Coffee by Jordan Mackay
Italy didn’t create coffee, but it certainly created modern coffee culture.
Or maybe coffee created Italy. Shiny chrome, curving metal tubes, powerful engines, and the viscous, dark, oily liquid at the heart of it all are equally hallmarks of classic Italian espresso machines (Pavoni, Gaggia, Illy) and classic Italian supercars (Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati). Espresso, as Italian cars, is synonymous with speed, portraying Italian coffee as a product of the industrialized North in fast-paced cities like Trieste, Milan, and Turin, renowned for their coffee culture. But alone, the North doesn’t dominate; Naples is also a coffee mecca, representing the Southern Italian culture, where the espresso of choice is the ristretto, a concentrated, short (barely 2-3 sips) shot of coffee. From north to south, coffee culture in Italy is not about 5-minute pour-overs, Wi-Fi passwords, and journal writing but about speed, brevity, and social interaction.
So, how does this translate to the home and your pantry? Never has decent quality coffee been more available at home. Let’s start with the beans. Italian roast coffee is traditionally cast as a dark, oily roast, one step lighter than a French bean. However, the best coffee in Italy does not look like this. Buy a can of Illy, one of the leading brands in Italy and worldwide, and you’ll find a moderate roast whose beans are a matte mahogany brown color, not black and oily, as these beans will brew a more complex, balanced, and less bitter cup of coffee.
Let's begin with the basics of brewing Italian-style coffee. While in Italy, most people go out for espresso, at home, they tend to keep a can or bag of ground espresso and a classic moka pot - that iconic two-chambered, aluminum, octagonal device. In 1970s America, people called moka coffee espresso, but it’s really something between brewed coffee and espresso. To use: unscrew the top from the bottom; fill the bottom with hot water (up to the little knob); place the metal filter into the water and fill with coffee (do not tamp down); screw on the top chamber and place the device on the stove. Heat the moka pot with the lid open until the coffee streams out and fills the kettle chamber. When it starts to sputter, close the lid, remove it from the heat, and run the bottom chamber under cold water to stop the brewing. Serve immediately. While keeping a can of pre-ground espresso around is most convenient, a moka coffee will be less bitter with fresh ground beans and a slightly coarser grind.
A moka pot seems highly rustic today as Nespresso and all the other coffee “pod” brands are ubiquitous and inexpensive. The moka’s upside requires no counter space and doesn’t involve the waste of disposable pods. On the other hand, the coffee from a pod machine can produce real espresso - coffee made by forcing water at high pressure through finely ground beans to produce a shot with an acceptably fluffy crema (the foamy, oily residue on top).
If you want to take it one step further, the ultimate way to make Italian coffee at home involves investing in a manual or semi-automatic espresso machine, which can cost several thousand dollars. You will also need a fancy burr grinder and a digital scale for measurement. This approach will appeal to gearheads and coffee geeks. If you have the counter space, a gleaming chrome espresso machine looks beautiful and can pull world-class shots - but that’s a whole world of calibration and precision involving a fair bit of skill and experience.
Italians don’t drink lattes like Americans do, but when they drink milky coffee, it’s usually a cappuccino (foam and a little milk) or a macchiato (just a dab of foam). The good news is that if you like coffee with foamed milk, you no longer need to own an espresso machine with a searing hot steam spout to get it. Rather, inexpensive gadgets that heat and froth milk abound, making it easy to have a perfectly airy cappuccino at home with minimal effort.
Even though Italians' devotion to espresso expresses their love of bitter flavors, much of the population reflexively adds sugar to their coffee. That's because the only thing better than bitter to Italians - similarly expressed by their love of amaro and aperitivo - is bittersweet.