Long before anyone in this region pulled an espresso shot, coffee here meant gahwa: lightly roasted beans, boiled with cardamom, poured from a dallah into a small finjan. The cardamom was never a flavouring trend. It was the point. What is interesting now is how well that pairing transfers onto a modern espresso bar — and Dubai cafes have noticed, with cardamom nitro cold brews turning up at places like Nightjar in Alserkal.
Three ways to get cardamom into coffee
1. In the basket (best)
Crush two green pods, drop the seeds into your ground coffee, stir through and tamp as normal. The water extracts the cardamom oils under pressure along with the coffee, so it reads as part of the shot rather than something added to it. This is the method worth using.
2. In the milk
Warm the milk gently with a cracked pod for a few minutes before steaming, then fish the pod out. Softer and rounder, good for a cardamom latte, and it does not touch your coffee at all.
3. In the grinder (do not)
Grinding whole pods with your beans sounds efficient and is a genuinely bad idea. Cardamom is oily and fibrous. It coats the burrs, it lingers in the grinder for days, and every coffee you make afterwards tastes faintly of it. If you only own one grinder, never do this.
Which coffee to use
Traditional gahwa uses a very light roast, almost blonde. For espresso that does not work — you need enough body to stand up to the spice. A medium or medium-dark single origin is the sweet spot. Something nutty and chocolatey sits under cardamom nicely; something bright and acidic clashes with it.
Ingredients
- 1 double shot espresso (18 g in, 36 g out)
- 2 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
- 150 ml whole milk, for the latte version
- Date syrup or sugar, optional
- A pinch of saffron, if you want the full gahwa reference
Method
-
Crush the pods
Press two green pods with the flat of a knife until they split. Pick out the small black seeds and discard the husks. -
Add to the grounds
Grind 18 g of coffee, add the cardamom seeds, and stir them through the puck with a needle or a cocktail stick before tamping. -
Tamp and pull
Tamp level and pull a 36 g shot in 25-28 seconds. It may run very slightly faster than usual — that is normal. -
Steam the milk
Steam 150 ml of whole milk to about 60C for a cardamom latte, or stop here and drink it as a spiced espresso. -
Sweeten the local way
Date syrup rather than sugar if you want it to taste properly Emirati. Start with 5 ml.
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Questions people ask
Not quite. Arabic coffee, or gahwa, is very lightly roasted coffee boiled with cardamom and often saffron, served unsweetened in small cups. What is described here is cardamom applied to espresso — the same pairing, a different format.
Two green pods per double shot. It sounds like very little. It is not — cardamom is powerful and three pods will taste like soap.
Yes, and it is excellent. The condensed milk sweetness and the spice work together. Add the seeds to the basket and make the drink as normal.
No. The seeds go in the portafilter and come out with the puck. Just do not put them through your grinder.
