Archive for 'food'
Using a Moka Express
Posted on November 8, 2009, under daily life, food.
Here is a quick guide as how you can make a great cup of coffee with an Italian Moka. Originally these wonders were first made in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, under the name “Moka Express“. Our one below isn’t from the famous manufacturer, but the design is similar. Sometimes Moka’s are incorrectly spelt as Mocha, but that more refers to a mixture of coffee with chocolate. Here is our Moka Express.
For good coffee, you need good beans. We are using Lavazza beans, namely their espresso blend. This is a mixture of 30% of Robusta beans and 70% Arabica beans. Lavazza is apparently Italy’s favourite coffee blend.
The best grinders are canonical grinders, as they don’t heat up the ground coffee unnecessarily. Sadly our grinder isn’t, but it gets the job done.
The Moka Express has 3 parts, consisting of a boiler, which is a holder for the water, a metal filter for holding the ground coffee and an upper part used for holding the coffee once it is brewed.
When you are grinding your beans, make sure it is almost ground to a powdery consistency. This will allow you to pack more coffee into the metal filter. This coffee below needs to be more finely ground.
Coffee that is ready for the Moka.
Here is the metal filter filled up with coffee. It is important to fill it up to the top, and to also compress the coffee down. Compressing the coffee into the filter will ensure that the steam from the boiler will pass through the coffee at a high pressure.
Place your Moka on the stove on a full heat. This will cause the water in your boiler to boil as quick as possible.
Generally you should keep the lid down to avoid the coffee flying into your face and boiling you. But here is what it looks like.
The coffee will continue to bubble up and fill the upper part.
And all that is left to do is to enjoy your espresso, or add a bit of water for a weaker, but still tasty cup of coffee.
Alternatives to a Moka Express
And for those of you who are too lazy to use a Moka, and want to use something a little easier to use, but still want a good cup of coffee, I would suggest a nespresso machine. Nespresso coffee comes in little small pods (see below) which contain ground coffee sealed for freshness. Pop these little capsules in the machine, and out comes a rather nice, aromatic coffee.
The variety of blends also you to give your guests a nice cup of coffee depending on their tastes and preferences. Nespresso also offer decaffeinated capsules, these are the red ones normally. Nespresso rates their capsules on a scale from 1-10 for strength, these are listed on the side of the boxes, with 10 being the strongest.
So what’s your favourite way of making coffee ?
My 2nd Girlfriend
Posted on February 14, 2009, under Living in Germany, food.
As you may or may not know, I am a bit of a coffee snob. I know what I like, and I am likely to turn up my nose when I don’t like something. Once you have tasted some real coffee, and not that instant muck from Nescafé, you will realise that not all coffee was created equal. Above all coffee should be created fresh. This starts with the beans being ground fresh then making sure that the water from a fresh source. Also for my coffee mug, you should really heat it in advance. Then of course there is the choice of beans. Here is a quick video of what I call my 2nd girlfriend. A DeLonghi Magnifica , which retails at about €400-€550 here in Germany. I picked mine up from a nice American for half price because she was heading back stateside. The bean hopper can store about 300g of beans. It grinds the beans internally and stores the spent coffee in a little internal bucket afterwards. They look like little hocky pucks when they come ou ! The water source at the side can hold about 1.5L of water, which is good for about 10 coffees.
That reminds me I should really do something with my coffee website , but in the mean time you should check out The Other Black Stuff which is a great Irish blog on the topic of coffee.
Sunday Breakfasts
Posted on February 24, 2008, under Living in Germany, food.
This morning I did a clean out of the freezer and found some rashers and sausages from my Christmas trip home. I’m off on holidays next week so I thought I would clean a few things out. Normally I managed to get in a cooked breakfast once over the weekend, but this one was rather special
It was a healthy breakfast: English muffin, sausages, scrambled eggs, and a rasher. And about a whole 5 minutes later, this was the state of the pate
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