priya tuli's randombloggz

I had the most surreal Sunday morning today. I resurrected my beloved Bialetti Moka Express, which had been lying neglected in some forgotten corner of the kitchen cabinet for months, maybe years.

Being prone to taking the path of least resistance, I gave up the elaborate ritual of preparing my own Moka Express brew every morning in favour of the Indonesian way of doing coffee...boil the water, dump the coffee (fine-ground) in a mug, pour in water, drink. I add: sugar and creamer, inhaaaale, light cigarette, sigh, grab newspaper. That's only on Sundays, mind you. Maid's day off.

So today I thought I'd give myself a treat. Dug out the Bialetti. Got really upset at the grungy state of it. Why do they look so leprous after they've been used? The only sexy Bialetti is a brand new one. You use them, they go to hell. The aluminium loses its shine, the insides look like something that will surely give you at least three types of poisoning, and my Italian friend made me swear never to use detergent to wash it. It ruins the build-up, she said (of what? 50,000 cups of coffee and water scale and millions of colonies of caffeine-starved micro-organisms?!?), and then your coffee will forever taste of soap. So I have never washed my Bialetti with washing-up liquid, but I have tried to shine the outside with a scouring pad...to no avail. Still leprous; enough to make me weep.

But ahhhhhh, the coffee it makes! So today I rinsed it out, tested the rubber washer for signs of life (rigid; could crack if I screwed on the top too tight). Filled the bottom to the valve mark. Put in my freshly ground coffee. Screwed on the top loosely (big mistake; NEVER be kind to the washer). Plunked it on the stovetop and waited.

The water first started to trickle out as it heated, from where I should have screwed on the top much tighter. Not much was getting to the top. I waited, as half the water spitted and hissed its way onto the stovetop, dousing the flame several times. I finally figured half a mug was all I'd be getting, the rest had escaped in the process. Damned rubber washer. Poured it out, added sugar and creamer, inhaaaled, lit a cigarette and grabbed the newspaper. The first unsuspecting sip of my devil's brew jerked me straight up in my chair. My heart stopped for a few beats. About 2000 volts of double-espresso -x-500-strength coffee raced through my barely-awake system, which began ringing loud alarm bells in my ear...the good one. Talk about a power-chug; this was one-mug worth of coffee in half the water it needed. And then I felt hair growing on my chest, just like that.

The good thing is I've never been this wide awake in decades. What's not so great is I'm too wired to attack the mountain of work staring me in the chest. Concentration is down to 0.3 seconds. Ah well, it is Sunday. Work can wait until manyana. But oh dear, I'll need to get a chest wax first...