1. Make sure you start with whole, strong coffee beans and unscrew your Bialetti Moka Express
An ode, an homage to these storied Ethiopian highlands, a chess board of the gods as Homer once said, where goats and shepherds have become their chess pieces, shrouded in the gauzy mist of early dawn. A curious goatherd rolls the beans up and down the length of his sun-kissed calloused fingers—a tradition is born. It weaves across generations, passed from hand to hand, the beans roasted over open flame, smoky, smooth, and sacred. Poured with expert care, a battle-scarred rite—our inheritance.
2. Let the aroma explode in your nostrils when you open the sealed airtight bag of coffee beans
Espresso three times a day in my house, and occasionally on Sundays, the burning incense of wood, spice and crackling charcoal—bakhoor—wafts silently up our ridiculously high ceilings, shyly staining everything with its scent, complimenting the rich dark drink. I never liked it when I was little, closing my bedroom door to avoid the smell—the smell that never let me forget home and school sometimes seemed worlds apart.
3. Grind the beans to a powder, you should still feel the grains, spunky and fresh, under your fingers
Truth be told I still wrinkle my nose a little, the bitterness shared by the coffee and the incense stings, tingles, scratches as I begrudgingly inhale it in. Oh fragrant frankincense, from the Magi themselves. Did you follow the star and somehow land in our humble walls, not to be received at the foot of the hallowed manger?
4. Pour room temperature water in the Moka boiler, there’s a line that tells you when to stop
The Italian Bialetti Moka Express sanctimoniously sits on our stove’s smallest burner. It’s a subtle reminder of my mother’s braided blood, the same that flows in me, and in her mother’s: the ciaos as we kiss each other twice, thrice on the cheek, the imported inshallahs that pepper our prayers along with the amens, and my aunt’s Greek shortbread cookies, the powdered sugar dusts the kitchen tiles, false snow for our shared Catholic | Orthodox Christmas.
5. Add the ground coffee, filling the Moka funnel generously with heaping spoonfuls
Is coffee stitched into the fabric of our lives for the pure pleasure of the drink or the thirst for home that it satiates? My parents never opt for drip coffee. They always grind their own coffee beans, choosing time and time again that single source origin. Are they repaying a child’s debt for leaving home or are they singing an ode to the motherland?
6. Put the Moka pot back together and set it on the stove, low heat will do. It will take some time.
I find it ironic that I’ve witnessed the traditional coffee ceremony only once, at someone else’s house. Yet tradition will still burrow new roots in freshly planted soil. The dark grains of earth trace life lines along my palms, fossilized evidence of survival. I know enough from my post at the kitchen table, watching the coffee come to fruition, that the incessant bubbling does not mean it is ready. It must settle down first. I open the pot’s silver lid as the aroma floods the kitchen.
7. On the stove, it will gurgle, steam and swell as the newly formed coffee rises to the empty upper chamber, which is waiting patiently to receive this liquid gold
My father takes his coffee dark, a single shot straight up. Early on, then mid-morning, and finally in the afternoons. Often, a splash of milk and a dash of sugar swirl in one of our 8-count multicolored set of tiny espresso cups twinkling like jewels in the cupboard. My mother takes hers tinted with milk, adding the spiced hot water from our kettle to fill her mug before work.
I generously add warm milk and some sugar to mine, sipping it slowly as a long Sunday morning goes by, bathed in cheerful sunlight. My younger brother doesn’t drink coffee often, and when he does my mother smiles as she makes it, fondly reminded of her childhood, always just a sip of coffee poured into steaming milk. An inheritance passed down in every single cup.
Suddenly, with a cup, seeming so large when tucked in our small palms, we feel all so grown up in our high backed chairs, sitting next to the adults.
Coffee, it's our coming of age story.
