Three cheers for our Kiwi wonderboy Paul­­. He’s outdone himself with this one.

Here are some of the highlights:

Breakfast

First up, a nod to the Israeli breakfast staple ‘Shakshuka’ – two eggs lightly poached in a delicious tomato and spiced bull’s horn pepper sauce. It’s topped with ‘Charmoula’, a North African herb paste with lime, coriander, mint and about a dozen other herbs and spices. It also comes with a piece of sourdough to scoop up any leftover sauce and some garlic yoghurt. We’ll be serving up the Shakshuka for breakfast and lunch.

Ever craved Caesar Salad for breakfast? Neither have we, but we still managed to take some inspiration from the classic salad and create ‘Caesar’s Breakfast’. It’s got poached eggs, balsamic roasted mushrooms, roasted beans, prosciutto, tomato, rocket, parmesan and croutons.

From the wild prairies of El Paso comes the southern specialty ‘Texan Eggs’. It’s got Paul’s signature chili con carne, poached eggs and a tomato and coriander salsa. For three bucks, you can get some avocado on there too.

And for those of you with the morning sweet tooth, you can’t go past the ‘breakfast crumble’. Delicious layers of poached apricot, boysenberries, caramelised hazelnuts, an almond and coconut crumble and yoghurt. Drool…

Lunch

“Do you know what they call a quarter pounder in France?” That’s right, we’ve brought the ‘Royale with cheese’ down under. Served on a delectable croissant-dough bun, it has got a patty made from mince freshly ground in-store, tomato, pickles, Swiss cheese and a special sauce. “Mmmm…. that IS a tasty burger!”

If you’re looking for something a bit healthier and more wholesome, look no further than the ‘broad bean and fetta bruschetta’. A perfect summertime combo of oxheart tomato, feta and mint is put atop of a broad bean and garlic puree that has been slathered onto sourdough.

There’s no better way to demonstrate your sophistication and good taste than by ordering a ‘paté board’, with a delicious duck liver paté, aged cheddar, house pickles, greens, house mustard and a pear, apple and pumpkin chutney.

The ‘roast chicken salad’ has had a summer makeover. We’re roasting the chicken in thyme and white wine and tossing it with some fresh fennel, roasted beetroot, tomato, beans, greens and finishing with a mustard vinaigrette.

 You’ve got three months to devour your way through this menu. Get into it!

Mecca is on the hunt for a switched on, motivated individual to work full time at our roastery in packing and despatch. The job will be centred around fulfilment of wholesale orders, and for the right candidate could also lead to involvement in the roasting process in the longer term.

Duties will include -

- Processing, Packing and Despatching Wholesale Coffee Orders
- Liaising With Wholesale Customers When Required
- Packaging Roasted Coffee
- Maintaining Warehouse Space
- Preparing Daily QC Cupping Sessions

Training will be provided where necessary however the candidate will need to demonstrate good attention to detail and mindfulness. This is a great opportunity for somebody wishing to make a start in the coffee industry.  To apply, simply submit the following form.

Our training arm Coffee Kaizen is running a round of classes in January, you can check out the offering here….

You can listen to our conversation here

We are in the process of designing and writing a coffee quarterly. It is going to be full of articles about coffee – how to brew it, where it comes from and where to get it – as well as barista profiles, café guides and the odd recipe.

We’ve decided to run a competition, Name This Newspaper. For the next two weeks (until December 5) you can submit any ideas you have for a good coffee newspaper name here via email, or use the twitter hashtag #namethisnewspaper. As well as taking the title (no pun intended), the best submission will win an Aeropress and a bag of beans!

We bought two lots from the Santa Rosa mill, an AA and AAA. The amount of A’s refers to the size of the beans. At the moment, we’re roasting up the AAA big boys.

We’re not big fans of stereotyping origins , but if pressed, we’d say Costa Rican coffees behave kind of like a good rhythm section in a band. Thanks to Costa Rica’s progressive agronomical and processing practices, the coffees tend to be super clean. Great Costa Ricans coffees have a tight, integrated structure which gives the coffees a remarkable sense of balance and poise. But you don’t often hear them shredding solos. They can deliver delicious, sweet, refined cups, but without the extroverted personality that origins like Kenya and Ethiopia are renowned for.

The Santa Rosa AAA has that characteristic Costa Rican elegance; It’s got a pleasantly soft, rounded acidity, a silky, light bodied mouthfeel and a long cocoa finish. But it’s also more expressive than you’d expect. Plenty of florals, with  a complex acid backbone that jumps from green grape to stonefruit.

The coffee is the product of a very small operation –  just five families – in the remote rural town of Santa Rosa de Leon Cortes in the Tarrazu region. The cherries come from Finca (farm) de Macho, and are processed at the Santa Rosa Micromill. The Santa Rosa’s unique personality can be attributed in part to the altitude of the farm, which at 1900m above sea level  is unusually high by Costa Rican standards. The low atmospheric pressure and cooler temperatures at this altitude slow down the coffee shrub’s ability to photosynthesise, which causes the cherries to ripen very slowly. When this happens, the concentration of sugar and overall intensity over flavour increases.

This special coffee will be making appearances both as filter and as espresso. Grab a cup before we run out!

I was delighted to be able to chat with Francisco Mena a couple of weeks ago . He is the super-knowledgable and passionate co-owner of Exclusive Coffees, a Costa Rican coffee exporting company that work intimately with the farmers that they buy from. They help farmers raise quality by coaching them on new agronomical practices, and they also give a helping  hand  on the business front by providing financial assistance and planning. They had a pivotal role in the micro-mill revolution of Costa Rica, which has since become a model for other coffee producing countries.

You’d be hard pressed finding a better advocate for specialty coffee than Francisco. Although our conversation focuses on the history and culture of coffee production in Costa Rica, Francisco touches on a lot of ideas and thoughts on coffee that us coffee lovers have in common. It’s fascinating to hear these thoughts so well expressed from the producer’s point of view.

Without any more rambling, here’s the interview:

Interview with Francisco Mena

]]> http://meccaespresso.com/interview-with-costa-rican-coffee-developer-and-exporter-francisco-mena/feed/ 0 http://meccaespresso.com/coffee-chaos/ http://meccaespresso.com/coffee-chaos/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 02:47:34 +0000 tuli http://meccaespresso.com/?p=467 It’s springtime, and in coffee-land this means new coffees, and lots of em.  All those  coffees that we purchased back  in the beginning of the year have now been processed, have undergone reposo (resting), were shipped, quarantined, and  then dumped on the warehouse doorstep.

Packed to the rafters

This season, the bounty comes from Central America. First to land were the Costa Ricans. Some, like the Helsar de Zarcero (Tri from  CQ’s  NSW Barista Championships winning coffee ) are old friends. But most of the ten lots are coffees we’ve bought for the first time. Our preliminary cuppings  have yielded some pretty damn exciting results. There will be much more information about these coffees coming through in the coming weeks.

Next to land were some lots sourced from Antigua in Guatemala, with the help of Luis Pedro Zelaya Zamora, owner of the Bella Vista wet and dry mill and several coffee farms in the local area. There are some really rich, juicy and complex coffees among these. The Guatemalans have a distinctly different personality from the Costas, even though they share some of the same varietals such as Caturra and Catuai.

The icing on the cake has been the much anticipated landing of the El Salvadorian coffees from Cup of Excellence and World Barista Championship winning coffee producer extraordinaire, Ernesto Menendez. Some of his selections provided us with many of our coffee highlights of last year – the butterscotch and lemoncurd-like Grand Reserve, the Las Brumas Pacamara with it’s incredible body and complex stone fruit driven acidity, and the clean but bombastic Ernesto natural. We’ve got all of these again, plus some very interesting new additions, including a lot from Finca Los Andes which is 100% SL28 – the prized Kenyan varietal.

We’ll be posting more interesting information about all of these coffees when they’re ready for production.

Saludos!

Coming up – interview with Costa Rican coffee superstar, super nice guy and part owner of Exclusive Coffees Francisco Mena.

We have finally finished counting the coins from our Ethiopia Week collection jars and we are happy to announce we raised $1540 through our stores, including Mecca’s contribution. Our most successful fundraiser was our King St store, followed by Ultimo then CQ. Thank you so much to all of you who contributed.

With the generous donation of $2000 from our friends at Qantas Helping Hands Communities the total from Ethiopia Week stands at $3540. Although this is short of our target, we will still be able to send just under 60 farmers to a one-year agronomy course run by Technoserve.

We had a great time raising money for such a worthy cause and at the same time having the opportunity to share some of the back story from the wonderful coffees we source. We look forward to doing something similar in the future.

We are on the lookout for passionate coffee people to join the award winning team at Mecca Espresso. We have a number of positions available at varying levels, with the only requirement being a deep interest and enthusiasm for specialty coffee.

So whether you are a home enthusiast looking to go pro, or a seasoned professional who is looking to further their skills we have positions that suit. The successful applicant will have the benefit of working for a company that operates from “Seed to Cup” and will receive access to Mecca’s internal training and education programs.

Candidates would need to be able to commit to full-time hours, to express your interest or to find out more please email sam@meccaespresso.com.