印度的街边咖啡文化 India’s Streetside Coffee Culture

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/11/27/south-indias-streetside-coffee-culture/

India’s Streetside Coffee Culture
印度的街边咖啡文化

Early one morning last week I queued outside Sri Gopi Iyengar Coffee and Tiffin Center, a coffee bar just outside the monumental Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. My long wait under a scorching sun was rewarded with a small glass of fragrant, caramel-hued brew topped with a fluff of white foam. Though a moderate coffee drinker at home, I was already on my fourth dose of the day. It would be far from my last, for in this South Indian state, coffee is as delicious as it is ubiquitous.
上周的一天清晨，我到斯里戈皮艾扬格咖啡和茶园中心排队，这座咖啡吧就坐落于泰米尔纳德邦的历史性建筑米娜克希神庙外面。在炎炎烈日下等了很长时间，最终得到的奖赏是一小杯芳香扑鼻、泛着焦糖色的饮料，上面漂着一团白色的泡沫。虽然在家我不太喝咖啡，但现在我已在饮用今天的第四杯了，而且还想喝，根本停不下来，因为在这个印度南部省份，咖啡既甜美袭人，又无处不在。

India is most often associated with tea, but java culture runs deep in the country’s southern states. Coffee was introduced to what is now Tamil Nadu’s neighboring state of Karnataka in the 17th century by an Indian Muslim saint named Baba Budan, who smuggled seven beans from Yemen while on pilgrimage to Mecca. Cultivation flourished under the British, and India now produces some 300,000 tons of coffee per year. Tamil Nadu is the country’s third largest grower after Karnataka and Kerala.
说起印度，人们往往会想到茶，其实啊，咖啡文化早就在该国南部各省落地生根了。咖啡是怎样被引入印度的？据说是17世纪，在现在泰米尔纳德邦旁边的卡纳塔克邦，一位名叫巴巴布丹的印度穆斯林圣人去麦加朝圣时，偷偷带回了七枚咖啡豆。在英国统治时期，印度的咖啡种植业开始兴盛，如今，每年的咖啡产量大约为30万吨，泰米尔纳德邦继卡纳塔克邦和喀拉拉邦之后，成为印度第三大咖啡种植地。

“No true blue South Indian would ever do without his or her filter coffee early morning ,” says Chennai food writer Sadita Radhakrishna. The author of a forthcoming book on Tamil Nadu cuisine, Ms. Radhakrishna remembers that when she was growing up in Bangalore, “every single day, coffee seeds were roasted and ground on an old coffee grinder with a handle” and brewed in a traditional lidded drip filter made of brass.
“要是一清早不来上一杯过滤咖啡，他/她就算不上生活在印度南部的人，”金奈美食作家萨迪塔·拉达克里希纳说。拉达克里希纳女士即将出版一本新书，内容是关于泰米尔纳德邦的美食。她回忆说，当年她在班加罗尔长大的时候，“每天都要焙炒咖啡，用一台手摇式研磨机将它打碎，”并在祖传的黄铜过滤装置中煮出滴漏咖啡。

Tamil Nadu residents still sup at home, but coffee is also served in messes, restaurants and chain cafes with catchy monikers like Hot Chips. But the majority of the state’s java is served and drunk at coffee bars, a term that describes a range of street establishments from standalone shacks just wide enough to accommodate a vendor and carts parked under a corrugated roof to huts carved out of the ground floor of permanent structures. At a coffee bar, your hot drink (many serve tea as well) is ordered, prepared, served and paid for at a window fronted by a small counter. It’s at the counter that you drink while standing on the pavement, perhaps as you nibble a piping-hot crispy daal fritter or a tea biscuit plucked from a metal-topped glass canister. Takeaway is always an option, provided you bring your own receptacle.
今天，泰米尔纳德邦的居民仍在家里喝咖啡，但在人群聚集的地方、餐馆及连锁咖啡馆，比如在当地大名鼎鼎的“热薯片”，也有咖啡供应。不过，这个省主要的咖啡消费场所是咖啡吧，也就是街边一些各自独立的窝棚，里面通常空间不大，仅能容纳一位卖货人和几辆车，车子一般停放在某座永久性建筑的一楼地面上，上面搭起棚子遮风挡雨。在咖啡吧，你买的热饮（很多时候也供应茶）被当场加工制作好，通过小柜台上的窗口递到你的手上。你可以站在人行道上喝咖啡，也许还会从上部镶有金属的玻璃罐中买一个热气腾腾的油炸豆馅脆饼或小点心，就着香甜的咖啡一起吃下去。当然也可以打包带走，前提是你得自己准备盛装咖啡的物件。

In southern India, the brew method of choice is slow drip in a brass filter, which can hold a cup of water or be sized for a crowd at up to 10 liters, and is kept gleaming via regular applications of tamarind paste. Some java jockeys use the sock method, pouring hot water or milk through fine grounds in a piece of muslin suspended from a metal ring. Beans are Arabica, robusta or a mix of the two, always blended with chicory. Sugar is a given (ask for konjam jeeni for a less sweet brew), and so is India’s wickedly rich full-cream milk, kept hot on a burner near the counter. To prepare an order the vendor places sugar in a wide-lipped metal tumbler, adds a shot of coffee and a ladle of milk, and then simultaneously blends, cools and froths the liquid by pouring it back and forth between two tumblers, often from great heights (thus its nickname “meter coffee”). Utter the words konjam kuda and he’ll add a flourish of black coffee to the su***ce of the drink.
在印度南部，咖啡是从黄铜过滤器里缓缓滴漏出来的，过滤器既可以小到只能容纳一杯水，也可以大到满足一群人的需要，如果那样的话，器皿的容积就要高达10升左右，而且，由于经常使用，过滤器往往闪闪发光，老远就能看到。一些咖啡卖家也会将***当做过滤器，他们将***绑着一圈金属环上，悬在半空，先放入磨好的咖啡粉，再将热水或牛奶浇在里面。咖啡豆的品种有阿拉比卡和罗布斯塔两种，也有人会混合使用，通常还要加上菊苣。咖啡里加了糖（如果想喝的淡一些，可以要求少加一点儿“吉尼”） ，同时添加了印度产全脂牛奶，口味真是浓郁，然后将调配好的咖啡放在柜台旁边的炉子上加热。准备咖啡的时候，卖家从广口金属罐中舀出糖，加在一杯咖啡里，再兑上一小杯牛奶，然后将三者充分搅匀，并且，手举得高高的，将混合饮料在两个罐子里反复倒来倒去，以便让它尽快凉下来，所以，这种饮料有了一个时髦的绰号——米咖。如果你说来点儿“库达”，他便会在饮料表面再加上一些黑咖啡。

Depending on the type of bean used, southern Indian coffee can be smoky, winey or even a bit cinnamony, and the chicory adds a hint of nuttiness. In over a week of steady sampling around Tamil Nadu, I drank my best (and strongest) glass at Gopi Iyengar, though I’d rate all of the others nothing less than wonderful.  Served in small doses for as little as 8 Indian rupees (about $0.13) a glass, southern India’s coffee-bar coffee goes down like ice cream — leaving room, pocket change and a hankering for just one more.
根据所使用的咖啡豆类型，印度南部的咖啡可幻化出多种口味，比如烟味、酒味，甚至肉桂味，菊苣则会给饮料增加一点儿坚果风味。在泰米尔纳德邦的一个多星期里，我一直在品尝咖啡，其中最好的（也是味道最强烈的）要数在戈皮艾扬格喝到的饮料，当然了，其他地方的咖啡同样妙不可言。在印度南部，咖啡吧里的咖啡就像冰淇淋一样卖得飞快，一小杯咖啡的售价最低只要8个印度卢比（约合0.13美元），如果你的肚子里还有地方、口袋里还有零钱，何不再来一杯？