Black Coffee ended with a plan. The next big purchase was going to be an espresso machine, once I found space for it in the kitchen, and if history was any guide, the whole thing would probably start with another mistake. Two and a half months later, the espresso machine is sitting in my kitchen, and I didn’t buy it. My girlfriend gave it to me a few days before my fortieth.
She gets more excited about my birthdays than I ever do, which I think frustrates her, and which I find amusing. This time she’d been asking what I wanted for weeks, and had even narrowed it down for me: a tailored shirt from Bombay Shirt Company, a gold ear piercing, or an espresso machine. I kept dodging. All three were expensive, and lately I’ve been bad at spending money on myself, even when it isn’t my money.
Her patience ran out the evening she picked me up from the airport, when I got back from my parents’ place in Bhilai. We stopped at Toit, and on the drive back she gave me an ultimatum. Either I told her what I wanted, or she’d assume I didn’t want anything. I asked for any espresso machine with at least 20 bar of pressure and decent customer ratings, which is about as romantic as I get.
That still left the space problem from Black Coffee, which I’d forgotten about and she hadn’t. On Sunday, the 4th, she tricked me into cleaning the kitchen. Once I’d started, she didn’t pitch the next idea to me. She fired it from my cook’s shoulder instead, looking at the old table where all the cooking things lived and asking her, “Wouldn’t it be better with a steel rack, where everything’s right in front of you?” My cook said of course it would. Then she turned to me and said we should order one. Nothing big enough was available for delivery on Amazon Now or Blinkit, so she suggested we try the stores nearby. By then I was charged up enough to finish the whole job, and within minutes we were in her car, outside a utensils and home improvement store, choosing a rack. It was all done in a couple of hours, and the kitchen suddenly had a corner it never had before. I only found out what she’d cleared it for the next day, when a coffee stand arrived. She has a devious, scheming mind.
The machine, a VANTRO with a touch panel and a stainless steel body, followed on the 6th. She came over straight from work that day, and after lunch we started on the stand, a sturdy thing of wooden shelves and tubular steel columns. It took us close to an hour, mostly because I was being a smart-arse and not reading the instructions properly, and we had to undo part of it and do it again. So it did start with a mistake, just not the one I’d expected.
By the time every bit of my coffee equipment was arranged on the new stand, it was six o’clock, and neither of us wanted coffee that late and a sleepless night after it. The kitchen looks far more spacious now, and with the coffee station in its corner, the whole arrangement looks great. The machine sat there unused until the next morning.
I finished a couple of meetings, walked into the kitchen with the user manual in hand, and for once read it. There’s a virtual demo you can book with the company, which I still haven’t registered for, but the setup took about five minutes. The only espresso grind I could find on Amazon and Blinkit was a small pack of Coffeeza, so that’s what went in. I filled the funnel with the double filter, which I’ve since learned is called a portafilter, pressed the coffee down, locked it into the machine and pressed the double cup on the touch screen. Three or four seconds later, coffee was running into my cup. I filmed it as it poured and sent the video to her right then, with a thank you for such a thoughtful gift.
The crema was the surprise. I’d get a thin layer from the Moka pot on a good day, but this was something else, a thick layer sitting on top of the cup. I drink my coffee black and bitter, and it tasted exactly how I like it. And that was a pack of Coffeeza. I can’t wait to see what it does with the Blue Tokai Vienna Roast or French Roast I usually buy.
Of the five ways I make coffee at home now, she’s given me four, and the stand they all sit on.
There’s one more on the way. She’s ordered a small framed print for the coffee corner, a black cat glaring over a cup of coffee under the words “More Espresso, Less Depresso.” It has the face I make before my first cup of the day, and it suits me better than I’d like to admit.
