At last - a wireless coffee

I’d had a bit of bother with my ipod shuffle – I couldn’t upload any tracks - so I took it into the Apple shop, fearing the worst. No need - it's now bursting with 200 tracks (something to do with Consolidation), so I cross the road to the Strawberry Alarmclock to celebrate with a much-needed double latté.

The owner walks past my table, amazed I’m online. Yep, I’m typing this in their back garden – right now! He’s amazed because normally the internet connection here is practically non-existent – though the whole street is having routers installed next week. I don’t know exactly what that means but the result will be unbroken wireless internet on Parnell Road.

It’s quite a novelty being online outdoors. A bit like when you got your first mobile or, way back in the old days, turning the TV on and getting a picture for the first time. I almost forget to drink my coffee.

The connection's a bit slow and cuts out several times. Where are those routers when you need one?
It starts to spot with rain and I notice my battery’s running low.

Such is the downside to technology on the move. Though it was fun while it lasted.

I’ll be back.

A perfect cup of coffee

Is there such a thing? It's a bit like requesting the perfect meal. Do you have one? Just one? For me it varies each day. Yesterday it was chicken liver terrine with a glass of Cotes du Rhone at midnight. Today it's poached eggs on crusty toast with a cup of tea. I haven't got round to making that yet though. I'm out of eggs.

So maybe there's no such thing as the perfect cup of coffee but there's certainly a big difference between a good coffee and a bad one. If you're unlucky enough to pay for a bad one you'll know about it instantly. Sometimes before you even taste it. Thin, burnt, too hot, sour, too watery, too milky...

But if it's a good one, a well made one, it will slip down like bitter-sweet velvet and you'll realise that that's how they should all taste.

So what goes into making a good coffee?

A decent blend of beans that have been roasted well. Then there's the grind. It's not just a case of the finer the grind, the better the coffee. The grind is determined by the humidity in the air. Well, it should be, according to mother-and-daughter team Anthea and Selina who run Sierra café in Auckland. It's all about how coffee particles behave when it's humid or cool. Not only that but the metal parts of the coffee grinder can expand when it's hot and make the coffee clump together. So this has to be taken into consideration when the grind size is set on the grinder.

And if the beans aren't freshly ground - we're talking minutes - already the coffee is slipping down the scale of being potentially very good to so-so. You see, once ground, the essential oils are exposed to the air and they're slowly turning rancid.

What other variables? The pressure of the water coming through the coffee machine and how densely the ground coffee is packed into the basket. Too tightly, and the espresso will be gloopy and burnt-tasting. And as for the milk - how it's steamed and frothed can make or break the finished coffee. Heat and texture of both the espresso and the milk are key.

So there's a lot of pressure on the hands behind the machine - the barista - to get it right. It's not just a case of pressing a button and putting a lid on a cup.
There's more in a cup of coffee than you might realise.

In a good one anyway.


If in doubt, have a smoothie.

A taste of 1978

Today I had the most amazing wine - a 1978 Rioja Gran Reserva. That's nearly 3o years old.

1978 - the year the world's first test tube baby was born (in Manchester) and Pollyanna's nightclub in Birmingham was ordered to open its doors to black and Chinese people.

Kate Bush released Wuthering Heights and Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta were singing Summer Nights.

I can't remember what I was doing in 1978 but I was far too young for Grease and nightclubs.

So it's incredible, really, that all this history-in-the-making was going on when this wine was barely in the process of being created.

Presumably it's been re-bottled and re-corked over the years (the bottle is barely dusty and the label's in perfect nick) but how did the wine-maker back then know that it would taste so great today? That's pretty impressive forward-planning.

Something else I've enjoyed recently - though certainly not for ageing - was a handful of Auckland oysters. A work perk that I downed on the way home in the car...

Do try this at home!

Want to know the best mix for Pimms?

Sparkling wine and ginger beer. Honestly, it's amazing - particularly with a handful of fresh mint and strawberries thrown in. And the more you have, the better it gets. Funny that.

According to my friend Lou, it's called a Pimms Royale. She should know - she made enough jugs of it on Friday night.

Afraid there's no photography of Pimms Royale in a glass for you to have a look at as once it was poured I kinda had my hands full. So you'll just have to try it at home and find out for yourself.

Though this is what it looks like on the floor...

Cheap as chips?

If you can, go to a fish and chip shop where you can eat in.

Why?

Because everything will taste so much better if you eat it as soon as it's whisked from the fryer, rather than steaming crisp batter into a soggy mass by wrapping and transporting it home.


And don’t even think about plating and reheating in a microwave. You may as well buy a frozen ready-meal version from Tesco.

My favourite chippy in Auckland is the Fish Deli in Parnell. The set-up’s pretty basic – a white-tiled wet fish counter with plastic stools at the open windows. A perfect backdrop for enjoying hot crunchy batter straight from the fryer. The chips are always good, too.

You can feast on battered fish of the day, normally hoki - a relative of cod - and chips for $6.50. A bargain in a basket with a wedge of lemon and parsley garnish.

Though I've just looked up hoki on the Best Fish Guide and it falls into the Red category - the Worst Choice. Apparently it's massively over-fished and by-catches in the trawlers' nets are often seals and albatrosses.

According to the Best Fish Guide The Fillet’o’Fish sold at McDonalds in New Zealand is hoki.

Once caught, hoki must be covered in ice within six hours or it'll go off. It used to be that catches of hoki were sometimes pulled up faster than they could be iced and so excess fish were thrown back into the sea. Presumably dead or dying. Maybe this still happens.

So in future I'm going to upgrade from hoki and buy, well, I'm not sure, as there's nothing in the Green category. Apparently nothing qualified. I'm going back to the fish market in a few days, so I'll ask around there and let you know...

Walk this way...

This is just some of the walking I've done recently.

I bought these flipflops in Sydney last Christmas when my luggage missed the connection so I arrived in 30 degrees heat with just my trainers.
They only cost a few dollars from a Seven Eleven - but what an investment...

They've taken me everywhere - from putting the rubbish out back home in London (to the bins and back, countless times) to Europe, South America and now to New Zealand.

As you can see, they're now a little down at heel. In fact, the left one now has a hole and the toes on both are wearing away, too. I can't throw them out though. Not yet anyway.

Auckland's a mound of steep hills because it's built on volcanoes, so you're forever up and down. Though unless you've fallen down a deep hole, the good thing is you're only ever a few steps away from seeing the sea.

It's amazing what you come across on foot if you keep your eyes peeled. The other day I walked into a stack of old food magazines dumped by a recycling bin in Ponsonby.

Want to know what was hot in June 1998?

According to Australia's Vogue Entertaining & Travel, you should have been drinking coffee in Vietnam, dining on sushi on the 14th floor of the Park Hyatt in Tokyo and fantasising about a guy called Will Ricker launching The Great Eastern Dining Room in London's Shoreditch.

In June that year I was working on a campsite on the west coast of France - a far cry from sushi and fine dining. A daily diet of baguettes, barbecues and cheap red wine more likely.

All good though.

Beans at Ben's

There's a café on Fort Street in downtown Auckland called Ben. The coffee's excellent - every time. That's because its owner Ben Boyle is a great barista.

You only have to watch him at work to see he takes not just his, but everyone's coffee seriously.

His coffee machine's from Seattle. It's like an extension of his body. He darts from machine to till to table, totally consumed in making coffee, tweaking a lever with one hand whilst pouring milk with the other and bending down to pull something from the fridge with... well, maybe his left foot - he was too quick, I can't quite say how he did it.

And the whole time he's answering my banal questions with calm patience and dodging the camera when required.

At one point he flies back to the counter with coffee cups balanced up to his chin and a new order in his hand.

He turns the coffees out super quick. "You have to really," he says, matter-of-factly.

Ben opened its doors three months ago and Ben is putting in 80-hour weeks and turning out 350 coffees a day. But at least it's his own place, he says, and he obviously doesn't mind hard work.

So what's the biggest crime a barista can commit? Failing to bring out the best of the beans. In other words, not knowing what the end product is supposed to taste like. Which comes from lack of knowledge or passion to strive for the best. "A good coffee should be a relationship between the roaster, barista and customer," Ben says. It's like a chef selecting the best ingredients then combining and transforming them into the best possible dish.

If Ben ever has time for a coffee break, he'll go for a flat-white. There's nothing wrong with milk in your coffee, apparently, as most beans these days are roasted to be made into lattés, cappucinos and flat-whites.

Ben's flat-whites are velvety and creamy - even the ones made with low-fat milk. They're also pretty strong. That's because he never under-extracts the beans. He uses a generous dose of ground coffee (18g) to make a 40ml shot of espresso. That's about double the amount that the big chains would use. So where Ben will get 50 espressos from a one kilo sack of beans, the big chains will rack up 100 from the same amount. So even if their coffee's cheaper (which it rarely is), it's only the chains that are benefitting, not you. Unless you like your coffee watery, that is.

Italy might still be the coffee capital of the world but the coffee scene's pretty good in Auckland, Ben reckons. In Wellington, though, they like their coffee strong. There, a standard coffee is now made with a double shot of espresso.

Auckland's still largely a single-shot city but Ben finds that people are wanting their coffee stronger and stronger these days. So he compromises and uses a shot-and-a-half in his. He thinks it's only a matter of time before Auckland goes double, too.

Ben makes it all look so easy but it's not, as I discover. Even steaming the milk to the right temperature without adding too much air requires skill and experience. Once I've sprayed hot air around the jug and surrounding area, my attempt to transform an espresso into a flat-white with a pretty pattern on the top is quite dismal.

It's still a nice coffee, though, even if it's a little cold by the time I get round to drinking it.