Liquid Breakfast

Breakfast is coffee and a shower. There are exceptions to the coffee component : a high carbohydrate dinner of, say, pasta or pizza, can cause hunger pangs the morning after, and so a supplement of two eggs, scrambled, or made into an omelette with fines herbes, is called for. Occassionally on Sundays, a croissant, with unsalted butter and English Marmalade, is a treat. When desperate, I make a trip to Eat Well close by on Sunset Boulevard for ten buck steak and eggs.

The key to decent coffee anyplace takes very little effort: whole beans must be ground immediately before brewing. I use José´s Colombian Beans from Costco ground in a basic Krups coffee mill. The aroma of coffee flavored with hazelnut or vanilla is anathema to me. I like coffee for what it is and I drink it black with or without a little sugar. I'm am not much of a tea drinker, unlike my father before me.

For the morning pot I use the Krups 10 cup Arome. I don't use the water filter as LADWP's tap water is fine, though they could learn a thing or two from the city of New York's process. For a special dinner I use the French Press, which involves grinding, then steeping the resulting medium grind in boiled water. Then, when the grounds are sodden and stirred they are ready to be pressed to the bottom of the beaker with the manual filter. This method leaves very fine grounds in the liquid which adds a slightly creamy texture to the coffee. I've stopped using the Italian stove top espresso maker on account of having occasionally left one of the discs out of it and had coffee grounds explode all over the ceiling just one too many times. It makes a good cup though.

I learned to make the funnest and creamiest coffee when in Croatia. Turska Cava, Turkish Coffee, was the preeminent home made coffee when I was there during the Civil War in the early 1990s. Their neighbors The Serbians make the same thing but call it Serbska Cava to avoid the memory of their history with the Turks, and the Greeks also have their version. Wherever Turkish influence has made its mark, if nothing else, Turkish coffee remains. Turska Cava is made with any fine grind in a pretty tapered pot that holds back the froth, an important part of the ritual. Mine, in the picture above, is a fairly small, two cup, Turkish made copper coated pot, which Matt purchased in San Luis Obispo. Essentially it's boiled coffee, but it has to be cared for and watched over to avoid overboiling. Three spoonfuls of coffee are dropped in the bottom with half that amount of sugar and fresh cold water is added up to the neck of the pot. The flame must remain under the pot - no licking up the sides. After a few minutes the mixture heats up and it can be stirred once with a spoon. Just as it boils the head of froth will rise up above the neck and at the last moment it is removed from the flame. The froth is scooped off into demi-tasses and the pot is left to sit while the remaining grounds sink to the bottom. The liquid is then poured gently into the cups to preserve as much of the froth as possible and leave the larger grounds behind. The resulting beverage is mild and full of flavor, hiding its potency behind a creamy veil. Milk should not be added as it spoils the taste and results in mud. An added treat is the very fine sediment left at the bottom of each cup, which should be sampled with a teaspoon.