Saucyman: Bonus McGriff: OCD - Obsessive Coffee Disease

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Bonus McGriff: OCD - Obsessive Coffee Disease

McGriff has an unnatural attachment to his espresso maker, the La Pavoni, even going as far to compare its beauty and disposition to an Italian Supermodel, giving the edge to the Pavoni on the basis its superior intelligence. Pavoni's have been mentioned before at Saucyman (here), but not to the degree of loving, obsessive detail McGriff has provided us. This was McGriff's response when I asked him about his favorite piece of kitchen equipment...

The Pavoni! It’s absolutely the glory of my kitchen, both in form and function. It’s pure eye candy, quintessential Italian design, a balance of understatement and flare. I own the La Pavoni Pro, which is the bigger of the two basic, fully-manual espresso machines that they produce. You really have to give yourself over to the Pavoni. With each new bag of beans you have to experiment with grind, tamping pressure, duration and force of the pull, etc. The Pavoni is deceptive and cunning—it’ll make a lousy cup of espresso if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. But once you get it, you’ve got it. There is absolutely no way a semi- or fully-automatic machine can make a cup of espresso like a manual machine.

I can count the number of espressos I’ve purchased in cafés since buying the Pavoni: 4.

If you come to my house the first thing I’ll do is get an espresso or macchiato in your hand. I love the whole process—it’s a study in method and patience. You have to wait for the machine to build up pressure, then you have to bleed the machine to purge the false pressure reading, then you have to let it build up pressure again. I like to pull an empty shot to clear the water. I heat up my kettle so I can pour boiling water through the portafilter, thus heating it. Then I fill a demitasse cup with water and steam the water to heat the cup. When you get a well-pulled shot through a hot portafilter, which then finds its way into the heated demitasse, you know you’re about to enjoy the best espresso you’ve ever had.

A good shot pours like molten honey and stays hot exactly long enough for you to take your time with it. It might take 15 minutes to craft an espresso, but you’ll never forget it. It’s like building a ship in a bottle and then sailing the ship. I almost always use Blue Bottle Coffee—PNG, Three Africans, and Misty Valley are particularly fine roasts for the Pavoni. I use a good burr grinder and a wooden tamp. I have a beautiful Thomas E. Cara, Ltd. wooden knock box. My signature cold-weather drink is a Laphroiag hot toddy with clove, cinnamon, lemon, and honey.

The Sauthors feature continues tomorrow with a new contribution of word from the kitchen from poet and Wordstock speaker, Carl Adamshick. On Monday, we will be featuring an interview with another Wordstocker, Portland cookbook author, Ivy Manning - who will give exclusive tips on what you can make for Thanksgiving Dinner that is easy and will wow your dinner companions.

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Basketball

Since the lockout ended, I have been largely silent about the great sport of basketball. Despite Brandon Roy retiring, despite my beloved Blazer’s sprint out of the blocks to a really good start, despite my home team playing a style of basketball than can no longer be described as Van Gundying (Jeff) up the sport’s fluidity.

I don’t know, some interesting developments transpired: During the lockout, analysts and beat writers, the very people who possibly think about professional basketball more than I do, had a light bulb go on over their collective heads and across the league they discovered what everyone else pretty much already knew, NBA Commissioner David Stern is a dick. Over the last decade Stern forced bankrupt municipalities to build new stadiums for billionaires’ new play thing, this heavy handed behavior garnered nothing but praise. The writers sighed and thought eh, “we live in the suburbs, we write for suburban middle managers, our values are if anything anti-urban” - with all the weight that word carries. But needlessly locking out players jeopardizing their tenuous employment in publishing, well that is something that we might complain about except they hate the players more - Oh the conflict.

But mostly I can’t get excited about any team helmed by Nate McMillan. We’ll make the playoffs with a pretty good but not best record, maybe get home court advantage in the first round and then fail to advance. This is true until McMillan proves otherwise, 11 years a coach out of the first round once - this record while coaching some pretty good but not great teams. Along the way Nate will overplay star forwards LaMarcus Aldridge and Gerald Wallace so there is nothing in the tank come playoff time and risk their health. And yo-yo Nicholas Batum’s minutes so the young player becomes a head case instead of developing into a consistent contributor.

So a predictable finish is part of the my own jejune response to the return of the sport of kings (not really, that's horse racing) maybe it's the sweet science (damnit google says that's boxing). My attitude goes deeper than a finish more predictable than one of McMillan's earth toned, triple pleated suits, if the lockout exposed a fault line in NBA coverage it's that broadcasters and writers are now PR agents for the teams - so who is left to advocate for the fan - thank goodness for blogs and the posting cyborg that is named Henry Abbott.

2nd round or bust