davethegrinch.net

Dave Says
Morocco is somewhat famed for its mint tea so whilst enjoying a cup of this super sweet and highly addictive local brew I got to thinking about tea and coffee in general. I’ve given up on beer and wine. I know this sounds highly irregular but, to be quite frank with you, if I may, the world’s beer all tastes the same. It’s all lager based - Heineken but with a different label. Wine is wonderful but only the civilized countries vint it and we can’t afford the good stuff so we’re “forced” to drink the cheap table wine and, to be frank with you, if I may one more time, it can be both wine and paint stripper in the same bottle. So I turned my attentions to the staples: tea and coffee.

My samplings of both here in Morocco have led me to hypothesize that you can just about sum up the complexity of a society by its approach to its staple drink. Try this out for size:

Morocco: mint tea. It’s hot and the combination of green gunpowder tea, fresh mint and at least four sugar lumps per CUP (that’s about twelve to a pot) is a sure fire way to cool you down on a hot day. There is a complex ritual of pouring from one glass to another to cool the drink down and one must pour the tea from a great height to make bubbles in the glass. The Moroccans themselves appear to be quite hot blooded people too and seem to bury the icy coolness of mint deep down. I have witnessed quite a few explosions of temper, jabbering of Arabic followed by a smile and laugh. Tea imitating life or life imitating tea.

In Japan tea is not to be trifled with. The very complex ritual of the tea ceremony, lasting perhaps 30 minutes leaves the guest with a highly complex, very neatly presented cup of pasty green tea. One cannot fault the tradition and gravity of the ceremony but the end result is a perfection that only the Japanese can, or probably want, to understand. The mysteries of their culture hides in the tea pot for none but themselves to contemplate.

Chai tea from India is the same everywhere you go. The mish-mash of spices (the masala) that goes into every pot is just like the mish-mash of religions that make up the country. A little sweet and a little spicy and all competing for right to exist in the same cup at the same time.

Nepal has a much more basic and subsistence approach to tea. Black or Milk. Throw some basic black tea either in a pot of water or in a pot of milk. Serve when hot. There’s no time or inclination to make it any other way. There’s work to be done and besides, spices are expensive, save them for the dahl-bhat.

In Amsterdam, Lisbon and Barcelona the espresso rules supreme. Cafe Bica, Cafe Solo or just plain Cafe - one shot or two and some sugar if you wish. Cafe Du Lait is for tourists, real Europeans drink it neat. But, the European culture is a cafe culture so please, take as long as you like with the single shot and why not have a cigarette or two. If you smoke, as everyone seems to do there, the single shot is the only way you’ll taste the coffee anyway.

The Vietnamese borrowed their coffee habit from the French but the lack of refrigeration has led them to use canned, condensed milk. It’s sweeeeet and gives Sarah the runs so drink it under caution. Your coffee comes served as a glass of condensed milk with a single shot metal coffee filter perched on top. After five minutes or so, the coffee will have dripped into the milky goodness. But, just like most things in Vietnam, the filter doesn’t really work properly and one is often left with half a cup of coffee and a table disaster waiting to happen when you will invariably pick up the filter contraption and inspect it’s underside to see why it has prematurely ceased dripping.

Britain of course, is world famous for it’s tea. But,I’m afraid to say that the British wartime culture still pervades when it comes to making a cuppa. Firstly, the tea is always served with a dash of milk. The Indians and Nepali make their tea using just milk but the Brits may still think that milk is rationed so one dash is all you get. Also, the Brits are pretty thrifty with the actual tea. The mentality seems to be that if one drinks a lot of tea one should buy the cheapest available thereby saving money and perhaps ration stamps over the long haul. Perhaps if one invests a lot of time drinking something one should buy the best - you only live once.

But what happens when your country has no tea or coffee? That’s when the Nescafe corporation step in and the locals do their best with instant. We have seen some pretty creative names and concoctions using just a spoon of Nescafe and a bit of imagination (including coffee ice cream). In regions where tea is not readily available Liptons is served, and, yes, this includes the USA. On a side note from my side note, did you know you can buy Head and Shoulders shampoo in every village in the world. A grand statement I know, but I’ve not seen anything yet to disprove it.

Only the Americans could produced the vast array of coffee drinks that they now offer via the green goddess all of the world. The Triple Grande, Split Shot, Skinny Frapachino could only be created by the nation that has blended the world’s cultures together in a must have it how I want it, when I want it and I want a lot of it uber-culture.

The good news is that the world is not falling for the cryptic crossword coffee as much as you would think. Starbucks, obviously, is not in Morocco or Nepal. They have a few branches in India, a lot in Japan (but they LOVE American culture), none in Amsterdam but, to the salvation of the British who were proudly part of the Nescafe brigade, they are all over Britain. Unlike McDonalds the world seems to be absorbing the green coffee invasion gracefully and selectively. Perhaps because the local fare is so damn good but probably because there was no local hamburger culture for Mc’ds to originally displace, Starbucks and her clones remain somewhere the tourists go when they need a cup of home.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 10:12 am and is filed under Africa, Global Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.