The Drinks..

I think that cezve (a container for preparing coffee), kahve fincan (small turkish coffee cups), cay bardak (turkish small tea cup) and caydanlik (a boiler to brew tea)are among the most important things in the social circle of turks.They just love to socialize. When they get together, the turkish coffee will be served first.Then, the tea will come. The rationale is that while the guests drink coffee, the host will start boiling the water and brew the tea.Yep, you heard me right. They brew the tea...

First and foremost,please don't ask me how turkish coffee tastes like..i only drank it twice and that was by force. I drank it by holding up my breath, gulped lots of water and was awarded by great headache afterwards (i cannot tolerate coffee). That is me. Not turks of course.

They simply love the turkish coffee.If you have drank american coffee or what not...trust me,turkish coffee is like none other! How do they prepare the coffee? The cezve is the key.For a cup of the turkish coffee,one dessert spoon or 2 small teaspoons of coffee is added. Then, one or two (depending on one's taste) sugar cubes is/ are added.Some even drink coffee sugarless!!The coffee will be let to cook on a very low heat till coffee bubbles start foaming on top. The coffee is then poured into the turkish coffee cups.The coffee is very thick. Do you want to know why? a turkish coffee cup is only the equavalent of not even half the amount of a normal western coffee cup!!

I remember an incident. An american guest came to visit my dad in law. We served her turkish coffee. Politely, she asked if she could have at least another 3 more cubes of sugar..and i already added 2 inside the coffee itself!! Thick pure coffee...there is nothing like a turkish coffee...foamy on top and thick inside...if u can survive a turkish coffee, i salute you.

And then there is the tea.Yeah..another small glass of tea cup...again the size is around half the size of a normal tea cup. There are two compartments in the tea making. The bottom part of the pot is full with boiling water. The top part is where the tea leaves are mixed up with hot water and put on top the boiling water compartment to brew under very low heat for at least 15 minutes before serving the tea. Well, if i don't make sense,there's the pic on top there anyway...

Turkish coffee cups..turkish tea cups...why so small? i wonder about it myself..Why can't they just use the big cups? Ok..ok...thick tasting turkish coffee in big cups will be too much for one's own health i suppose. But small tea cups? Why not use normal *big* tea cups as in other cultures? ? That way the tea especially won't finish so fast and you won't need to refill it again and again? It can get really tiring to keep up refilling the tea..especially for the host..refilling and refilling..and in a crowd, one's feet can get really tired of moving from the living room to the kitchen and vice versa... i suppose the people like it hot...the tea i mean. Big cups of tea can mean that the chances of the tea to get cold to be very high especially when one is engrossed in the conversation. Turks love to chat. They can talk and talk for hours to end and may forget to drink the tea they are holding.. At least with smaller glass, with the constant refilling, cold tea won't be an issue....

Well..that is at least my opinion..i am not complaining or anything..it just is...that is the way things are done. This is the culture..a culture unique to itself..after all..what is oneself without a culture that represents him or her?

***to be continued****