I've been drinking coffee since I was a kid. It all started at my grandparents' table with a cup of half Folger's, half milk, and lots of sugar. As a teenager I drank it with reasonable amounts of half and half and sugar. In my early 20s I eschewed grocery store brands for Heine Brothers. When not ordering a basic cup of coffee, my brew of choice was a mocha.
At some point not so very long ago - within the last year, maybe - I stopped taking sugar in my coffee. I don't know why, but I do know that the idea of putting sugar in my coffee now makes my taste buds recoil. And I soon found that I loved unsweetened cappuccinos and lattes. In fact, I've been drinking quite a few lattes lately, and that's not a cheap habit to have. When I got a craving for one this morning, I quite impulsively said to Neil, "Let's get an espresso maker." So we did.
I know nothing about making coffee beyond filling my red KitchenAid automatic drip with water and freshly-ground beans. Unlike many of my friends, I've never worked as a barista or taken it upon myself to become particularly conversant with more than the very basics of coffee making. Given this fact, I was not about to drop several hundred dollars on an espresso maker more sophisticated than I am. I went to Target and bought this Mr. Coffee. And just now I served my very first two cappuccinos.
It was messy. I spilled coffee. I spilled milk. (I didn't cry.) The most baffling part of the whole experience was that there were no means of measuring anything. The water reservoir was marked with only minimum and maximum fill lines. The brew basket had two filters, one for one one-ounce shot and one for two one-ounce shots, but there was no indication as to how much coffee I needed to grind; I was just to fill the filter I wanted to use to the top. The most confusing thing was figuring out how to measure the espresso as it came out. The instruction manual informed me that cappuccinos are one part espresso, one part steamed milk, and one part foam. My machine has two spouts, which means I can place two cups under it, but how to know when each one contained a one-ounce shot? I'm terrible at eyeballing quantities, so I ended up just using a measuring cup, turning the machine off once it had spit out two ounces.
The milk quantity was similarly unclear. I was to fill a "small" pitcher halfway with milk. That part actually went pretty well for my first time steaming milk, although the manual cautioned me to be patient because doing it well takes practice.
I suppose all of this means that espresso making is more of an art than a science, so I imagine I will have to just keep messing around with it until I get good at it. My first two cappuccinos were pretty tasty, though. I'm sure it helped that I used Jackson's Organic.
Oh, and yeah, I realize it's been exactly two months since my last entry here. And there were so many things I've wanted to blog about since then. Our Thanksgiving potluck, making Christmas stollen with my mom, cooking Christmas breakfast for my parents and Neil's mom and stepdad, getting re-engaged at L&N (!!!), my first meal at August Moon, my second (much better) meal at Le Gallo Rosso, making persimmon pudding, going pescatarian again... It's been a busy several months food-wise. It's been a busy several months period, which explains my lack of blogging. But I have missed Blog Tartare, and I'm going to try to start updating again more frequently. Stay tuned!
