chocolatebuddha » Archives » In Search of Perfection

“But he doesn’t like to have fancy dinners, though he’s really sweet when it comes to chivalrous acts such as holding the door open for me, those old-fashioned gestures that have become a rarity today,” she’ll say. And before you can respond, she continues. “And his job, it’s not quite that exciting. A writer, photographer or an architect I wouldn’t mind..”

You may have listened, responded and avoided these conversations as often as I had. The dilemma is universal. We search endlessly for the best things we can get our hands on. Best man, best woman, best house, best holiday, best recipe, best dessert and the tiring list goes on. Let’s be truthful here, for once, even though we’d like as much to deny it, nothing is quite as perfect as we’d want it to be.

Well if perfection is a rarity, then a perfect cup of coffee is the rare gem. The perfect guy will never exist, now or in the future (listen up, girls!). If you’re as pessimistic as I am on this, you’d have stopped the search and settle for the perfect within the imperfect. Now that there’s spare time from the halted hunt, all my attention can be directed towards a perfect cup of coffee.

What is your perfect cup? Someone I know will be transported to momentary delirium at the first sip of Starbucks’ Coffee of the Day – medium strong brew. Others think about the coffeeshop’s ‘kopi-o’ even the night before. My perfect one is a homemade cross between a latte machiato and an American latte. A brown dark ring should stain the cup. On most days, the perfect cup is as elusive as the perfect guy. And when it does come along, I toss away my jacket of humility and praise myself endlessly for a miracle attained!

I do not own an electric coffee grinder and I don’t purchase ground coffee. The essence of a good cup is freshly ground coffee and by fresh I mean a minute ago, not after 3 days in the darkest glass container. Mechanically or you might say medievally, my coffee beans pass through a cast iron mill attached to the kitchen counter. It doesn’t have pre-measured grind settings but instead just a screw to adjust the grind manually. So each grinding occasion is a guessing game to attain the perfect grind that’d adhere to many baristas’ golden rule, that is to pour 2-2.5 ounces of espresso in 25 seconds. The pour must also resemble the consistency of runny honey dripping off the back of the spoon. I often brew a first cup to waste and manipulate the grinder again depending whether to go finer or coarser.

You must think by now what a coffee diva I am. Wait, there’s more that can go wrong. The milk should be frothed to a maximum temperature of 66-70C to lift out its natural sweetness. Heat will transform the taste of milk. With the right temperature, and hopefully no large bubbles in the froth, hope is still present.

So to achieve the best in both coffee and milk, the bulk of the responsibility lies on the barista. He could probably feel the ideal grind between his fingers and listen with accuracy to the hisses of the milk frothing. In the meantime, a homemade barista like me, creating a perfect rare cup gives me sweet satisfaction. Now who’d care about those men……