COFFEE - THE RECIPES

COFFEE - THE RECIPES OF MANE


The french, long ago, as they knew an Arabian legend about a fruit that produced an alertness effect on goats and an eventual comercial value it would have, kept it as state secret a large plantation of coffee on their american colony, the Guyana.

In 1727, Governor of the Brazilian State of Maranhão e Grão Pará, Mr. João Maia da Gama, before sending an expedition for resolving frontier delimitation matters, asked Sargeant Francisco de Melo Palheta, comander of the expedition, to bring him some seeds of coffee.

The official mission was discussed with Governor of Guyana, Claude D’Orvilliers, and the sigilous mission was settled with Mrs. D’Orvilliers, Governor’s wife that, after falling in love with Mr. Palheta, offered him some seeds and five small samples of coffee tree. It was enough for Brazil to become the World’s Largest Producer of coffee and discover the “burning-everything-to control-prices” scheme.


Despite the Galaic-portuguese language been so linked to coffee, if you wish to know better this plant, you should really use some latin, since the coffee tree belongs to the group of Phanerogams,class Angiosperm, subclass Dicotyledonous, Order Rubilaes, Family Rubiaceas, Tribe Coffeae, Subtribe Coffeinae and Gender Coffea, in which the species are grouped in four categories: Eucoffea, Mascarocoffea, Argocoffea (from Africa), and Paracoffea (from India, Indochina, Sri Lanka and Malaisia)
Category Eucoffea (which is the most important economically, since it contains the most cultivated species destined to drinking) is divided in following subcategories: Erytrocoffea, Pachycoffea etcoeteracoffea. Since there are so many types, let’s talk about the Erytrocoffea, which is the one that encloses, among many types, the Coffea Arabica (arabian coffee) and the Coffea Canephora (strong coffee) that are the only cultivated in large quantity. Those are also the best to acompany a talk, making friends, doing business, datings, receive visits, pause for a while, complete a meal, beggin a brand new day... or simply make us crak the tongue and say:

“Eta cafezinho bão!” (“What a good coffee!” - Galaic-Portuguese dictation spoken in Brazil).

Well, my dear readers shall accept that if coffee is a holy medicine, there shoud be instructions for its use.
So, here it is coffee chemical composition:

________________Arabica ______Canephora
Caffein;....................... 0,6 - 1,5 .................1,6 - 2,7
Trigonelline; .....................1 ...........................1
Cafeol; .........................0,7 - 1,1 ......................-
Clorogenic acids;......... 6,2 - 7,9................ 7,4 - 11,2
Sacharose and
reductives sugares .......5,3 - 9,3................ 3,7 - 7,1
free amino acids;.......... 0,4 - 2,4............... 0,8 - 0,9
polysacharide;.............. 46 - 59 ..................43 - 54
proteins;........................... 12 .........................12
lipids;............................ 12 - 16 ...................10 - 12
other acids;....................... 2 ...........................2
minerals; ...........................4 ...........................4
total .............................90 - 114 .................86 - 107

Besides the water that is almost completely eliminated by toasting, coffee has more than seven hundred volatile substances comprising its smell.

Hummmmmm!!!!!!!

But, before recipes, let’s know a little more about the effects of coffee on our body. Like every other human habit has defenders and accusers, those who feel well, those who feel bad and those unconcerned.

Generically:

“Coffee exercises main influence on nervous and circulatory sistem of the hunam body, exciting brain function (intelectual efect) and is a heart tonic and diuretic drink, having blood vessels expanding properties (throgh action in the bronquial tubes), it may also atenuate smoking damages.
Reseaches on the carcinologic, teratogenic or mutagenic effects of cafein resulted negative. Same results were got from coffee administration to a group of hipertense aged in USA. And it was proved there is no relationship between the use of coffee and mortality. It can also be conclude, therefore, from those among a large amount of scientific researches that support present knowledge, that a normal consumption of coffee (4 or 5 cups a day), does no harm to human health.”

Now, let’s get down to the recipes:

CAFEZINHO Á BRASILEIRA (COFFEE THE BRAZILIAN WAY): As the water beggins boiling, add 5 soup spoons of coffee powder for each litre of water. Blend with a wooden spoon and pour in a flannel percolator. Serve with or without sugar.

EXPRESSO: It is donne with hot water, under pressure. Use a coffee machine or visit a coffee shop, asking for a “Bica”, if you are in Lisbon, or a “Cimbalino” if you are in Oporto.
Variations:
Carioca - The “Bica” with a little water.
Garoto - The “Bica” with a little milk.
Italiana - Short “Bica” well concentrated.
Com cheirinho - The “Bica” with a little “bagaço”.

CAPUCCINO: Basically coffee, milk, cream and individual tecniques.

COCKTAIL: A pour of sugar canne beverage, one tea spoon of sugar and half cup of black coffee. Mix in a cocktail jar with ice cubs. Serve afterwards.

REFRESHMENT: Two spoons of black coffee for each cup, sugar to one’s taste, cool water or ice.
Variation: Instead cool water, blend cream ice cream.

FRAPPÉ: Freze black coffee and add two cubs of coffee for each cup of milk, sugar to your taste. Blend it until it becomes creamy. Serve it in tall cups with or without chantilly cream.

VIENNESE COFFEE: Blend half cup of milk cream. Add one soup spoon of sugar. Leave in the refrigerator till it cools. Add four tea spoons of chocolate powder, eight tea spoons of sugar and four dessert spoons of milk cream. Blend it till it becomes pasty. Add coffee (half litre for each serving), slowly. Serve it adorned with chantilly cream and a little cinnamon powder.

TURKISH COFFEE or GREEK: Boil water with sugar to your taste. Add Thin ground coffee. Boil the mixture three times. Take it out fire and add some cool water. Seerve slowly.

COFFEE CAKE: Ingredients: four eggs, a relish of salt, 3/4 cup of wheat, one spoon of ferment, 3 soup spoons of black coffee, 1/2 tea spoon of cinnamon and a relish of ground pink.
Blend whites of the eggs well with salt. Add sugar slowly without pause. Add yolks and blend till misture is creamy and dense. Then add wheat, ferment, cinnamon, and hot coffee. Pour it in two moulds with 20 cm diameter each, well geased. Bake it moderate temperature for 20 minutes. Take out of the mould and let it cool down. Join both cakes with a chantilly cream lawyer and pour, over the cake, some melt chocolate with coffee.

PUDDING: Ingredients: 2 cans of condensed milk, 1 cup of very black coffee, 1 cup of milk, 5 eggs, 1 soup spoon of cognac, corn glucose or honey.
Blend eggs and add condensed milk, coffee and milk. Pass mixture twice through a small-holed bolter. Grease a mould with corn glucose or honey. Pour mixture in the mould and roast in hot water, in hot oven.

BRIGADEIROS (PORTUGUESE CAKE) WITH COFFE: Ingredients: 1 can of condensed milk, 1 soup spoon of chocolate powder, 1/3 cup of black coffee, 1 soup spoon of butter. Ground coconut.
Blend all ingredients in a pan. Mix over moderate fire until it is possible to see the botton of pan and mixture unglues from pan lateral. Place in a greased dish. Let it cool down. Make small balls with wettish hands, rolling balls on ground coconut.

ICE CREAM and BONBONS: They are delicious but, unfortunately, I can’t make them. If you have recipes, please, send me copies.

COFFEE DRAWINGS: Use same water colour tecniques, and personal taste.


From this popular riddle:

“O que é, o que é...
Preto como o carvão
Forte como o Diabo
Quente como o Inferno
Doce como o Amor?”

Translation: Tell me what is as black as coal, as strong as devil, as hot as hell, and as sweet as love?

Baron Homem de Mello wrote this lines:

Das cavernas tenebrosas
Do temível deus Plutão
Vem jorrando este café
Preto como o carvão
(From gloomy graves of frightful God Pluto flows coffee as black as coal.)

Reclinado em seu coxim
Diz o opulento nababo
“Como sabe este café
Forte como o Diabo”(Sitting on his chair, the richman says “This coffee is as strong as devil”.)

Neste Rio de Janeiro
Em dias frios de Inverno
Como sabe este café
Quente como o Inferno(At Rio de Janeiro, in cool days, coffee as hot as hell is drunk.)

Mas, ah, que linda menina
Formoso botão em flor
Vem trazer-nos o café
Doce como o Amor(A pretty girl, as beautiful as theblossoming flowers, serve us coffee as sweet as love.)

Famous portuguese cartoonist Stuart, when he had little money, used to buying flat and hard paper, sandpapered it to make it porous, and bit a match head to withdraw it - the brush. Paint, it was the wine lopped over the counter or the rest of coffee in the botton of a cup. The rest was simply art.



Van Gogh used to making his sketches with coffee, but his prefered drink was not exactly it.



Johan Sebastian Bach was addicted to coffee. He suffered the same prejudice and rejection everybody who liked coffee suffered, because just like tabaco and alcohol, it too had its time of marginal condition. However, Bach revenged and praised coffee a lot. After all, coffee was not only a vice, it was the company to afford the few hours of peace to compose. They were 20 children in the same house, what it makes difficult to believe he could have left so many songs. Besides The “Cantata of coffee”, he simply made an hymn to the drink, which becameone of the most popular songs in the world and was called “Coffee, the happiness of men”. The Church altered its name, but coffee continues to deserve that original title.





RESEARCH:
- O Café - do Cultivo ao Consumo - Matiello, J. B.; ed. Globo - São Paulo, 1991. 320 pages.
- Caféiers et café -Coste, R.; ed. Maisonneuve et Larose - Paris, 1989. 373 pages.
- The granma’s drawer.
- To listen about.



Translation: Paulo Roberto Silva de Oliveira



Jorge Carlos Amaral de Oliveira.
Was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 23rd, 1952.
His interest in the arts aroused when he lived in the
State of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazonia; he left his univerity study of Geography in order to dedicate himself, full-time, to the arts and, through then, to shout out his indignation at the injustices towards the people and the forests of Acre. When the military dictatorship in Brazil ended, he became more quiet and devoted himself more to theatre (he turned professional in theatre) and to plastic arts. First he used the pseudonym of João Maiara and in 1995, on suggestion of the painter Zé Cordeiro, he began to sign his works as Mané do Café. He has been living in Portugal since 1990.
His Works are exhibited in the State Museum of Acre; Municipal Museum of Alcochete, Portugal; Museum of the Coffee, Campo Maior; Industry and Trade Bureau of Acre; Social Trade Service of Acre; Tropicalp (Swiss- Brazilian Association) Lausanne, Switzerland and seat of ABIC (Brazilian Association of the Coffe Industry), Rio de Janeiro.
Since 1981 he has been taken part in many individual and colective exhibitions; here are some: VIVA CAFÉ, COFFEE FOR THE FRIENDS, COFFEE IN COFFEE and EROTIC COFFEE, Rio Branco; 7º ARTS SALON (Foudation Rômulo Maiorana), Belém; Inauguration of CHICO MENDES PARK, São Paulo; attraction in the stand of PALHETA COFFEE (fair of ABRAS) and LET’S GO AND SEE A COFFEE? (Centre of Arts Calouste Gulbenkian and Novo Leblon Building), Rio de Janeiro and COFFEE MADE PAITINGS, Brasilia COLLEUR CAFÉ and CAFÉ FRATÉ, Lausanne (SWITZERLAND) – COFFEE NUANCES, CRAZY COFFEE, SUDDEN COFFEE, Lisbon; CEDAR SCULPTURES, São Pedro de Moel; PAINTING WITH COFFE, Caminha; COFFEE ART, Alcochete; PLASTIC ARTS IN THE LUSOFONIA, Évora; CULTURAL WINTER, Cascais and ART WINTER, Nisa (PORTUGAL) – LE RÊVE ET L’EXOTISME, Morrières-les-Avignon (FRANCE) and CHILD COFFEE (Itinerant).

BOOKS:
Was Bach Brazilian? – Teorema - Lisboa, 2004
O Português ou Escravos da Esperança – Campos das Letras – Porto, 2003
Punk rock & Cia. Ou O Grande Gastão – um romance pimba por Esteves Oliveira – Pangeia – Lisboa, 2005
Ladrão de Sonhos – Academia da Edição – Lisboa, 2001
Dona Peta – conto minha vida – Lisboa, 1999
Um poema e outras brincadeiras – Lisboa e Rio Branco, 1993
Qomunicassão I espressão – um artigu com muinto umor – Fundação Cultural do Acre – Rio Branco, 1989
Colectânea de Poesia Acreana – Casa do Poeta do Acre – Rio Branco, 1987
Literatura de cordel – 1978-1988.
Was Bach Brazilian? (en castelhano) – (translation: Ana Marquez) – Mimeógrafo – Lisboa, 2005