Musing By Moonlight

Photograph of a Turkish Coffee Cup courtesy of Turkish Gift Bazaar.

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.” a Turkish proverb.

Recipes for making both Turkish and Lebanese coffee here ,naturally wheat-and-gluten free.

Public domain photograph courtesy of Wikipedia.

Picture it.  Brooklyn. A Lebanese restaurant someplace on Atlantic Avenue.  1958. We had recently seen the movie, Gigi, starring Leslie Caron.  You might remember that in the early scenes she wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with a ribbon tied in a bow and trailing down her back.  I had such a hat and suffered the illusion that I looked just like Gigi in the film. This illusion was strongly supported by the fact that Gigi was my childhood nickname. I might have felt pretty and even glamorous and certainly rather grown-up, but I would soon be relieved of my illusions.

First my mother allowed one of the restaurant patrons – an artist – to draw a picture of me. Much to my dismay all he saw and drew was a scrawny olive-skinned kid with a rather gauche hat that sat too far back on her head. Nothing at all approaching the light, elegant, grown-up beauty of Ms. Caron. Then our distant cousin, Julia, the restaurant owner, worked her special magic.  She predicted the future by interpreting the designs formed by the sludge left in the cup after drinking Turkish or Lebanese coffee. Julia would provide this service . . . “reading” coffee grounds . . . for her favorite (i.e., frequent) patrons.

At Julia’s my special treat was one cup of Lebanese coffee with my baklava. On this day, Mom let Julia do a reading for me. It had none of her usual romantic niceties: “You are like the sun and the moon. He is the sun that warms your heart. You are the moon that reflects his strength.” Or, “I see a key. Many doors will open for you. And, see there?  There are two bells entwined with a string.  There will be much love shared.”  No. No.  No such thing for me. For me there was: “See that, Gigi. Two books.  You must keep up your studies over the summer or there will be trouble come September.” 

My mother and grandmother never did readings to my knowledge, but I have seen them done when visiting.  As with Julia, I think in many families it was simply entertainment. Some women (I’ve never seen a man read grounds) were clearly having fun with the custom.  At other times it seemed that the woman doing the reading was truly intuitive and using the grounds – much like some people use tarot cards – as a means to focus.  Like crystal gazing, it’s a form of scrying.

As I have seen it done, the procedure is this:  Once the coffee is finished, the cup is covered with the saucer and turned upside down for a minute or two and the grounds are allowed to drip down the sides.  When the cup is righted, the reader reads the design formed by the grounds as they dripped down the sides.  She reads around the inside of the cup in a clock-wise fashion beginning and ending with the point at which the handle is attached. Some women are quite eloquent even if not truly intuitive and this gift alone can make for an amusing experience.

Public domain photograph of baklava courtesy of Wikipedia.

Lebanese coffee and baklava go so well together, and the memory of coffee readings was triggered for me when I read that today is National Baklava Day.  Well, you know, our manufacturers will do anything to promote their goods. Even Mother’s Day and Father’s Day were created for marketing purposes.  

I haven’t worked out a satisfactory wheat-and-gluten free recipe for the phyllo dough necessary to make baklava, so I am not yet prepared to post on it. However, for those who can eat wheat-and-gluten products, I encourage you to try a traditional recipe for baklava using store-bought phyllo.  Don’t be intimidated. Phyllo dough is easy to work with.  Your homemade version will be lighter and so much more moist than the manufactured thing.  Note how syrupy the baklava looks in the photo above. That is how it should be.