Stovetop of the morning to you

The gurgle of a Bialetti or Moka stovetop espresso maker on a gas burner in a dimly lit pre-dawn-kitchen is low-key one of my favourite aesthetics. Or not even pre-dawn, you can get the same experience just by moving to the very arse end of the South Island; this February morning was simply grey and drizzly, and yet as dark at half-seven as it will be well into winter. The spark of the blue flame, the anticipation of the brew, the surge and whoosh of the whatever-you-call-it-when-a-stovetop-espresso-espresses. The day begins here. It has to begin somewhere, apparently.

Stovetops for me have a strong association with holidays - most places we go there’s some kind of hotplate, coffee can be a variable experience away from home, and we take our coffee punishingly seriously in la Casa del Yobbo (local roaster, freetrade beans, ground to spec) so the venerable stovetop and fuel to fill it are always first on the packing list. Since we don’t get away that often, and out of an abundance of wanting to drag-and-drop some of those holiday vibes into the slow early weeks of work, when we came back from our last break I decided to keep making my morning constitutional with a stovetop. 

The stovetop in question is an alleged six cup with a broken lid hinge (rewired with a wallhanging nail) which like most of my T-shirts dates from the early 2000s and wears its advanced age and hard life accordingly. We have more than one perfectly good* proper coffee machine in the house; this is entirely a vibes-driven choice. 

And because for some reason, that stovetop shit hits different. Sure maybe it’s because you can generally cram more coffee in an alleged six cup stovetop basket but it could be the slightly gentler pressure of a stovetop produces a bigger and rounder flavour. Or maybe, like an old wok in a well-used kitchen, it’s the years of seasoning and the residue of thousands of past coffees which inform and infuse today’s flavours.

We are, allegedly, a month away from builders cutting a remorseless swathe through our house, ripping off the roof and smashing through the kitchen and bathroom like human-scale kaiju (it’s OK, we’re asking them to.) The new kitchen cooktop, when it comes, won’t be gas. It’ll be the first time we’ve not had gas in fifteen years. (Fart joke! Wahey!) As regular chef I’m ready to move on from gas; while it’s arguably better for certain kinds of cooking, aside from being environmentally thoroughly shitful vs NZ's largely renewable electricity supply, it’s a massive ballache to coordinate gas bottle deliveries and cop the angst from sweary delivery people over the narrow down-stepped route to where the bottles get parked and piped in. I won’t miss much about gas cooking, but I will miss the aesthetics of a first-thing stovetop coffee on a gas burner.

...aaand fuck it’s gone cold while I was brain-dumping this. I will miss less the aesthetics of a first thing stovetop coffee which needs to be reheated in the microwave.

The Doctor is OUT.

*OK it’s an op-shop-rescue Breville with aging seals but as long as you don’t pack too-finely ground coffee in like a concrete hockey puck it’s fine, honest.