All I Want Is A Proper Cup of Coffee Made in a Proper Copper Coffee Pot

The Sultan and Kersia

In spite of my well-documented tea enthusiasm, I am also a devotee of coffee.  In fact, I would estimate that I drink more coffee than I drink tea.  This is probably partly due to having had the past decade of circumstances dictating remarkably peculiar sleep schedules (while tea contains more caffeine per pound than coffee, a cup of coffee actually contains more caffeine than a cup of tea.  We will unpack the reason for this anon.  It has to do with what one does with the product.)  But undoubtedly it also has to do with my tendency to gravitate toward deep, dark, rich flavors (e.g. dark chocolate, red wine, black tea, opaque beers, heavily spicy foods, and, back in the days before I was stricken with asthma, pipe tobacco.)  

Before we get started on brewing methods, a quick word about purchasing a good coffee.  There are fabulously grand brands of coffee and, indeed, an entire culture of extraordinarily fancy, ornate, and sublime coffees out there.  A fine starting point for the novice is this book: God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee which deals with the world of hyper-excellent coffee-making and the hyper-obsessive people embroiled in the quest for the peak coffee experience. When one ventures into the finer varieties of those beverages, one finds that they contain flavors that one never would have associated with the drink.  As our hero Mr. Lagerfeld might say, they go "beyond coffee" to places where one gains a deeper understanding of the drink and, I would even dare falling into pretension to suggest, the universe around them.

It is a deep rabbit hole which one who wishes to engage further in the world can spend a lot of time exploring.  However, for our purposes here, we are hardly talking about cupping or techniques of roasting or "God in a Cup."  I will leave exploration thereof to the enthusiastic.  You can geek out significantly on coffee and I recommend that you do.  Here, on the other hand, I mean to focus, via my new gadget, on waking up of an average morning and brewing one's self a very good cup of coffee as a reward for continuing to exist.  There is a reason why it is the second most traded commodity on Earth today, second only to crude oil (and, as a renewable resource, less vulnerable in the marketplace to the whims of speculators.)

As for the diurnal cup, find a decent dark roast whole bean coffee (leave the roasting and blending to the professionals unless you become so much of an enthusiast that you branch out in that direction too.  It really is a craft in the most Germanic sense of the word.)  Eschew the aluminum can.  Ideally, grind it yourself and don't buy more than a week's worth at one time.  Use about two tablespoons of grounds to six ounces of water.  As to what to use to brew it, I've used a French Press for the past six months until my friend Paul sent me a style of coffee-maker, entirely new to me, for my birthday.

Of course, with tea, the idea is to infuse the water with the flavor of the tea leaves by pouring water over them (my mnemonic device of my own devising:
"Tea over water
isn't how you oughta.
Water over tea,
that's how it should be") and seeping the leaves in the water for a few minutes.  With coffee, I do not recommend a drip coffee-maker because the concept is similar to tea infusion and you miss several of the elements present in other coffee-makers with the goal of extracting as much flavor from the bally beans as you can.  Coffee and tea are comparable to apples and oranges.  Also, drip brewing systems are difficult to clean properly and, in my experience, will never last you as long as a French Press.  You get a much better cup from wetting the grounds, allowing them to infuse into the water, then pressing every last bit of flavor back out of them.  An espresso maker (one of which we also own.  It was a wedding gift) is good for this as you compact the grounds very tightly and the high temperature and high pressure of the water sort of do that job for you.  However, in my experience, an espresso maker in the home is a bit too involved when you wake up at 3:40 and have to get on the road by 4:00.  Besides, it is called an Espresso maker because it was intended to make the form of specific coffee drink known as Espresso, which is galaxies away from what we're talking about here.  Like so much of life, one must take into account the age-old wisdom "Just because we can do a thing doesn't necessarily mean that we should." 

I have also heard convincing arguments in favor of what is known as a vacuum coffee pot, but every time I look at one I think "You know, I couldn't imagine having one of those in my home before I own a Tesla Coil and a Theremin."

But, let's get to today's experiment with my brand new AeroPress Coffee Maker which the package boasts is the best coffee maker that someone who said that has ever owned:

One places the cylinder on top of one's coffee mug, places a small round filter (provided in abundance with the maker, but also easily fashioned on one's own) at the bottom and fills the cylinder with coffee grounds, then water.  Stir the two for a few seconds, then place the plunger in the top of the cylinder.

Simply by firmly pressing the plunger down with firm but slow pressure, you are super-brewing your coffee by harnessing several forces of physics at once.  Gravity, infusion, and pressure are all making a very strong cup of coffee for you.  Now here's the taste test.

Yes, I have to admit, it is a darned fine cup of coffee.  In fact, better than I'd anticipated.  The speed with which is makes a good cup of coffee and the ease of cleanup were beyond my expectations.

Aroma Comments: Excellent, heady, whisps of the aroma waft up the nose to tickle the olfactory bulbs of your brain.

Acidity: Good and hearty without giving cause for fear.

Mouthfeel: Superlative.  Like a mouthful of rich caramel (See previous post)

Flavour: Dark, rich, heavy, everything I love about coffee.  The fantastic aroma slaps a bit of the bitter away.

Aftertaste: Fumigating my oral cavity like holding a puff of cigar smoke.

Balance, overall notes: Extremely balanced.  Balanced beyond measure.  Balancing itself off kilter.

Final Scoring:  I feel I am not overstating by saying that this was one of the better cups of coffee I've ever made.

And now we have a cute little coffee-making nook on our kitchen counter.

 The one advantage I would still say the French Press has over the AeroPress is that it makes about a pot's worth of coffee at once.  However, I must needs concede that the AeroPress makes a better cup of coffee.  Thank you, Paul.

I hope you've enjoyed my brief, remedial coffee tutorial.  Now here's a novelty song:

Something for the Foodies

So, last night I made my secret chili recipe and, in a bold move acting out my belief that information should be denied no one, I live tweeted my cooking, giving away almost every detail of how to make my secret chili recipe. Now you can make Paul Mathers Style Chili. I left a few things out because of time and 140 character limits, so I thought it might be fun to expand on the event here. I've never put a recipe on this blog before, so this is something a little different.

I waited until last night to make the chili because Gina's boyfriend Stefan was in Nashville this past week until Wednesday and he wanted to try it. I don't make my chili often because there has to be an inciting event. The inciting event is that someone will give me really good and special meat. I won't use ground beef from the supermarket. Someone has to give me venison or (as it was in this case) bear. Or even if it's home-raised meat like a goat or a cow from a farm where the animal was able to use its legs and see the sun. That sort of thing. It's a matter of taste on two levels. The point is, you need a really good and special meat.

So, here's how you do it.

You take your meat out of the freezer much earlier than I did yesterday. If you're like me, you'll start your cooking time by putting the partially defrosted meat into a bowl of hot water and get to work on your puree first.
In a food processor, cut up your red bell pepper with olive oil and garlic. Puree and throw into a soup pot. Crack a can (not a bottle) of Guinness stout and pour the whole can in. Pour in one can of kidney beans and one of black beans. Get your tomato replacement sauce which is 1/2 cup molasses, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup cider vinegar, 1 tsp basil (although, as you can probably imagine, I just eyeball the measurements for the most part) and throw all of that in the soup pot as well. Squeeze a lemon in there (not lemon juice from a bottle!)
Let that simmer and by now you should be ready to brown the meat. Throw it in a pan with lots of olive oil, a whole diced red onion and even more garlic. Get your meat good and cooked, nice and brown, like you'd be ready to serve it just like that, and then throw everything in the pan into the soup pot.
Get it up to boiling and then let it simmer, stirring occasionally. Maybe throw Tom Waits' Glitter and Doom album on the stereo. Clean up a bit before Laurie sees what a mess you've made. You can let this simmer with occasional stirring for over an hour. I think I went about an hour and a half with this step. You want to give the flavors you have so far a good chance to get to know one another. You also don't want to put the spices in too early. The spices go in about 40 minutes before you're going to serve. Go ahead and throw about a glass worth of red wine in there. I go with a Shiraz.

While we're waiting, this is the first meal in our 3 years together that I've made for Laurie. She doesn't let me cook. First of all, because she's an excellent cook, so I don't mind. I like to cook, but every picture she's seen of things I cooked before we were together were dishes with a fried egg on top. Laurie hates eggs. The other reason is that I kind of explode all over the kitchen when I cook.

Okay, so now it's time for the spice drop. Do not use a mix. 4 tbl chili powder, 2 cumin, 1 cayenne, a bit of cinnamon, a bit of paprika, a bit of curry and salt. Maybe some black pepper. Let that mingle for about 20 minutes and taste it. It will probably have a strong after-kick and if you're trying to win people over with your cooking, especially people who are not spice-heads, now is the time to throw in some butter and grated cheddar. Slowly so you don't do too much. You can also throw in some dark chocolate here if you'd like. I didn't this time, but sometimes if you find you went a little crazy with the vinegar, lemon or wine, it's a good, sweet taste balancer. If you're like me, at this point you'll start to regret having toned the spice down so much and you'll throw a bunch of Tabasco into the mix.
Now, about 10 minutes before you're going to serve, cut up some carrots and your green bell pepper so that there will be a little crunch to it.

Laurie made kind of a whole wheat corn bread yesterday that went really well with it. The good people at Guinness sell their product in 4 packs, so a glass of Guinness goes well with this.

It was a success. Everyone liked it. Laurie even cleaned her plate.