People who care about such things often have their personal favourite Italian design classic. Not being a
petrolhead or a fan of conspicuous consumption, I'm fairly lukewarm to the charms of Ferrari sports cars. I find the
Vespa motor scooter more impressive, in the sense that it's easy to build cutting-edge design into something that ridiculously wealthy will pay for, but to give flair to something affordable and mass produced takes a bit more ingenuity. But the
Vespa isn't my classic of the moment. Neither are immaculately tailored Italian clothes - I don't know enough about fashion to spend my time coveting la
bella figura or eagerly pursuing all the latest fads and trends.
What I do like is the Italian
moka coffee pot. It's a modest and easily overlooked object - in fact I'd managed to pretty much overlook it myself until quite recently. I'd seen the little octagonal aluminum pots around before, but hadn't paid them much attention until I actually used one for the first time last year.
Previously I used one of those those glass jugs - normally called a
cafetière, French press, or plunger - in which you put your ground coffee, pour on hot water, leave to brew for a few minutes, then push down the filter to trap the grounds before pouring. You can make decent cup of coffee in one of these, so I'd had no reason to look at any other method. In Italy, last year, I found myself in a kitchen, with no other coffee-making equipment but a
moka pot. I'd no idea how to use one until I was told how, but when I tried it out, the resulting coffee was as smooth as silk, with a kick like a shire horse. The strength is due to the amount of coffee you put in the filter and the percolating process, which extracts more caffeine than the
cafetière method. The smoothness must be due to the filter retaining more of the coffee grounds. The
moka is, strictly speaking, for preparing espresso, so it's not surprising that the caffeine dial
goes up to eleven. What truth there is behind the stereotype of Italians shouting and waving their arms about probably owes something to the ubiquity of the
moka pot.
There's something very satisfying about brewing coffee in a
moka. This is partly because it's like a tiny steam engine and makes a satisfying gurgling noise when your coffee's ready. Even the freshly-brewed coffee aroma seems more pungent and enticing than what you get out of a
cafetière, although that's just my subjective judgement. Here's a diagram showing how the magic happens:
You fill the lower chamber (A) with water and the filter (B) with coffee. Screw on the upper pot (C). Place the pot on the heat. The water in the bottom chamber gets hot and gives off steam. The steam forces boiling water through the coffee in the filter, so coffee bubbles up into the upper pot. When the lower chamber's almost empty, steam bubbles are forced up through the remaining liquid to produce the gurgling noise that signals your coffee's ready (apparently purists say that by the time the pot starts to gurgle, the coffee's already at too high a temperature and the flavour has already started to spoil - for the perfect cup of coffee, you should be able to anticipate the gurgling and take the coffee off the heat before it starts making a noise).
The
moka pot was invented in
1933 by
Alfonso Bialetti and there's one of the
Bialetti company's coffee pots in the majority of Italian homes (or another manufacturer's design based on the same principle). The simple, octagonal industrial styling seems to go with the
moka pot's steam engine-style
splutterings and has hardly been changed since it was first introduced. I was recently given a
moka pot which works on this principle as a present. It's not a
Bialetti, but another brand made of stainless steel rather than aluminum, and not in the
original's octagonal shape. I sometimes think a classic
Bialletti would be better, but on reflection, I'm not that fussed. It does the same job and, although I like the
Bialetti, I can appreciate the design without
fetishizing it and getting into that horrible marketing-manipulated state of having "brand loyalty" (it is only an object for heaven's sake). The idea of any branded product being a "must have" seems incredibly superficial and just deeply wrong to me (it
really is only an object).
I remember long ago, as a student, being amused to see some American students trying to make tea. They'd put teabags into the teapot and were trying to boil them up on the ring of a cooker. I wouldn't laugh at such naivety in beverage preparation these days. After all, until last year, I'd never used a stove-top coffee pot and didn't know how to without being told. Even worse, many years back, when I started using "real" coffee (as opposed to instant), it didn't even occur to me that it was a fresh product which needs to be kept in the fridge once opened. I was merrily keeping mine in a cupboard, like tea or instant coffee, then wondering why my coffee started tasting terrible after a short while. I've decided that ignorance isn't anything to be ashamed of - it's only failing to learn and correct that ignorance which should cause us to blush.
Anyway, here's to the
moka pot - it's only an object, but it's rather a splendid one.
