Back to blogging…
It’s been an eternity since my last post, but in the meantime I finally finished up the edits on my book. The Lexicon of Greek Taste is due for release by Aspri Lexi Press in September 2009!! Add to that the lost of my domain name, and the last couple of months have been exhausting.
To make a long story short, www.historyofgreekfood.com became www.historyofgreekfood.org, because the registrant company STARGATE.COM was bought by UK2 Group. My domain name was supposed to be purchased by UK2 Group, however it had not. This was despite historyofgreekfood.com being on their list of domains. As a result, I could not renew it either through UK2net or through Stargate and I could not access my website. Even worse, historyofgreekfood.com was bought by domain squatters and the price went sky rocketing when I tried to buy it back. So, I changed it to historyofgreekfood.org. Unfortunately many posts, comments, links and photographs are gone, since I was not very wise to export all of them to my computer.
….. and a glass of coffee.
When the temperature rises in Greece, the frappé season is! This very popular Greek summer –coffee started by accident in 1957, at the International Trade Fair of Thessaloniki. Dimitris Vakondios, employee of the representative of the Nestlé food company, couldn’t find any hot water to make his instant coffee, so he mixed the coffee with cold water and shaked it in a shaker. A new coffee had been born.
Thinking that instant coffee was launched onto the international market just in the 1950’s, it is not suprising that the idea of the ‘shaken’ cold coffee spread slowly. But in 1975, Nestlé began advertising on Greek television Nescafe, the hot instant, easy-making coffee. Four years later Nestlé expanded promotion to cold instant coffee and gave it the name of Nescafe Frappé. Greeks begun to drink it with such enthusiasm that became their most characteristic summer coffee. When a Greek today wants to drink a cold instant coffee, he simply asks for a frappé.
Frappé is a simple beverage. The instant coffee is combined with 1/5 of a glass of really cold water, sugar (optional), shaken vigorously together in a shaker or with a hand mixer, until the mixture will turn to thick foam. In case of using a shaker, the creamy mixture is poured over ice cubes in a tall glass. More cold water is added, some milk(optional) and the coffee is ready!
The foam of a good frappé is very thick. The lower oil content of instant coffee compared to traditionally brewed coffee makes the coffee -bubbles do not collapse and the foam creamy and durable. The best foam is made with spray-dried coffee, which actually is cheaper because spray-drying is simpler than freeze-drying. On the other hand, the high temperature needed in this process, destroys the natural flavor of coffee.
The popularity of frappé has nothing to do with its quality or quantity. The frappé is more about social gathering, contact, talking and watching people go by. The statistics say that the average person needs about 1 hour to drink a frappé at a cafeteria. Its high price – 3-6 euros for a glass of coffee- probably has mostly to do with the time that customers keep the tables. And it makes Athens the second most expensive city in Europe after Moscow, at least in terms of the price of a cup of coffee.
And here is the frappé I drink in summer mornings. Well, it is not so traditional but is tasty and I love it.
2 fingers of cold milk and 1 ½ tsp. coffee are mixed together with a hand mixer and then more milk is added into the foam.
I use the organic coffee Mount Hagen, a freeze-dried coffee with very rich flavor.
It is a product of Fair Trade, which means that the final customer is charged a little more but the middlemen have been cut off and the farmers have fair wages.
So sorry to hear about your dealings with Stargate switching to UK2. I am dealing with a customer who is having the same issues. UK2 claims an individual that I had a similar battle with a few years ago is to blame. I won last time, but now he is going after our customer’s domain. According to UK2, he changed the admin contact, but left it as us on ICANN. The only way the customer knew his domain was due, was that the site went down due to the DNS getting changed by the individual. We have until the 15th of this month to fight this battle, and hopefully we can get the domains back. The individual has been given until midnight tonight to give us access or he is getting reported to several authorities, and we are filing a dispute. Wish us luck!
Thanks for stopping by Dr.Davon Jacobson, I will check out your site too.
Selba, your blog is such a pleasure for the eyes as well as the stomach.
Thank you foodcreate!
MTCook,Cafe Sultan(Kapalıçarşı, Istanbul) serves frape!
Welcome Erica!! Colombia is the only country in the world with a nationalcoffee federation, isn’t it?
I love Coffee! Nescafe is very popular in Colombia. I am a new visitor and I love your site.
Welcome back! I was wondering what happened to your domain! I tried to visit a few times and it took me somewhere else.
The nescafe is also very popular in Turkey too, however I have not seen the cold nescafe yet. Although I am not a big coffee drinker, so I could be missing out on what’s going on in the coffee world. Thanks for sharing this drink, sounds really easy to make.
Welcome back! I love your blog colors food, drinks! I love greek coffee. I love to drink instant coffee.
Thanks for sharing your storie ~~~
“Join our growing food community enjoy exceptional recipe.
Summit your heirloom recipe for all the world to share”
Welcome~~~Benvenido~~~
http://foodcreate.com
Hi.. thanks for visiting my blog 🙂 I like to drink instant coffee.
This is really a well laid out website. I love how your posts tie in with the food and drink theme so well. You seem to really love your site. I myself love to read up on recipes along side helping others in health. Keep up the great work here and please visit by my blog sometime. The url is http://healthy-nutrition-facts.blogspot.com
Thank you all for the warm welcome back!
Tangled Noodle, the book is written in Greek, as it will be published here. An English edition will be available in the future.
James and T.Noodle, an iced-cold frappe is definitely a nice way to get going in the morning… especially if the temperature shoots above 34C, as it did yesterday morning.
My dear Lulu, there is a strong link between Greeks and frappe, isn’t there? Omos ti les na grapseis ena post gia ton freddo cappuccino?
BTW we had not success with waterless tomatoes, the plants got south- wind burn…but, we’ll try again.
Yay! You’re back! I’m raising a glass to you, stin iyia sou!
I was just thinking thinking of doing a frappe post myself, but I didn’t know the history of it. Of course, that’s *your* specialty! 🙂 Have I mentioned how glad I am that you’re back?!? I was SO disappointed when I clicked my link to your old site and you weren’t there!
Interesting about the oil content versus foaminess, that goes along with what I know about foaming milk for cappuccinos: the more fat the more difficult the foam production.
Had any waterless tomatoes yet this year? 😉
Nice way to get going in the morning!
Ooh a book – how exciting. Welcome back.
Thank you so much Ivy.
It’s so wonderful to see you back in the food blogosphere, Mariana! You’ve been sorely missed. I’m sorry to hear about the issues with your domain name but at the same time, I congratulate you on the final edits of your book. Will it be available in the US? Please let us know when it launches.
This frappé looks wonderfully refreshing – now that it’s finally getting warmer here, I may have to switch my morning coffee from hot to cold! But I may have to talk my husband into letting me use his cocktail shaker. 😎
Kaloriziko Marianna mou. My best wishes for your new site and for the publishing of your book, which I am looking forward to buying in September.