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The Coffee 100 · make it at home

Kopi, Singapore and Malaysia's sock-brewed kopitiam coffee

10 min · 2 cups

The kopitiam breakfast coffee, brewed strong in a cloth 'sock' from beans wok-roasted with sugar and butter or margarine, and drunk with kaya toast and soft eggs.

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The real one

You need

• 30 g (1/3 cup) Nanyang-style kopi powder (robusta roasted with sugar and margarine, sold in Asian stores), or dark-roast coffee ground fine
• 400 ml (1 2/3 cups) boiling water
• Sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk, to taste
• A cloth coffee filter (a 'sock') or a fine cloth bag in a sieve, and a tall heatproof jug

How to make it

1. Brew (5 min): Put the coffee in the sock, set it in the jug and pour over all the boiling water. Let it steep 3 to 4 minutes, dunking the sock up and down a few times.
2. Pull (30 sec): Lift the sock out and pour the coffee from one jug to another from a height two or three times. It cools it slightly and froths it.
3. Sweeten (30 sec): For 'kopi', put 1 tbsp condensed milk in each cup and pour the coffee over. For 'kopi-C', use 1 tsp sugar and a splash of evaporated milk. For 'kopi-O', sugar only. Stir well.
4. Serve: With kaya toast and two soft-boiled eggs seasoned with soy and white pepper, dipping the toast as you go.

Tips

• The order language: add 'kosong' for no sugar, 'siew dai' for less sweet, 'gao' for strong, 'peng' for iced.
• Rinse the cloth sock in hot water only; never soap. It's the old coffee oils that season it.
• Ipoh white coffee is a cousin: beans roasted in palm-oil margarine only, sold as 3-in-1 sachets.

Chef Amazing's own home version, in our words; not any café's recipe.