The key thing about ‘Armenian’ coffee is – it’s not ‘Turkish’ coffee. Never mind, that most of the world calls the exact same type of coffee – Turkish coffee…
This high tech gadget called ‘Jazzve’ is instrumental in making your ‘Armenian’ coffee a success. It must be used and old. The handle is often wooden and burned. You can tell at once that it has seen a lot of coffee flow through its belly.
In the old Soviet times everybody had a jazzve and an environmentally friendly manual coffee grinder. Those are gone nowadays – and people prefer to grind coffee by large electronic grinders when buying it. There are also pre-packaged ground coffee sorts, but the common belief is that it’s not really coffee… with accompanying horror stories about how they put ground metal and mix it with burnt soya powder to make it heavy.
The recipe is simple. One small cup of water, one teaspoonful of coffee and half-teaspoonful of sugar. Put it in the jazzve. Turn on the gas and wait till it starts to boil.
I usually spill some coffee and sugar around when making coffee and have to wipe all around the kitchen. I also always leave the teaspoon in the jazzve. Naturally, it heats up. When the coffee is ready, I always try to mix the contents of the jazzve with the teaspoon and always burn my fingers… that, however, never spoils my mood and love for the good-old ‘Armenian’ coffee, commonly known around the world as the ‘Turkish’ coffee.
I like to think of myself as a person with an open mind, so if you have any special touches to making the perfect ‘Armenian’ coffee, I’ll greatly appreciate your advice.