what do you call a cortado in spain and in cataluna? a cortado here is an
expresso ''pocillo'' (the small, small cup) with a some milk. a corto is a
different thing: it's a very strong expresso, 2/3 of the pocillo. when we
drink expresso in a cafe au lait cup, we call it a doble. you can have a
doble cortado (little milk) or a cafe con leche (almost 1/3 milk): same
size, proportions change. milk is always heated, almost boiled, before added
to coffee. if you want it with cold milk, you must announce it first: ''un
cortado con fria'', for example. that's what i always drink because i'm very
impatient and i hate to drink or eat very hot stuff. you can also have a
lagrima ( a tear!!!), which is a cortado with very little coffee a almost
all of it milk. and there are a hundred other varieties that i never order
so i can't recall their names.
i always have my morning's second coffee (first one i make myself at home,
italian style) at don jose's. don jose is about 75, from galicia. over 50
years making coffee for the neighborhood.
as to coffee standards, i drink it only in argentina, uruguay, brazil,
france and italy. in the states i have ginger ale. us coffee is not coffee.
no matter how hard you try (just think of all the starbucks thing, so
complicated, almost scientific), no one can make really good coffee there.
not even oneself! i buy the coffee, i use the same measures i use here in
argentina, and my coffee stinks! it must be a bermuda triangle kind of thing
with coffee in the us. but then, when you want to make cheese cake outside
the us, it never works either. so that's a compensation of sorts.
wallyK
