Column
BEYOND THE LINE
Perking up never tasted so good!
It took me until my mid-20s to have my first cup of morning coffee, and when I did, Wow! What had I been missing? No longer was I fuzzy after a good night’s sleep. I was ready for the day in every way — a coffee epiphany had made me a grownup overnight.
I grew up in the “Mad Men” age. Cigarettes, coffee and cocktails went together and ... it was cool, man. From beatniks and movie stars to moms and dads (my mother always said she was different because she smoked filtered cigarettes and drank premium liquor), coffee was part of a glamorous lifestyle — or was it?
In my younger days, I wanted none of it. Coffee grounds made such a mess and the smell of cigarettes and coffee together really turned me off.
But by my mid-20s, I was working in a kitchen, and being tired one night, coffee suddenly seemed like a good solution. In other words, I had given in. It was like a bolt of lightning to my system. How did I ever work without coffee before? I was perky and there was no more yawning — bring it on!
This led to pursuing the understanding of state-of-the-art coffee makers. Press coffee from France was big in the ’70s, as was espresso, especially living in Manhattan, so close to Little Italy, where the taste of coffee became important to me. I finally liked the taste without sugar and milk or cream. This girl had gotten stung by the “java jive.”
But until I recently started to do some research on the topic for this column, there was a lot I didn’t know about coffee, its history and its lore — some of it funny, some of it debatable, such as who had the first actual cup.
Legend has it that Kaldi, a shepherd on the Arabian Peninsula, found his goats “dancing joyously” around a dark green leaved shrub with bright red cherries. Soon he realized the berries were causing the “peculiar euphoria” and ended up trying the cherries himself. “The stimulating effect was then exploited by local monks at a local monastery to stay awake during the hours of prayer — distributed to monasteries all over the world,” according to CoffeeResearch.org. Hence, coffee for all!
But this is just one of many stories about the origin of coffee. The berries also were discovered growing on the plateaus of central Ethiopia in the 6th century. There, the coffeehouses in Yemen and Cairo appeared as coffee was equated to passion. I am beginning to see how those “flying carpets” came into being and how they stayed awake all those Arabian nights!
Coffee processing, grinding and percolating all have lore of their own. It is said in 1933, Dr. Ernest Illy invented the first automatic espresso machine, while Italian Achilles Gaggia in 1946 invented the first espresso machine with pressure, which is what we use now.
This next gem is dear to me, as my maiden name is Bentz. Melitta Bentz, a Dresden housewife and devoted coffee drinker, wanted to find a way to get the bitterness out of the coffee, particularly from overbrewing. She experimented with various items and found her son’s blotter paper, which she cut into a circle, worked the best — hence Melitta filters. My brother, upon learning this, is wondering if we might have unclaimed inheritance in Germany.
As you can tell at this point, there is a remarkable source of information relating to coffee. I have just scratched the surface of the subject — the foam on the cappuccino, if you will.
If you have any stories to share, please e-mail me — there could be a Coffee, Part 2. In the meantime, here are a few fun facts from the “Gomestic” Web site:
1. Coffee is not grown anywhere in the USA besides Puerto Rico and Hawaii, although 65 countries along the equator grow coffee.
2. Scientists have found more than 800 different aromatic compounds in coffee.
3. Brazil produces 40 percent of the world’s coffee.
4. A Belgian named George Washington invented instant coffee in 1906.
5. More than 20 million people worldwide work in the coffee industry.
6. There are two types of coffee plant: Arabica and Robusta, with 70 percent of the coffee coming from Arabica beans.
7. Drinking a single cup of coffee that has been brewing for 20 minutes provides the body with 300 phytochemicals which act as antioxidants and stay in the body up to a month.
8. Espresso coffee has just one third of the caffeine content of ordinary coffee. (Who knew?)
9. It takes 40 beans to make 1 cup of espresso.
10. Worldwide, more than 1,400 millions cups of coffee are consumed every day.
Pass the cream and sugar!
Tasty morsels
The Newport Restoration Foundation will host a Summer Garden Soiree at Rough Point on Bellevue Avenue in Newport on Tuesday from 5-7 p.m. Tallulah’s on Thames will be recreating hors d’oeuvres from Doris Duke’s favorite recipes. Tickets are still available through the Newport Restoration Foundation.
Midge Knerr, a former executive chef in New York and Newport restaurants, is a Daily News columnist. Send her e-mail at midgelknerr@aol.com.
Perking up never tasted so good!
It took me until my mid-20s to have my first cup of morning coffee, and when I did, Wow! What had I been missing? No longer was I fuzzy after a good night’s sleep. I was ready for the day in every way — a coffee epiphany had made me a grownup overnight.
I grew up in the “Mad Men” age. Cigarettes, coffee and cocktails went together and ... it was cool, man. From beatniks and movie stars to moms and dads (my mother always said she was different because she smoked filtered cigarettes and drank premium liquor), coffee was part of a glamorous lifestyle — or was it?
In my younger days, I wanted none of it. Coffee grounds made such a mess and the smell of cigarettes and coffee together really turned me off.
But by my mid-20s, I was working in a kitchen, and being tired one night, coffee suddenly seemed like a good solution. In other words, I had given in. It was like a bolt of lightning to my system. How did I ever work without coffee before? I was perky and there was no more yawning — bring it on!
This led to pursuing the understanding of state-of-the-art coffee makers. Press coffee from France was big in the ’70s, as was espresso, especially living in Manhattan, so close to Little Italy, where the taste of coffee became important to me. I finally liked the taste without sugar and milk or cream. This girl had gotten stung by the “java jive.”
But until I recently started to do some research on the topic for this column, there was a lot I didn’t know about coffee, its history and its lore — some of it funny, some of it debatable, such as who had the first actual cup.
Legend has it that Kaldi, a shepherd on the Arabian Peninsula, found his goats “dancing joyously” around a dark green leaved shrub with bright red cherries. Soon he realized the berries were causing the “peculiar euphoria” and ended up trying the cherries himself. “The stimulating effect was then exploited by local monks at a local monastery to stay awake during the hours of prayer — distributed to monasteries all over the world,” according to CoffeeResearch.org. Hence, coffee for all!
But this is just one of many stories about the origin of coffee. The berries also were discovered growing on the plateaus of central Ethiopia in the 6th century. There, the coffeehouses in Yemen and Cairo appeared as coffee was equated to passion. I am beginning to see how those “flying carpets” came into being and how they stayed awake all those Arabian nights!
Coffee processing, grinding and percolating all have lore of their own. It is said in 1933, Dr. Ernest Illy invented the first automatic espresso machine, while Italian Achilles Gaggia in 1946 invented the first espresso machine with pressure, which is what we use now.
This next gem is dear to me, as my maiden name is Bentz. Melitta Bentz, a Dresden housewife and devoted coffee drinker, wanted to find a way to get the bitterness out of the coffee, particularly from overbrewing. She experimented with various items and found her son’s blotter paper, which she cut into a circle, worked the best — hence Melitta filters. My brother, upon learning this, is wondering if we might have unclaimed inheritance in Germany.
As you can tell at this point, there is a remarkable source of information relating to coffee. I have just scratched the surface of the subject — the foam on the cappuccino, if you will.
If you have any stories to share, please e-mail me — there could be a Coffee, Part 2. In the meantime, here are a few fun facts from the “Gomestic” Web site:
1. Coffee is not grown anywhere in the USA besides Puerto Rico and Hawaii, although 65 countries along the equator grow coffee.
2. Scientists have found more than 800 different aromatic compounds in coffee.
3. Brazil produces 40 percent of the world’s coffee.
4. A Belgian named George Washington invented instant coffee in 1906.
5. More than 20 million people worldwide work in the coffee industry.
6. There are two types of coffee plant: Arabica and Robusta, with 70 percent of the coffee coming from Arabica beans.
7. Drinking a single cup of coffee that has been brewing for 20 minutes provides the body with 300 phytochemicals which act as antioxidants and stay in the body up to a month.
8. Espresso coffee has just one third of the caffeine content of ordinary coffee. (Who knew?)
9. It takes 40 beans to make 1 cup of espresso.
10. Worldwide, more than 1,400 millions cups of coffee are consumed every day.
Pass the cream and sugar!
Tasty morsels
The Newport Restoration Foundation will host a Summer Garden Soiree at Rough Point on Bellevue Avenue in Newport on Tuesday from 5-7 p.m. Tallulah’s on Thames will be recreating hors d’oeuvres from Doris Duke’s favorite recipes. Tickets are still available through the Newport Restoration Foundation.
Midge Knerr, a former executive chef in New York and Newport restaurants, is a Daily News columnist. Send her e-mail at midgelknerr@aol.com.