Japanese filter sets, Italian espresso machines, vintage Bialettis – as hobbies go it’s extreme and expensive. Don’t judge me
I’m about to go holiday, and though the prospect is delightful, one thing is worrying me: the coffee situation. For the last few years, a group of us have rented a big, old house somewhere in deepest France. It’s a place I love as much as anywhere I’ve ever stayed: you will know what I mean when I say that it’s the kind of house where you want only to read Colette, and eat apricots, and lie in the bath with a large glass of rosé while listening to Francoise Hardy (you might want to pretend that you are Francoise Hardy, I couldn’t possibly comment). However, there is a problem, and that is the aforementioned coffee situation.
The house has an old-fashioned percolator, but only one. There are no cafetieres, no stove-top devices, and no Nespresso machine. (I can no more imagine a Nespresso machine on its ancient kitchen counters than I can a go-go dancer.) But we are 10, at least. How to make sure there is enough coffee for everyone? In the past, we have used the percolator to fill a huge teapot with Costa Rican, after which we then immediately run it again for a second round.
In these anxious times, such kitchen rituals are nothing short of a life raft
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