Saturday, November 08, 2003


total eclipse of the moon

did anyone else see the lunar eclipse tonite? i swear the shadow across the moon thru my neighbor's telescope was exactly the color of perfect espresso crema. . .a dark reddish brown.

i gazed up at the eclipse from the middle of pierrepont st. and then went inside and finished up the chicken cacciatore in my beloved kuhn rikon pressure cooker.

but earlier today i made some coffee. not just my usual morning cappucino. no, on friday, a friend had given me a mysterious and unnamed coffee.

this coffee was quite odd. it came taped up in a plastic express delivery envelope! the beans were roasted; small; scruffy; ugly; with many shells, by which i mean empty coffee husks.

when i stuck my nose in the bag, the scent was a mixture of plastic and peanut butter. . .

whassup with this? i thought. . .so this morning i made a press pot of it.

i have a 4 cup press pot. thus, 8 scoops of ground coffee, and 4 cups water at about 192-194 degrees by the time i got the thermometer into it.

it tasted like the worst diner coffee. even with milk and sugar. i mean, it was a perfect new york city "regular."

for those unfamiliar with that brown liquid sold in diners and from metal carts on the street corners, the nyc regular is 10-oz. of coffee in a blue paper cup. usually it's about 2/3 brown stuff, 1/3 some kind of dairy product, and often already contains sugar, whether you want it or not.

it usually costs US$1 on wall street. don schoenholt of gillies says that the regular became regular during the depression, when it may have cost US$0.05.

i'm guessing this mystery coffee is a darkish city roast: dark but before any oil. maybe light full city. not vienna.

since it was handed it to me in that weird plastic envelope(!) -- what was the person thinking? were they insane? insulting me? displaying an uma thurman sense of humor? -- it smelled strongly of tyvek-type plastic. yuck.

when i held the beans in my hand, as i said, the peanut-buttery scent is/was very strong. it smelled exactly like the bazzini unsweetened natural peanut butter i buy at sahadi's to use in making carribean oxtail stew.

i tried "decanting" it into an old illy can i had lying about, thinking the delicious tyvek scent would fade. and the freshly ground coffee did smell better today than yesterday.

the fragrance was a cross between green cardamom and bay leaves. it had a modest bloom in the press pot.

4 mins. later. i press and pour out a cup. smells like plastic again. dip my regulation scaa silver tasting spoon into it.

i take just a tiny bit, 3 or 4 drops, and slurp. that flat nasty diner coffee "taste."

ok, must be me. drink some from the cup. yup, i could be at the liberty diner. but in the cup, the plastic from the bag seems to come through even more.

i add some milk and sugar -- for some reason all i have is skim and splenda. omigod it's worse.

i don't understand what's happening to me. what kind of mean trick is this? do i know nothing about coffee or is someone testing me?

desperate, i brush out my grinder and reach into my freezer, where i am hoarding the 1/2 lb. of gillies guatemala city roast. this shows a tiny patch of oil and so i'm calling it a dark full city or light vienna.

dole out 8 scoops of small but pretty beans i could make a bracelet out of; little quicker on the pour, so the water comes out at 198-200.

the coffee's been frozen, so i expect a modest bloom. the fragrance is a mixture of coriander and cassia (the less-sweet more-woody cinnamon) i remember.

i actually go stick my nose into my jar of ground coriander to make sure.

4 mins. later, smells like coffee. press and pour. drag out regulation tasting spoon.

take 3 drops. try to remember the one great thing pro coffee taster patrick "it's not juan valdez until i say so" spillman told me: "stop sipping like a lady. without a righteous slurp you are never gonna get it all the way back behind your nose."

what do i find? that nice sweet brown rice thing i also remember with some roasty stuff.

but it's still a tad hot. the temperature hides the brightness; i won't see any of that at all until it cools.

but since the coffee's darkly roasted, the roast level will lower those lights. . .

to be fair i add splenda and skim milk. i think: i can't do this! i must have light cream and turbinado sugar. i'm so spoiled. . .

and so this is what i drank all day. yup, i'm intolerably spoiled and intend to stay that way. remind me to buy light cream to keep in the house as staple always!

but still i'm wandering the streets of fair bklyn a-wonderin': was the problem the plastic bag and maybe too cool water? am i too influenced by ugly, ugly beans?

or maybe it's that i cannot abide peanut butter. almond butter, chestnut butter, pistachio butter, cashew butter, all good. but peanut butter -- never.

in short i spent all afternoon playing with coffee and thinking about my friends. . .those whose coffee and spoons keep me the very best of company.

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