Tamping - Forget the Coffee, Get the Teapot

 

I’ve just been trying to read an article about what happens if I tamp expresso too hard. I quickly lost interest and gave up. On the occasion that I might have a cup of coffee, presently once a day, it is from a jar of instant Nescafe Gold. It will do for me. Visitors to my house can have the same, or choose between regular Nescafe or decaf. At the moment, there are still a few sachets of instant latte lurking in the beverage cupboard, left over from when we thought them a good idea. Nescafe, of course, but unwanted, not liked, still in date. I’m baffled by coffee menus in Costa, Starbucks and similar. On reading the first sentence of that article, I'd satisfied  myself I’m not missing out on anything. I don’t need a coffee maker or a tamping mat, though the mat could possibly have other uses.

Morecambe promenade, circa 1960. Sunday morning with my visiting grandparents always involved going to church – Sunday School for me – then a stroll along the front to what I think must have been Nanna Hetty’s favourite café. We had cups of coffee, even me at age five or six. It was either to warm me up on a cold day, or the huge glasses of squash were considered too much. I enjoyed these excursions and remember feeling quite grown up having coffee and popping two light-brown sugar cubes into the cup. I don’t think there was any fuss about choice. Coffee was coffee and in our house and Nanna Hetty’s house, it was in a small, round tin, in powder form. A few years later, when I was old enough to go to the shop by myself, I sometimes bought an individual sachet of instant Nescafe for a few pence. This was old money, pre-decimal. It was just the coffee, not the ones with added milk powder that are available today. I wonder then, when did all these types of coffee and the use of tamping mats come about?

Italian brothers, Sergio and Bruno Costa started their coffee bean roastery in London around 1971 and opened their first coffee bar in 1981. In Seattle USA, the Starbuck team of business partners Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl were doing the same thing around the same time. Fifty-plus years later, they are both globally established, offering a long list of different coffees, keeping their baristas busy with their tamping mats. My daughter doesn’t generally like coffee, maybe a caramel latte, but on a short holiday in London when she was about fourteen, she carried a takeaway Costa cup everywhere as it seemed to be the thing to do. And she didn’t walk with us, she was either a little in front, or a couple of paces behind. Funny that.

Well, those of you with tamping mats, coffee makers, even percolators or coffee bean grinders, you know what you like, so enjoy. I'll have a pot of strong tea. A good builder's brew.

My Haiku,

Who wants a latte?
What’s ordinary coffee?
Is it a flat white?

The Barista’s job,
What is tamping all about?
What is expresso?

Why a tiny cup?
I’ll have English Breakfast Tea,
Yes, tea. Very strong.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Sauce - Keep It in the Fridge

 

Most of the door compartments of my tall larder fridge are taken up with sauces. Apparently, everything needs refrigerating when it has been opened and must be used within six weeks or sometimes only four weeks. We often go beyond that, with our general rule of ‘no fur, its fine’ unless it is obviously curdled or changed colour. Mint sauce, full of sugar and vinegar, in a jar with a two year ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ date, would surely not just ‘go off’ if left in the fridge for seven weeks instead of six? If you don’t hear from me for a while, I might have poisoned myself. Joking apart, nothing hangs around for too long, except the seafood sauce that I bought too much of one Christmas. I’d over-estimated the prawn cocktails, again. The name ‘Seafood Sauce', when did that happen? I searched the shelves in our massive, well-stocked Tesco looking for Thousand Island Dressing, in vain, on a rare physical food shop for last minute Christmas stuff.  Seafood Sauce would have to do. Anyway, I’m melon, not prawn cocktail, it is for dinner guests. Someone suggested mixing mayonnaise and tomato ketchup. I haven’t tried it.

Like lots of people, I was brought up in a family which had two sauces, red and brown. My dad loved tomato ketchup and plastered everything with it. He would have swamped his Sunday dinner if he could have got away with it. My mum liked H.P, Brown Sauce, or mustard, but mustard was a powder that needed mixing and that was a lot of faffing for one sausage butty. I was with dad on the ketchup, but only a small amount on the side of my plate and when it was gone, that was it. The glass bottle took ages to pour and my dad would push a knife in to get it going. Those were the days.

I blame Mrs Bridges, the cook from Upstairs, Downstairs, for my desire to make homemade sauces. I’m not a domestic goddess, I’m more for feeding a family or just the two of us these days, by affordable, practical means and I haven’t got a kitchen maid to help either. I love my own cheese sauce, perfect for cauliflower, broccoli or both, but my favourite is seasoned onions and mushrooms in cream with steak or pork. It is from a recipe for Boeuf Stroganoff but seems to work well,

Amongst the fridge door contents is the irreplaceable Heinz Tomato Ketchup, no other will do, and the H.P. Sauce. They were kept in a cupboard when I was a child. I keep Soy sauce and Worcester sauce in a dark cupboard with the vinegar, salt and pepper. I hope they are alright.

Here is Lake District, from Sir John Betjeman,

I pass the cruet and I see the lake
Running with light, beyond the garden pine,
That lake whose waters make me dream her mine.
Up to the top board mounting for my sake,
For me she breathes, for me each soft intake,
For me the plunge, the lake and limbs combine.

I pledge her in non-alcoholic wine
And give the H.P. Sauce another shake.

Sprint of Grasmere, bells of Ambleside,
Sing you and ring you, water bells for me;
You water-colour waterfalls may froth.
Long hiking holidays will yet provide
Long stony lanes and back at six for tea
And Heinz’s ketchup on the tablecloth.

John Betjeman  (1906 – 1984)

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and keep well, Pam x

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