Indian-style coffee

I think I'll start with a simple recipe that I devised myself:  Indian-style coffee.

In actuality, I'm not even sure that Indians add spices to their coffee.  Why, then, would I claim this is Indian-style, and why would I have the audacity to claim to know anything about Indian tastes?  

My husband is Bengali and I've picked up bits and pieces of Indian culture and eating habits.  When my husband's parents visited, they would have their coffee (with milk and sugar) for breakfast and their tea (with milk and sugar) in the afternoon.  I was actually surprised that they didn't add spices to their tea, beings I had been making chai tea for years.  I was also surprised that they wanted to find "high-quality" instant coffee to bring back to India and give as gifts.  

That said, what I love about Indian cooking is the spices, and I wanted to bring some of that goodness to my coffee.  Looking at the many chai recipes in my Indian cookbooks, I noticed that some recipes added fennel.  I'm not a big fan of fennel and licorice flavors, so I never add it to my chai.  But I thought the menthol-like notes from fennel and green cardamom would do wonders for coffee.  And it does!

Here's my recipe, which has become our family's weekend morning coffee.  When I'm lazy I'll use Bru, an Indian instant coffee with roasted chicory.  We get it from our local Indian grocery store.  However, I'm currently experimenting with using freshly-ground coffee beans brewed semi-Turkish style.  This will probably be more appealing to the coffee snobs among you (you know who you are!)  I'm waiting to get my hands on some Peet's Arabian Mocha-Java.....

Indian-style coffee  (makes about three cups)

1 1/2 cups water

3/4 teaspoon fennel seeds

seeds from 5 green cardamom pods

4 1/2 teaspoons Bru

5 teaspoons sugar

1 1/2 cups milk

1. In a small saucepan, start warming water over medium heat.  
2. Meanwhile, grind together fennel and cardamom seeds in an electric coffee grinder until semi-coarse (not powdered).  Add to water.  Add coffee and sugar, stir well, and heat for about 5 minutes or until simmering.  
3. Add milk and bring back up to desired temperature.  Strain before serving.

For semi-Turkish style using whole beans, grind the beans as fine as possible in the electric coffee grinder (coffee will cake to sides of grinder).  Use this instead of the Bru.  Before adding milk, let coffee simmer at least 2 minutes to let coffee brew.  After adding milk, stir only once (this allows some of the fine grinds to settle out of the coffee).  I call this semi-Turkish coffee because authentically the coffee should be brewed in an ibrik and treated in a special way to get a nice froth.  But the technique I'm giving will still produce a flavorful, strong coffee.  Beware, however, that even after straining there will be lots of fine coffee grinds on the bottom of your cup.  Just part of the experience!  (Some Turks use the grinds on the bottom of the cup to tell fortunes.)