My journey to the perfect coffee………..

I have a relationship with coffee that dates back to the apartheid era. It has had its highs and lows, sometimes coffee hasn’t delivered in the taste department, and I have also not been willing to splash out on good coffee.

It started off in boarding school, a Catholic convent school run by Swiss nuns. Sub standard coffee, mainly because of the milk powder they used. That milk powder was definitely relief aid quality, and I felt guilty every time I had some, as I was convinced it was initially destined for starving kids in Ethiopia and Bosnia.

Our options at home were Kloof and Mona. I am not sure if you remember the stuff, but it was basically chicory with a pinch of coffee. Tooth stainer extraordinaire, that nestled between your teeth if not strained well. I think previously disadvantaged people should sue the retailers for depriving them of the good stuff during apartheid years. First time I saw olive oil was when I went to varsity. Let’s not even talk about the first time I had cheese, other than Gouda or cheddar. You think they would sell Camembert and Gruyere cheese in the homelands?

Fast forward through coffee/chicory mixes in high school and varsity to my first year as a tax payer. Now I had truly arrived, and upgraded to Nescafe. Even the ladies commended me on my impeccable coffee taste. A year later, a Cameroonian colleague introduced me to some coffee from the ‘armpit of Africa’ as he calls his country. I was hooked; filter coffee just had this aroma and taste I wanted to take with me wherever I went. Lack of a coffee machine, and budgetary constraints forced me to settle for freeze dried coffee, and this in a way made up for it. During this time I also tried out the various coffee brands like Illy, Lavazza, Ciro, Danessi, etc. and the chain coffee shop stuff like Mugg and Bean, House of Coffees.

A white mate who was off to work in the ‘armpit of Africa’ (funny now that I think of it) left me with his Saeco Gran Crema machine and that is when I started making my own stuff. I was surprised at people telling me that the best coffee was ‘grrrown in Italy’. Didn’t know they had coffee plantations in Italy was my response. ‘No man, you know what I mean. It’s grown here in Africa but mastered in Italy’.

Looks like colonialism never ends, now its plundering things like coffee and tea from Africa and selling them as European products.

That is why my favourite coffee, has never left the African continent. Grown in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia and roasted and packaged in Port Elizabeth, then transported to my local coffee guy. Masterton’s Sidamo coffee is everything coffee should be. It tastes good, and its African renaissance coffee.

Try African coffee like Sidamo, Harar and coffee grown in countries like Kenya and Rwanda. You won’t be disappointed.

Has food gone global?

A few days ago, I got a response about my ‘Why I never do Sunday lunch in a restaurant’ post. The response, from a friend Down Under questioned how I link sangria and an old Italian woman. Sangria, as most people probably do not know is originally a Spanish drink. It is however globally recognized as an Italian drink. In South Africa one could probably blame this on the scarcity of Spanish restaurants and the over supply of pizzerias.

This got me thinking about other foods (if such a word exists) that have gone global. Some have even fully embraced the globalization trend of rebranding. A hot dog is called a boerie roll in South Africa. It’s the same thing really; sausage and synthetic sauces in a bun.

Italian cuisine is probably the most global cuisine, and must have something to do with the mafia forcing people to eat pizza slices and bowls of bolognese or else they make you ‘swim with the fishes’. You have this nation and that nation pizza all over the world. Throw in some jalapenos and its Mexicana, throw in some pineapple and its Hawaiian. Maybe I should come up with a tripe pizza: the Xhosanostra pizza. I even had a pizza with avocado and biltong a while ago.

The most global though, has to be ice cream. It has gone so global that its origin is no longer material. I suspect the Chinese or someone from some cold place in the Orient came up with ice cream. It transcends all boundaries; religious, geographical, you name them. Even the poorest villagers have a bit of ice cream from time to time.

Second on the list has to be the hamburger. Conceptualized in the Mongolian battlefields where warriors would tenderize the meat with their saddles while fighting, it ended up named after a German city.

Has any African food gone global?

That is difficult to say as they pop up on the other side of the world and people claim to have made them since time immemorial. Biltong is beef jerky in the USA and has been around for centuries. Pap is polenta in Italy, the list goes on.

The effects of this globalization of food are similar to the ones you see in the world economy. South African kids are now growing up not knowing how to cook pap, samp and beans or even eat mopani worms, but can make you the best tasking lasagna by the time they reach their teens. Ask a young Afrikaner girl to make some melktert and see what you end up with.