Finns love their coffee, but so do plenty of others on this planet. A coffee song by The Manhattan Transfer had been going round my head, and all I could remember was the beginning: "I love coffee, I love tea..." I went googling for the rest of the words and typed in coffee song. That did not find Java Jive, but it did show that a good many artists have confessed to being slaves to caffeine, at least judging by the tracks they have recorded under the title Coffee Song. The list includes Frank Sinatra, Deep Purple, Norah Jones, Sting, Eric Clapton and many more.
Under its proper name the song was easy to find, and it turned out to be much older than I thought. The Ink Spots recorded it as early as 1940, and the Manhattan Transfer version comes from their first album, in 1975. The words also mention Boston beans, which was a nice coincidence, as I had poured my coffee into a mug brought back from Boston. It says Beantown on the side. Boston is called that, I am told, because of the baked beans that were once stewed there in molasses.
Now and then my everyday cup of joe, which in my case is the dark roast of Paulig's Presidentti, needs a bit of variety. I bought whole green cardamom pods really for Indian curries, since I have taken to Indian cooking these past few days. First I made Meena's potato and pepper masala, then tandoori chicken. But the pods are also excellent for livening up a coffee break. Crush half a dozen pods with the flat of a knife, so that the husks split and the seeds show, and add them to the ground coffee. Ground cardamom from a jar works perfectly well too.
The idea is not entirely my own. I read somewhere that in Arab countries cardamom belongs in coffee, and in the Gulf states, for example, it goes generously into lightly roasted coffee, and no sugar is used at all. To a Finn the flavour is familiar by another route, because here cardamom goes into pulla, our sweet coffee bread, and pulla goes with coffee. The first cup did smell of pulla, although it tasted plainly of coffee. The cardamom stays in the background and makes the coffee a little fresher.
The bag of beans in the picture is from Starbucks, a 453 g, one-pound bag of whole beans. If you happen to find yourself in Starbucks territory (nearly the whole world apart from Finland), it is worth picking up one of their packs of coffee to try.
And then the words of the song I was looking for, from the beginning at least:
I love coffee, I love tea / I love the java jive and it loves me / Coffee and tea and the java and me / A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup (boy!)
Java Jive (The Manhattan Transfer)
