Recipe for Coffee

Recipe for Coffee - Alf Hanna

"...the only recommendation I have is to not make coffee in one of those stove top espresso makers..." supposed coffee expert on the radio.

Step 1. Buy the stove top espresso maker and ingredients

Purchase a small single shot espresso machine from Delonghi in Italy.  It holds one cup of coffee worth of espresso. Buy a pound of ground, yes, ground coffee, I get mine from Peets. You do not want to be grinding coffee when you wake up, even if you are single. It’s just too much work. A good blend is “Major Dickason’s” blend. If you can’t get Peet’s, then blend something between Italian or French (which can be too bitter, why do you think they add sugar to their coffee?), and stronger than the standard Starbucks blend, which offends no one yet everyone. The key is to find something roasted enough to have real flavor, but not too roasted to avoid the burnt taste. You want a coffee that is sweet.

Remember having bought a machine like this in Italy when you lived there. A small store a few blocks off the Duomo in Milan. It was a cold, crisp day in January. She was not with you. There was a reason for that.

Step 2 - Every morning, fall out of bed, do not take a shower.

Go to the kitchen, unscrew the waist of the machine, and clean the plastic top carafe. Removing the aluminum basket that fits comfortably in the base, which is also known in the trade as a ‘boiler’, tap twice to get the old grounds into the white porcelain compost bin you keep next to the espresso machine. Rinse the screen. Filling the boiler with clear cold water, replace the coffee basket.

Remember working in England, and you made coffee like this every morning looking out over a garden and the rooftops of Reading, past the elevated train tracks and the Thames flowing in the distance. The music you made at the pubs in the evening. The long walks in London. She was with you once in a while, but usually you were on your own. You read, Histories, by Herodotus. He described the wife market of Babylonia. You wish you were back in Reading.

Step 3 - Gather your ingredients

Open the refrigerator and take out a glass airtight container of coffee. Also get out at least 2% if not whole milk (not some horrid tasting soy substitute). And while you are at it, get out jam and any bread you might have been tempted to put into the refrigerator. The jam is your wild card. Have at least five kinds in the refrigerator. It won’t kill you or break the bank. And every morning you will have a treat and a choice.

If you did not store your butter overnight in the cupboard, get that out of the refrigerator and put in microwave for no more than 10 seconds. And don’t put it back in the refrigerator! It does not belong there. You can’t spread hardened fat onto bread.

Stop and think about how lucky you are that your partner only likes tea, so you don’t have to make two cups of coffee, and your toast won’t get cold.

Step 3a - Put tea water on if partner is awake.

Step 4 - Make the coffee

Remove the plastic measuring spoon from the container. Fill the basket with coffee. Screw the carafe onto the boiler, and put the unit onto the base. Flick the switch to on.

Get out your favorite mug. It should be enough to cup in your hands on a cold morning. Fill with one shot glass full of milk. Put in microwave or on wood stove. Heat in microwave for exactly 30 seconds. Heat on woodstove until just hot enough, halfway between a baby’s bottle temperature and ‘too hot’.

Think about Oxford. The cup of coffee you drank there before she left.

Step 5: Get out toaster and insert one slice (not two) into the toaster. You’re fat enough already, and don’t need more than one piece to cut your hunger. Do not walk away from the toaster! But you can take the now heated milk out of the microwave that is beeping at you, and set it next to the coffee machine. If you are waiting on your woodstove, be sure it is lit and has warmed up. If not, buy a microwave.

At this point, the boiling water should have produced steam which pushed it’s way through the coffee and up into the carafe, filling it to just under the brim. Remove from base, and pour coffee into cup.

Add teabag to teacup. Do not use a coffee cup for tea, as the flavor of coffee is still in it. Pour boiling water into teacup, not coffee cup! Don’t worry about how long it will be in, your partner drinks it stronger than anyone should.

Remove the toast before it burns, and spread softened butter onto it. Add jam of the day.

Return to bed. Shower later.