Café pingado e pão na chapa

As tradition built it

Café pingado e pão na chapa

Serves 1 . about 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 150ml, strong, brewed through a cloth coador coffee
• 30ml, warmed milk
• 1 roll, split pão francês
• 15g butter

Method

1. Brew coffee with a small amount of milk, traditionally through a coador de pano, a cloth filter sock rather than paper or a plunger.
2. Split a pão francês roll, butter it and press it on a hot griddle, a chapa, until the surface crisps and the butter melts through.

Notes

A popular story places the pairing's naming at a specific historic café, but this chapter holds that anecdote loosely: what is safe to assert is the larger point, that a state which built the modern world coffee market on its own soil would naturally turn coffee into its own defining daily ritual, not that any one café invented the exact custom.

What a modern chef changes

The correct cloth filter, the correct heat for the roll

Method

1. Brew through a proper cloth coador rather than a paper filter or a plunger, since the cloth's slightly coarser weave carries more of the coffee's body through than paper does.
2. Make the pão francês fresh and finish the split roll on a griddle set directly on the Big Green Egg's grate for real, even, high heat.
3. Warm the milk gently and froth it lightly with a stick blender rather than a full steam wand, closer to the soft, barely-aerated milk a real pingado carries than to a cappuccino's structured foam.