Coffee. What a great invention. The perfect drink for starting the day, for enjoying a break, to chat with your colleagues, to feel happy.

Unitl a few years ago, I was “picky” about coffee but only in respect of “italian vs non italian”. Then, a few years ago, we started to do our shopping at the “Living earth” store in Worcester, MA where I started trying some of the coffee beans that were sold there. First test purchase I made was a wee bag of organic espresso beans from the Equal Exchange company, which is based in mansfield, MA. It was love at first sight. Best coffee I had in ages. I would say that it does get close to an Illy quality. Not cheap (~ 11 bucks per pound), but worth every penny. Since then, I have stopped buying other coffees excepot for a brief period of a few months, when I started buying a coffee named “Cafe bustelo“. It’s way cheaper and still maintains a couple of properties that are very important to me, regarding the coffee I buy. But I’ll talk about those later. Right now I am enjoying the Organic Black Silk Espresso from Equal Exchange and I am very happy about it. Lovely. Dark. Bot too bitter. Not sweet. Mmmmmmhhhh.

Now, as I was quickly mentioning before, there are a few issues with coffee that make me very very very picky about what I buy:

First of all, quality. Naturally. I do not consider Starbucks or Dunking Donuts as being coffee. Thir coffee is either over-burnt, or too bitter or too acidic (DD especially). Badly roasted, badly ground and badly mixed. Bustelo is quite ok. There are some batches tat have that unpleasant metallic taste, but hey, once in a while can be tollerated.

Second, and the most important of them all, is that my coffee has to be guaranteed “fair trade“. Not the fake fair trade like Teavana, for example, where a small, tiny percentage of profits go to the farmers but where the farmers get paid a proper price for their beans. What’s the difference? very simple. With the “% of profits”, farmers do not have a constant, fixed and guaranteed income. They can not plan for the future and they still heavily depend on loans to start the season. With the “fixed price per kilo”, farmers have a good estimate of how much thwy will make, they are pushed to produce more and better and, most imortantly, can plan ahead and depend much less on loans for the next season. I know I am over-simplifying, but I am still reading and learning a lot about this issue myself.

Here’s something that will convince you even more, in case you still have doubts about it. I’ve seen this documentary on a VS flight and it really made me realize that the issue is serious and worth the “fight”. It’s called “Back Gold” and talks about a coop in Kenya. One single passage made understand how important this movement is: “we do not need your loans and goodwill. We need you to pay or products for their real price. 25 cents more per kilo allowed us to build a school. We can and we want to be self-sufficient”. They are right. Let them spread their wings. Or are we crushing them on purpose? Are we afraid?

I am doing my part. I only buy fair trade. Now you should do the same. Act now!

This is my first post about coffee. There will be more for sure.

OK, let’s start with some “cooking”. I put the quotes, as there’s nothing to cook in this one. Very simple one. And very leker Good’ole tiramisu’. Who doesn’t like it? Creamy, chocolaty, coffeey, cheesey and delicousy.

I like to make this dessert whenever I am asked “bring a dessert”, as it really takes 5 minutes to make and even a caveman could do it (hope I won’t get sued for this one). Anyway, here we.

Ingredients:

- 4 eggs

- 500g mascarpone (for you americans, that’s 2 pots of the standard one you find in Shaws)

- Ladyfingers (as many as you can use)

- Coffee (as much as you need)

- 100g sugar (that should be close to 3 ounces?)

- cognac (or any other booze, as much as you like)

- bitter chocolate powder

Start by separating the eggs into classical reds and whites. Mix the reds with the sugar and whisk it to a nice cream. Add the booze and keep mixing (I usually put a lid-full of cognac). Then add the mascarpone and keep mixing. When the whole thing is nicely mixed and creamy, take the egg whites and beat them until nice and fluffy and snowy and whatever you call that when you make a foam with the whites Gently mix them withe the mascarpone cream and let to rest for a wee while.

Now, make your coffee. I usually make two stovetop 3-cuppers and let them cool down to room temperature, or your ladyfingers will turn into baby food in a matter of nanoseconds. Now, coffee seleccion is also important. The coffee will give yoru tiramisu a specific taste and if you use crap quality material, your tiramisu’ will suffer. I usually tend to go for the “standard” Bustelo which is cheap, fair trade (I’ll talk about this in another post) and decent quality. If I really want to splunge and feel happy, I’ll use my stash of Oragnic Black Silk form Equal Exchange.

Anyway, too much rambling about coffee here. So, we now have our cream and our coffee. THe ladyfinger are there on the side. Let’s start then. Take a tray, or whatever container in which you want to assmeble your tiramisu and start making the first layer of ladyfingers. Take a cookie, quickly dip it in the coffee (just roll it once in the black juice) and cover the tray with them. Now, take the creamy cream and cover the fingers with it. Add a second layer of ladyfingers, cover them with the cream and so on. At the end, you’ll have a final layer of cream, which you will cover with the chocolate powder. for this, I usually use a small sieve and a tea spoon.

Your tiramisu is ready. Cover the whole film with plastic wrap or a cloth and store it in the fridge overnight.

Call in some frineds, or eat it on your own and enjoy

(PS: fotos to come)