{"id":1214,"date":"2009-11-25T14:00:39","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T20:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dmentd.com\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2009-11-24T14:58:53","modified_gmt":"2009-11-24T20:58:53","slug":"two-horrible-things-that-go-great-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/two-horrible-things-that-go-great-together","title":{"rendered":"Two Horrible Things That Go Great Together!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s well known that I’m a coffee snob.\u00a0 We’ve covered this already, and it’s one of my most endearing features (why does everyone tell me that in such a strange<\/em> tone of voice?).\u00a0 I very purposefully nursed and encouraged this snobbery from the very beginning, from my “awakening” moment with coffee — thank you GonzO for your enlightenment and wisdom… it’s all your fault.<\/p>\n

I came to enjoy coffee late in life, very specifically because I was born in a town that luxuriates in combining perfectly good coffee with funk-ass chicory — a throwback first to it’s French heritage, and secondly to World War II when coffee was scarce and chicory was used to bulk it out or replace it altogether.\u00a0 Chicory lends a bitter, eye-squinting taste to coffee, masking or completely obliterating many of the essential and desirable flavors standard coffee offers.\u00a0 As such, coffee and I never saw eye to eye.<\/p>\n

The most popular and well known variety of coffee and chicory in NOLA is CDM<\/a><\/strong>, aka Caf\u00e9 du Monde<\/strong><\/a>, and comes in an iconic golden yellow can that can be found in every grocery store in the South, not to mention in NOLA itself.\u00a0 It’s the blend of coffee and chicory made famous by Caf\u00e9 du Monde’s caf\u00e9 au lait that is served alongside yummy orders of powder sugar heaped beignets.<\/p>\n

Once I grew to appreciate actual coffee — not the bastard hybrid that almost ruined me for life — I also discovered that I couldn’t abide cold coffee, and more specifically iced coffee.\u00a0 There was something about how the flavor changed, and the way your taste buds were dulled by the cold that made the taste unpalatable to me… for lack of a better explanation, it “cheapens” the flavor.<\/p>\n

After moving to Austin, GonzO — my coffee mentor — decided to blow my mind again by introducing me to my own personal contradiction addiction.<\/p>\n

C\u00e0 ph\u00ea s\u1eefa \u0111\u00e1 (aka, <\/em><\/span>Caf\u00e9 su da)<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

It’s a Vietnamese style coffee that is brewed using CDM (specifically in the South due to its availability and similarity to the coffee used in Vietnam) in a specially designed metal drip coffee filter (c\u00e0 ph\u00ea phin) that drips into a glass containing sweetened condensed milk, stirred then served over ice.<\/p>\n

Iced.\u00a0 CDM.<\/p>\n

I know!<\/em> Dude… I know, I know, I know.\u00a0 I have a hard time explaining it other than to say that the sweetness of the condensed milk and the bitterness of the coffee work some kind of voodoo when combined with each other over ice to make a blissful little bit of heaven in a glass.\u00a0 It’s a bold flavored cup of coffee that will make our eyes pop open with an audible snap and keep you moving for hours.\u00a0 Combine a glass of that with a huge bowl of ph\u1edf (a Vietnamese beef and noodle soup), and you have the perfect start to a late, lazy weekend day, or the perfect cure for a hangover (whichever it happens to be, and that’s not to say they are mutually exclusive).<\/p>\n

No respectable Vietnamese restaurant would exclude c\u00e0 ph\u00ea s\u1eefa \u0111\u00e1<\/em><\/span> from their menu, and it has become one of the core criteria we use to judge a restaurant by here.\u00a0 Vietnamese has become one of my staple nationalities when dining out — the restaurants are plentiful, inexpensive, and filling without being horrible for you.\u00a0 The food is fresh and simple, and let’s face it, they have the miracle coffee.<\/p>\n

One of the gifts from Sweets’ for my birthday was a pair of c\u00e0 ph\u00ea phin filters so I could make c\u00e0 ph\u00ea s\u1eefa \u0111\u00e1<\/em><\/span> at home.\u00a0 I promptly went out an bought a can each of CDM and sweetened condensed milk.\u00a0 The process goes like this:<\/p>\n

Pour 3 TBS (50 GR) of sweetened condensed milk into a shallow tumbler.<\/p>\n

\"Ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Unscrew the screen from the inside of the filter, add 2 TBS of CDM coffee, and screw the filter back down, tightening moderately.\u00a0 Place the filter on top of the tumbler.<\/p>\n

\"Ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Fill the filter \u00bc full of boiling water and wait 20-30 seconds.\u00a0 Unscrew the filter screen at least 2 full turns then fill it the rest of the way with the boiled water.\u00a0 It should take approximately 5 minutes for the water to drip completely through the filter.<\/p>\n

\"Ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Thoroughly stir the coffee into the condensed milk while it is hot, taking care to scrape the sides and bottom of the tumbler clean.<\/p>\n

\"Ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Allow the coffee to enjoy one last moment of life as a hot drink as it contemplates the glass of ice next to it.<\/p>\n

\"Ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Pour the coffee over the ice, mix, and enjoy.\u00a0 If this is a new drink to you, you may want to be sitting comfortably, keeping clear of anything that could be kicked when you take your first sip, or knocked over when you stand suddenly, shouting “my god, I can see tomorrow!”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ca<\/a><\/p>\n

And I can rationalize enjoying this under the umbrella of coffee snobbery as there is special equipment involved, and a whole little ritual to be adhered to.<\/p>\n

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s well known that I’m a coffee snob.\u00a0 We’ve covered this already, and it’s one of my most endearing features (why does everyone tell me that in such a strange tone of voice?).\u00a0 I very purposefully nursed and encouraged this snobbery from the very beginning, from my “awakening” moment with coffee — thank you GonzO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,3,23,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domestica","category-links","category-pictures","category-rambling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}