds of establishments where travelers and locals can enjoy their time and indulge in delicious cuisine. At the same time, Vienna has, perhaps, more than anywhere else in Europe (with the exception, perhaps, of Paris), famous establishments with famous visitors. "Frauenhuber" was a favorite place of Mozart, Freud often visited "Landtmann", secret meetings of the Bolsheviks were held in the "Central", where, according to some stories, Leon Trotsky constantly visited. Cafe "Sacher" gave the name to the famous cake, and "Julius Meinel" - to one of the types of coffee.
A visit to the Central Café located on Herrenggasse will be a real adventure. Firstly, because it is extremely difficult to find it - it is not for nothing that at one time the institution was chosen by the Bolsheviks as the venue for their secret meetings. Secondly, the cafe impresses with its architecture and interior. Stucco molding on the ceiling, green sofas, massive columns, serious waiters - everything looks majestic here. Thirdly, often here you can hear not a simple Russian speech, but the dashing "Kalinka-Malinka", "Katyusha" and "Black Eyes" - in the evenings in Central, musicians from Bratislava perform, who, seeing visitors from the countries of the former USSR and feeling the Slavic kinship , in the blink of an eye "come to life".When entering a Viennese coffee shop, it's not enough just to know what kind of coffee you want. It is necessary to follow a few rules so that you are not offended and looked at as an eccentric illiterate in coffee.
Do not ask the waiters for natural coffee ("eine Tasse Bohnenkaffee"), as Vienna serves exclusively natural coffee.
In the word "kaffee" the stress should be on the second syllable.
In Vienna, forget about the concepts of "coffee pot" and "coffee mug" ("ein Kannchen Kaffee") - they simply do not exist here. Cups in Viennese cafes are of two types: large ("Grossen") and small ("Kleinen").
If you would like to have a cappuccino, ask the waiter for "Kaffee mit Schlagobers". However, there is a nuance: for mocha or espresso, the cream must be ordered separately.
Ordering just coffee ("kaffee") from the waiter of a Viennese coffee house is like saying simply "wine" or just "a pack of cigarettes" in a tobacco shop.
It must be said that the gradation in the name of the coffee tableware in Vienna is so diverse that, having arrived abroad, poor Austrian coffee lovers are faced with a misunderstanding when ordering their favorite variety and "favorite size", which once again confirms their confidence in the complete "professional unsuitability" of foreign coffee houses ...
Where else can you be offered a menu with 20 varieties of this drink? And what is the difference between a fiacre, a franciscaner and a classic Viennese melange? And a real Herr Ober - this is how a waiter in an elegant black livery is called in coffee shops - and should know the preferences of every regular. Does he like a double browner or a capuchiner, with sugar or liquor, with milk, cream, milk froth, or maybe ... with an egg? Yes, yes, and such an option takes place. And in one coffee shop in the early 90s, they even introduced special color cards with 20 shades of brown, by which visitors could choose the color of their coffee with milk! In good coffee houses, coffee is brought on a silver tray without fail with a glass of water and a spoon on top, to convey all this without dropping it is a special art!
For locals, a cup of coffee in their favorite coffee shop is a favorite and vital daily habit. Lovely ladies of retirement age with impeccable manicure and hairstyles meet with friends over a cup of coffee to while away the time in society, respectable gentlemen sip their favorite drink, casting secluded glances because of the fresh newspapers, which are always provided free of charge in almost any cafe. Businessmen meet over a cup of coffee to briefly discuss current affairs. Passers-by come here and walk their dogs. All in all, you can see a complete slice of Viennese society in coffee shops.
It is worth talking about snacks and cakes served in Vienna's cafes separately, because this topic is inexhaustible.
Topic start here: Vienna Coffee Saga 1. (Stories and Recipes) Schwarzwaelder Kaffee
Continuing the theme of Viennese coffee, and this topic is inexhaustible, I would like to propose a recipe from the chef Ina Garten, the author of numerous cookbooks and just a pretty soulful woman. The recipe has been tried many times.
Preparation
- Prepare espresso, add sugar, vanilla and hot water to blender. Stir well.
- Put ice in a blender and break it with coffee to a smoothie state, a mass with small homogeneous crystals of ice in coffee. Don't interrupt!
- Divide the mixture into four glasses.
- Take out the ice cream from the freezer, if it is very "oak" in consistency, put it in the microwave for 15 seconds, scoop up the balls with a special ice cream spoon and put them in glasses. Sprinkle with cocoa powder on top.

Note

In the previous part, devoted to Viennese coffee, I promised to talk about the man who taught Europe to drink coffee. Here's some great stuff on this topic.

To begin with, a few facts from the biography of our hero - Yuri Franz Kulchitsky - "the man who taught Europe to drink coffee." Yuri was born in Kulchitsy (a village near Sambor in the Lvov region, at that time belonging to the Commonwealth) in the noble family of the Kulchitsky-Shelestovichi.In his youth, he joined the detachment of Zaporozhye Cossacks, and during one of the unsuccessful campaigns he was captured by the Turks, where he was able to perfectly learn the Turkish language, the lifestyle and customs of the Turks, and also became addicted to coffee. After his ransom from captivity by Serbian merchants, he worked as a translator in Belgrade, in a branch of the East Austrian trading company. It should be noted that in addition to Turkish, Kulchytsky was fluent in Romanian, German, Polish and Hungarian.
So, 1683. Under the command of Grand Vizier Kara-Mustafa, the Turkish army besieges Vienna. They are opposed by 16 thousand soldiers under the command of Count Rüdiger Staremberg. As is known, the most important enemy of the besieged is time. So it happened this time, and the time was especially inexorable: famine began in Vienna, not only civilians, but also soldiers, and even mayors, who were already ready to surrender the city to the Turks, succumbed to decadent moods. Kulchitsky proposed his plan to help Vienna, which was to get out of the city for help. And Staremberg saw in this plan the last chance to save the city from ruin. Having supplied Kulchitsky with letters asking for help to Emperor Leopold I and Duke of Lorraine Charles V, Staremberg gives the go-ahead for a risky campaign.
And on August 13, 1863, Kulchitsky, together with his servant, dressed in Turkish clothes and singing Turkish songs, advanced through the positions of the Turks, during checks posing as a merchant who is in charge of supplying food to the Sultan's army. They managed to pass the Turkish cordons without incident, but in one of the Danube villages of Kulchitsky, local residents almost killed him, mistaking him for a real Turk. As a result, the letters were successfully delivered, Yuri delivered the reply letter of Charles V to Vienna, after which the decision to surrender the city was canceled.
A month later, on September 12, 1683, the Polish-Austro-German troops under the command of the King of Poland Jan III Sobieski crushed the Turks in the battle that is now known as "Vienna". The city authorities awarded Kulchitsky with a large sum of money, exempted his company from taxes for 20 years and donated a house in the prestigious Leopoldstadt district. In addition, Yuri was offered to choose a part of the captured Turkish trophies. And Kulchitsky chose - 300 bags of coffee for such a lover of a fragrant drink was the best reward.

From this moment, Kulchitsky's campaign to introduce the Viennese to coffee begins. Yuri personally carried coffee in jugs through the streets of Vienna, dressed in Turkish clothes - this was one of his first significant advertising campaigns. Of course, not everything went smoothly at once: the Viennese did not like the bitterness and strength of the new drink, moreover, remembering the hated Turks, drinking their traditional drink seemed unacceptable. However, Yuri did not even think to stop. After analyzing the situation, he began experimenting with recipes for making coffee to smooth out its bitterness. To begin with, I tried to sweeten it with honey, then add milk and sugar. This was the birth of the legendary Viennese coffee recipe.
Exactly one year after his sortie, on August 13, 1864, Kulchitsky opened the first coffee shop in Vienna (by the way, it was only the third coffee shop in all of Europe), in a house donated to him by the city authorities, which began to be called "The House under the Blue Bottle" ( "Hof zur Blauen Flasche"). The owner of this coffee shop personally served visitors, while invariably dressing up in Turkish clothes.
🔗
🔗