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    Whipping up an old favourite: Viral trend from South Korea is reminiscent of good old Indian 'pheta' coffee

    Synopsis

    The old Indian trick with coffee powder and sugar is coming back via South Korea.

    Today, in a market crowded with fancy concoctions, the fate of the indigenous ‘pheta’ (beaten) coffee is not encouraging.iStock
    Today, in a market crowded with fancy concoctions, the fate of the indigenous ‘pheta’ (beaten) coffee is not encouraging.
    It is a measure of how little generations pass down information about their defining experiences that something which was a treat for countless Indians before the advent of fancy coffee bars and brands is now being remarketed on social media as a ‘viral trend from South Korea’ — a rather inappropriate term these days. Perhaps the only present-day evidence of the Indian origins of this variety of hand-whipped coffee is ITC’s hardly known ‘Beaten Caffe’, an attempted nostalgic throwback to an indulgence from times past.

    The intent back then was to beat life into ordinary instant coffee by putting in an equal amount of sugar and a bare splash of hot water to a teaspoon of the powder and stirring vigorously till the deep brown liquid turned into a light caramel-coloured aromatic sludge. Addition of more hot water and milk resulted in a satisfyingly mellow, frothy beverage — an Indian cappuccino — well worth aching forearm muscles.

    Today, in a market crowded with fancy concoctions, the fate of the indigenous ‘pheta’ (beaten) coffee is not encouraging, so allusions to the current South Korean ‘dalgona coffee’ craze can be beneficial. However, it can also not only be marketed as an interactive comestible like a shabu-shabu pot but ‘selfwhisked’ coffee can even be a satisfying in-house activity in these times of ‘social distancing’.


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