The term sounds vaguely familiar and almost nobody knows what it actually is. It is a slightly complicated drink and it is worth the extra step.
Surprisingly, the result is not far from what a French press produces — an unfiltered, full-bodied cup — except that it arrives in the register of an espresso rather than a long drink. Small, dense and finished in three mouthfuls.
It also demands your undivided attention, because it is heated on the stove and it will boil over and make a considerable mess the moment you look away. That is genuinely the hardest part. Everything else is straightforward once you have the right kit.
What you need
The freshest beans you can get. A grinder that will genuinely go to powder — finer than espresso, which most domestic grinders will not manage. Sugar, if you take it, and this is decided at the start rather than the end. Filtered water. And a cezve, the little long-handled pot, usually copper, sometimes steel or aluminium.
The method
Grind to powder — about two teaspoons a person. Add the sugar now, to taste, or leave it out. Pour in the water, roughly one small cup per person, and set the stove to a low flame.
Stir once. That is your only stir; after this you do not touch it again, so make it a good one.
Now watch. A layer of foam will rise. Pour that foam off into the cups — this is the part everyone gets wrong by hurrying — then return the pot to the flame until it bubbles, and take it off. Once more, bubble, off. Then pour.
Serve with a glass of water and, if you are doing it properly, Turkish delight. Cardamom or anise can go in with the grounds. The sludge at the bottom of the cup is not a mistake; in several countries it is used to tell fortunes, and we are in no position to rule that out.
Artwork to come
A copper cezve beside a demitasse cup
Brief · Hand-inked engraved cutout in the Bear State style — fine dense line work and cross-hatching, tonal rather than outlined, the look of a 19th-century catalogue engraving or a Wall Street Journal hedcut. Subject: a long-handled copper cezve (ibrik), three-quarter view, beside a small demitasse cup on a saucer with a thin band of foam visible at the rim. Nothing else in frame. IMPORTANT: place the subject on a FLAT PURE GREEN #00FF00 background with no shadow, no gradient and no ground plane — the green is keyed out to transparency in post. One small spot of red #ef3b39 permitted as a single accent on the cup. No text, no lettering, no maker's marks anywhere in the image. 2000px wide, PNG.