Turkish coffee: pure fusion

So nescafé coffee (powdered coffee) is huge in Chile. Some people have it with breakfast and once (like evening tea). It leaves a little to be desired in the way of taste, but is incredibly easy to serve because you just need the can of powdered coffee and boiled water. And then people can choose between tea or nescafe, and you can add sugar and milk. It's a custom here. I can totally understand the pull of nescafe for its ease of use. You don´t need a drip machine, or an Italian percolator or an expresso machine. You just mix the ingredients and voila.

I arrived in Chile with my Italian percolator. For the first few years here I percolated lots and lots of coffee. Yummy. And then my friend Fer changed my life. Suddenly the ease of nescafe was fused with real coffee to make the dream of a good cup of coffee and the ease of nescafe a reality. I have the supermarket Jumbo's high prices to thank for this newfound knowledge.

So some girlfriends, Fer and I were shopping in Jumbo for our weekend trip to Tunquen, which was a send-off party for our friend Karina who is presently studying in Barcelona for the next couple years. Anyway we went to buy this little tin of nescafe for the five of us for the weekend. This tiny little can of like 200 grams cost like 800 pesos. (Like almost $2 now that the dollars way down). And its bad coffee. Alongside the nescafe was like 250 grams of the real stuff and it cost like 900 pesos. So Fer suggested we buy that and make turkish coffee. Yummy, yummy. So it's prepared the same way as nescafé but you have to use just boiled water. You mix in a spoonful or two of coffee grounds, sugar and milk if you want. Then pour the boiled water in, stir well and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes while the coffee grounds fall to the bottom. And there you have it. A yummy cup of joe fused with the ease of preparation that nescafe provides. Sheer genius.

Needless to say, we drank tasty coffee all weekend. What a pleasure!