hostess is likely to serve Nescafe instead of the real stuff.

The British Isles used to be famous for serving rich, full-flavored teas, but their coffee was

dishwater-colored, and the flavor mirrored the weak color, too. But in the 1980s the British slowly

acquired a taste for full-bodied, aromatic coffees. Espressos and lattes have steadily made their way

into the British lifestyle, too.

The Scandinavians, however, still maintain that the weaker the better. In many households,

they percolate a large pot of thinly-flavored coffee in the morning, from which they sip cup after

cup all day long.

My first cup of coffee experience in Sri Lanka was interesting. The coffee had an

astonishingly spicy flavor, a combination of spices with a strong note of black pepper. Although the

coffee was weak, the spices gave it a very unusual character, like the cardamom spice does to Arab

coffees. I questioned a number of people but no one could explain why coffee tasted spicier in Sri

Lanka than elsewhere. It always tasted that way, was the answer.

I revealed the reason accidentally and totally unexpectedly. I was watching a neighbor's

cook prepare the evening curries. She used a large stone mortar size of a large round basket in

diameter that sat on the ground in the yard and a huge wood-handled pestle as tall as she was. There

were some half a dozen small bowls of spices sitting on the ground. She pounded each bowl of

spice one after the other in the mortar, cleaning out the mortar after each with a quick wipe of a coir

brush. The last item she crushed was coffee beans. Eureka! This was, then the source of the coffee's

spicy overtone."

The art of brewing coffee

How does a perfect cup of coffee happen? Three variables are responsible for its

goodness—or badness. The single most important item is good and reasonably fresh coffee beans.

What kind of coffee-making devise you use, the second variable, while important, is still somewhat

secondary to the choice of beans. The third variable, of course, is water.

The best-brewed coffee comes from properly roasted, freshly-ground beans. You can even

roast your own beans for the very freshest brew possible. Green coffee beans are available from

some roasters. Home roasting, though fun, is quite cumbersome and, because the process is hard to

control with home kitchen equipment, somewhat unpredictable. Roasting in a heavy sauté pan in

small batches is one way, roasting in a hot oven is another. Stove top coffee roasters are just as

awkward to use. And by the time the coffee beans are dark enough, there is enough smoke in your

house to set off the smoke alarm—a good exhaust fan is essential when home roasting. If you don't

have one, roast outside on a portable burner.

Storing coffee beans

Coffee beans are rich in oil, but the oil is inside the beans safely sealed from harmful

oxygen. Roasting brings the oils to the surface where they become instantly susceptible to oxidation

that slowly results in rancid beans. Even though it takes many months at room temperature before

the oils turn rancid, they lose flavor well before rancidity sets in. Stored in an airtight container in

the freezer, unground beans hold their flavor at least 6 months. If you are short of freezer space,

refrigerator temperature slows deterioration well, too.

Grinding the beans exposes a much larger surface to the process of oxidation and speeds up

staling. Storing coffee as beans is definitely preferable to storing it ground. If you prefer not to grind

Serious Kitchen Play