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In article
, BJ
Conner wrote:


Thanks for the comments. I may wind up buying the Braun despite the
cost. I have one of the plastic things with the filter. Not bad but
messy. the first cup they make is good. The second OK. But the third
you get an hour and a half later is medicinal at best.

No, no no.

This is the sort of thing I mean.

http://tinyurl.com/yvgq3m

But you put a paper in, put coffee in it, pour the water through, and
that's it. You then throw away the paper and the grounds. You don't try
putting water through it again, or it will indeed taste horrible.

If you want more coffee, you put in a new paper, and more fresh coffee.

Properly used it'll be fine.

Lazarus

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On Jan 14, 8:19*am, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:
In article
, BJ

Conner wrote:

Thanks for the comments. *I may wind up buying the Braun despite the
cost. * I have one of the plastic things with the filter. Not bad but
messy. *the first cup they make is good. The second OK. *But the third
you get an hour and a half later is medicinal at best.

No, no no.

This is the sort of thing I mean.

http://tinyurl.com/yvgq3m

But you put a paper in, put coffee in it, pour the water through, and
that's it. You then throw away the paper and the grounds. You don't try
putting water through it again, or it will indeed taste horrible.

If you want more coffee, you put in a new paper, and more fresh coffee.

Properly used it'll be fine.

Lazarus

I'll get another, I use to have one. I even had one with some gold or
gold plated wire screen in it. Real or plated someone though it was
real and it dissapeared one weekend.

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"Lazarus Cooke" wrote in message
news:140120081503026945%lazaruscooke@britishlibrar y.invalid...

Snip

There plenty of things I dislike and even hate about Italy - the
corruption, the burocracy and the endemic nepotism.

But on food and drink they're generally terrific.

Snip

Lazarus

Maybe so, but my experience from 30+ yrs ago when I was stationed in Naples
didn't fit that appraisal. Although, the best pizza I ever had was in
Positano (near Naples) the 3 or 4 worst pizza's I ever had, and that
includes even microwaved frozen pizzas that I have eaten in desperation out
of sheer hunger, were served to me in Naples.

Bob Weinberger

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In article
, BJ
Conner wrote:

* what do you think makes this difference in quality?

jeff

I think that, by asking questions, (always the sign of smart people)
you've hit the nail on the head.

I've just done some very rough measurements.

To make a cup of espresso, you will use about three to four times the
volume of freshly ground coffee to the volume of the final cup of
coffee.

After that, the grounds are thrown in the trashcan and you start again.
(I'm speaking literally. If I have, say six italians who want a coffee
after their lunch, I'll go through the procedure three times. My
espresso machine, like most ones, can make two cups at a time.).

It's a bit of water, at (roughly) the right temperature, passing
through quite a lot of ground, roast beans that produces the right
taste. You mustn't skimp on the quality of the coffee, or the roast, or
the grind, or , especially, the quantity.

Above all, every time you make a new cup, you must start with new,
fresh coffee.

Like most things to do with taste, the ingredients are important, but
also you must get the method really, really, right.

Lazarus


Lazarus

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In article zERij.3297$rV6.817@trndny06, Bob Weinberger
wrote:

Maybe so, but my experience from 30+ yrs ago when I was stationed in Naples
didn't fit that appraisal. Although, the best pizza I ever had was in
Positano (near Naples) the 3 or 4 worst pizza's I ever had, and that
includes even microwaved frozen pizzas that I have eaten in desperation out
of sheer hunger, were served to me in Naples.


Hi Bob

I'm slightly surprised that you got a good pizza in Positano, even
thirty years ago. For a long, long, time it's been one of the most
touristy towns in Italy.

My point was that italian coffee is generally very good because, on the
whole, it's made for Italians who will simply go somewhere else if it
ain't good, and who, whether rich or poor, have a well-developed
palate for what is, and isn't good. Same goes for pizzas, in
non-touristy places.

But the Italians, as I've said, are shameless about exploiting
foreigners. I like them ver much in some ways, but not in others. .

I went a couple of weeks ago from Torre Annunziata (where there are
very few resaurants because everyone eats at home, and which is also a
world leader in camorra, drug-dealing, corruption and mindless
violence and murder, where there are no foreigners at all apart from
me, and which also has one of the best fish markets in Europe) one stop
on the Circumvesuviana train to Pompeii.

In Pompeii, even though I speak good Italian and the woman I was with
is local and speaks not just Neapolitan but the local dialect (Torrese
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrese )
we both got served with a really rotten meal, simpy because the people
who ran the restaurant were lousy cooks. They liked us, but their
business was cooking for tourists.

My point is (and perhaps I sometimes express it badly) that really good
food needs a blue-collar population who eat most of their meals at
home - round the table, properly, not watching the television, with the
kids and the grandparents all there, every day, eating oysters and
frogs legs and sheeps' brains together, discussing where the carrots
came from, and the pasta, and the fish - and why some of them aren't as
good as they were yesterday, and what they'd all like to have for
supper tomorrow, and just how a Prostitutes' Spaghetti ought to be
made.

You can't suddenly jump from a position where the food is lousy to one
where the food is good by bringing in a few fancy chefs. You need a
demanding, knowledgeable, non-snobby blue-collar population who care
about what they eat, put money and effort into it, and eat well every
day, week in week out, lunch and dinner.

Lazarus

The Other Adult Beverage continued.
 

"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message
. net...
Lazarus Cooke wrote:
... Until then, we, you, are indeed just wittering on about an effete,
snobbish distinction.

Well, I'll raise a glass to effete, snobbish distinctions.

well, actually he'll crack open a cold Budweiser and toss away any claim to
'effete' he might wish to make.g
Tom

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Dave LaCourse wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:35:37 -0500, jeff miller
wrote:


imo, as with vodka, gin, bourbon, scotch, beer, grits, collards,
etc..


Collards? What, are you crazy, man? Next thing ya know you'll be
eatin' okra! shudder d;o)



trust me, to one who has tasted chitlins (a/k/a ****lins), collards are
an exquisite delicacy. however, i like neither collards nor grits. i'm
probably crazy...but not that crazy.

jeff

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"jeff miller" wrote in message
...
But let's start with a decent cup of coffee, like you can
get in any tiny bar in any really ropey slummy area of an unknown town
in Italy. No-one in the back streets of Torre Annunziata is going on
about different beans, and roasts. But I'll defy you to get anything
less than an excellent cup of coffee there, even in the meanest slum
street. Lazarus

what do you think makes this difference in quality?

jeff

because the Italians, over the centuries in which their culture has evolved,
have developed a culture which values well made coffee. It is required,
actually, to wash the taste of Italian wine from their collective
palatesg.
Tom
......Lisa will kill me, shortly, after she reads this one....

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On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:47:59 GMT, "Bob Weinberger"
wrote:


"Lazarus Cooke" wrote in message
news:140120081503026945%lazaruscooke@britishlibra ry.invalid...

Snip

There plenty of things I dislike and even hate about Italy - the
corruption, the burocracy and the endemic nepotism.

But on food and drink they're generally terrific.

Snip

Lazarus

Maybe so, but my experience from 30+ yrs ago when I was stationed in Naples
didn't fit that appraisal. Although, the best pizza I ever had was in
Positano (near Naples) the 3 or 4 worst pizza's I ever had, and that
includes even microwaved frozen pizzas that I have eaten in desperation out
of sheer hunger, were served to me in Naples.

Bob Weinberger

Espresso is a modern invention (20th century) and the type of machine
Lazarus probably uses has only been around about 60 years, so it's not
like the Italians have some long, ancient history to draw upon. But
we're talking about personal taste here, so you and Lazarus can both be
correct.

TC,
R

The Other Adult Beverage continued.
 

In article ,
wrote:



Espresso is a modern invention (20th century) and the type of machine
Lazarus probably uses has only been around about 60 years,

This is right, and should have been mentioned before. (mea culpa)

so it's not
like the Italians have some long, ancient history to draw upon.

As you may have seen, my argument is that they care about taste more
than most other people

But
we're talking about personal taste here, so you and Lazarus can both be
correct.

Agreed, and this is important.

So, though I prefer italian coffee, I make my (Italian) girlfriend's
coffee as well as I can every morning when I get up early enough (she,
of course, prefers filter coffee).

(In my view it should be De gustibus disputandum est - with a strong
gerundive of obligation).

We haven't talked about where it all began, with Ethiopia, and probably
the nearest thing to 'early' coffee, that we're likely to deal with,
which might be the way of making coffee known as Turkish coffee, which
I like and enjoy and drink anywhere from the Balkans through Greece,
Turkey, the Levant, to North Africa, but which is quite different from
what we've been discussing.

L