Making Coffee
Back in New Zealand, I have had very different coffee routines at different times.
- When I commuted from Waiheke, I would buy a cup of filter coffee on the ferry.
- When I worked at the Tamaki Campus, I would frequently have a Vienna (long black with cream) at the campus coffee shop.
- When I worked in Old Choral Hall, I’d often go across to the student union for a mochaccino.
- When we moved into OGGB, I would make coffee in the coffee machine in the kitchen or go downstairs and get a mocha from Spicers.
- If I made coffee at home (rarely) it was moccona instant with a bit of milk – pretty simple. Here in India, coffee isn’t quite so simple.
Step One: Milk
Milk comes in bags here. We have a 500ml bag delivered every morning. We have a big fabric bag tied to the railing outside the door, and around 7:30am each day, a boy comes and leaves this bag of milk inside it.
We prefer full cream milk, although toned (skim) milk seems to be generally more popular here. We both just have a general preference for having food that has been processed as little as possible.
If we keep the milk in the fridge, the cream all floats to the top and sticks to one side of the bag. If you open the bag (by cutting off a corner) and pour the milk out, most of the cream will be left behind. My method of ensuring we get the cream is to basically massage the cream bag for a while to get the cream off the side and back in with the milk. Then I give it a big of a shake and then it is safe to pour it.
### Step Two: Coffee
We buy our coffee from a place called Cafe Coffee Day. It’s a chain of cafes that are very widespread in India. We don’t go to the cafes themselves, we go to little stores that sell just the coffee. You choose what kind of beans you want, and they will grind it for you. Pretty much all coffee here has some amount of chicory in it – ours has about 20%. We get fresh ground coffee every week or so.
Step 3: Brewing
We use a stove-top coffee maker. The basic design is a Moka Pot. We first pour water into the base of the coffee maker, then we insert a small perforated funnel-shaped filter cup and add the coffee to it.
After tamping it down a bit, we screw on the lid very tightly and put it on the stove. We put it on the lowest heat and let it slowly brew over about 10 minutes.
The cooker heats the water in the bottom until it turns to steam. This steam then forces the boiling water up through the coffee into the chamber above. When it is done, you can hear a kind of gurgling sound.
Step Four: Combining
Once the coffee is ready, it is combined with the milk in a pan on the stove.
Our mixture is about half milk, half coffee decoction and we just heat it until it is hot. I usually take mine just as it is, with no sugar, and then Gopal adds sugar into the pot for his coffee. Here in India coffee and tea is very sweet. So I’m very unusual in having it without sugar, and we are also a bit unusual in having such a large serving (about 125mls). Typical coffee cups here are usually about 50ml or even less.
It is certainly a lovely way to start the day.