Coffee with pepper and cinnamon

When you arrive in Morocco, you usu­al­ly have a well formed opin­ion on what a good cof­fee should be. Unfortunately, as the Moroccans them­selves admit, there is not much good cof­fee here.

You can make your own grind in a hanout (small shop)and enjoy very well roast­ed cof­fees, but you have to search, some­times for a long time, before you get there. In super­mar­kets, you can find the great clas­sics, but at high prices, and two Moroccan brands that are not bad at all: Duboisand Carrion.

On the oth­er hand, in cafés as in restau­rants, apart from the very high end, very expen­sive, it is the reign of robus­ta. By the way, if you want to give a gift to a Moroccan friend… bring him a few packs of good coffee!

To be hon­est, I've had much worse cof­fee else­where, in Belgium where the staff used to leave the cof­fee pot on all day so that the cof­fee wouldn't get cold, or in Germany, before the coun­try dis­cov­ered the charm of espresso!

Faced with this defi­cien­cy, Moroccans have found two solu­tions to drink "good cof­fee": mask the taste with sug­ar, lots of sug­ar.… and flavour the cof­fee with spices.

And that's real­ly good! Even bet­ter with a good coffee…

My favourite blend is pepper-cinnamon, and it can be made with a cof­fee mak­er or an espres­so machine. In the sec­ond case, you just need to be very light-handed, to sprin­kle the cof­fee with a lit­tle bit of spices before tamp­ing it.

Coffee with pepper and cinnamon

Course: Beverages

Cuisine: Moroccan

Diet: , Low lactose

Price lev­el: 2 — Economical

Difficulty: 2 — Easy

Author: La Marmite

Print Recipe

Ingredients

• 8 dose Coffee
• ½ dose Pepper
• ½ dose Cinnamon
• 1 l Water

Instructions

Traditional Moroccan preparation

• Boil the water.
• When the water is boil­ing, add the cof­fee, cin­na­mon and pep­per, in small quan­ti­ties, stir­ring well.
• Allow to boil for three min­utes.
• Turn off the heat and leave to infuse, cov­ered, for two min­utes.
• Strain the cof­fee through a fine sieve before serving.

Preparation for the electric coffee machine

• Mix the cof­fee and spices before putting it in the filter.
• Make your cof­fee as usual.

Preparation for the espresso machine

• Put the cof­fee in the fil­ter pan and add the spices, stir­ring a little.
• Tamp the cof­fee as usual.
• Make your coffee.

Notes

Other spices, such as gin­ger or nut­meg, can also be added.