I love coffee. It is my one addiction. I drink coffee year-round, in many forms, at most hours of the day. Hot when the weather is bearable. Iced when it is not. Whipped or blended or poured over ice cream when I want it as dessert.
The beans come from my local brûlerie — an artisan roastery — dark roast, the kind the current coffee culture has spent fifteen years calling unsophisticated. Floral and fruity and single-origin from a hillside in Ethiopia is what wins prizes and gets written up. Mine is nutty, earthy, chocolaty, and I have no interest in arguing about it. I like what I like. My Jura grinds per cup — pre-ground beans start losing what makes them coffee within minutes of the burr. Someday, I would like one of those huge restaurant-style Italian machines that sits on the counter like industrial equipment. For now, the Jura. The Italian one is a someday.
On most days, the coffee is hot. A café crème, an allongé with cream stirred in. Or a cappuccino with foam steamed thick enough to hold a small sprinkle of raw sugar on top — just a few grains. I do not put sugar in my coffee. The sugar on the foam is not for sweetness. It is for the feel of the crystals against the foam. Texture.
On hot days, it is iced. Espresso over ice with organic milk for the iced latte. Espresso over ice with dark chocolate almond milk for the iced mocha. There is also the cold brew I make in a French press — the press is good for more than hot coffee — steeped overnight, poured over ice the next day with a little milk and, when I want something different, a layer of oat vanilla foam on top. And the Dalgona — Korean whipped coffee, made with espresso powder, whipped by hand. My grown kids asked me to make so many of these during the Covid months we all spent under the same roof that I think my whipping arm built itself from them.
When I want coffee as a dessert rather than a drink, the form shifts again. The slush — espresso, ice, milk, and a splash of Coureur des Bois, a Quebec maple cream liqueur, Irish-cream-like, blended until smooth. Or the Liégeois — a hot espresso poured directly over a scoop of ice cream in a glass. The classic is vanilla. I prefer coffee ice cream. The cold scoop melts into the hot espresso while you eat it, and the bottom of the glass is, by the end, a kind of doubled coffee — drink and dessert at once.
A good one, the addiction.
— Catherine