One of the highlights of Christmas 2016 was my re-discovery of the pleasures of coffee with cream.
For decades, my home recipes for coffee were
a) Cafetiere coffee – black, no sugar (see the wall sign for a summary)
b) Instant coffee from a jar with some gold colouring – white, no sugar
c) Other instant coffee – avoid if possible
Nothing overly pretentious. (Although, now I think about, I have been experiencing worrying feelings of identification with George Clooney recently, and was devastated to find no coffee machine in my stocking.)
Then, one morning over Christmas, whilst I was in coffee production and distribution mode, Ann suggested I offer it with some of the under-used cream she’d bought for pudding purposes.
I did, and in a moment of radical departure from my strict conventions, I added cream to my own black coffee.
I have to say, the effect was far more pleasurable than I’d expected or remembered from the past – and I’m still working through the remains of the cream today, using it only occasionally so that it continues to provide the pleasure of the exceptional.
And this takes me back to my youth – to when I graduated from milk to tea and thence to coffee. And to when I first became aware of my true nature; when I understood that I was unquestionably the embodiment of sophistication.
The day I poured cream into my circulating coffee over the convex side of a teaspoon.
You don’t get much cooler than that, do you?
Unless you’re George Clooney, I suppose.
