Coffeehouse 09 - Roast Mortem

by Cleo Coyle

  Finally, Michael lifted his hand and held it there.

  With a silent nod, Mike shook it.

  EPILOGUE

  SIX weeks later, Madame and I were heading back over the Queensboro Bridge. This time, I’m happy to say, her art-dealer boyfriend, Otto Visser, was driving.

  We were attending the opening of Osso Buco Pronto!—a nouvelle Italian restaurant. The location was Long Island City, but the event looked more like a gallery show in SoHo than the launch of an outer-borough eatery (even one with a Manhattanesque ironic name). Oh, sure, there were trays of samples from the restaurant menu, and a brigade of food writers (online and print) were in attendance, but there were just as many members of the art world here, and for very good reason.

  From our corner booth, Madame and I joined the applause when Lorenzo Testa appeared in a wheelchair pushed by his daughter. Grinning tearfully, he joined Dante Silva and the other young artists who had diligently worked to re-create his original mural. (For reference, they’d used blowups of the digital photos that Dante had shot just before Caffè Lucia burned.)

  As Enzo rolled by to pose for the press, I caught sight of Lucia’s impressive engagement ring, courtesy of Oat Crowley.

  According to Madame, Enzo couldn’t be happier that his daughter at last had chosen a man over a boy. (Of course, I didn’t see that she had much choice, given the third point of that particular fire triangle—Glenn Duffy—was now facing twenty-five years to life.)

  “What happened to your man Otto?” I asked Madame, after the restaurant’s young chef-owner proposed a toast to Enzo. “I lost track of him . . .”

  Madame pointed across the large, crowded space to a tall, dapper fellow, leanly built with thinning but still-golden hair. “He’s over there, dear, explaining to that New York Times reporter how it took Dante and six of his friends an entire month to recreate what my old friend envisioned and painted by himself.”

  Madame drained her champagne flute and shot me a sly smile. “Of course, what Otto is really doing is laying the foundation for Enzo’s public show this summer at his Chelsea gallery.”

  “Whatever works,” I said (my new go-to catch phrase).

  The paintings to be shown at the Otto Visser Gallery weren’t new. Enzo was still weak and recovering from his stroke; it would take lots of time and therapy before he could paint again. What the world was going to see, for the first time, were the canvases Enzo had painted of his wife—a subject to which he’d lovingly devoted himself for decades. And though the artist himself remained reluctant to part with any of his creations, Enzo at least agreed to a public show, which wasn’t bad publicity for Otto, either.

  After a few rounds of Prosecco and trays of delightfully seasoned morsels, Madame found me again.

  “So where is your noble knight this evening?”

  “Another undercover operation,” I said. “He phoned to tell me he’s running late.”

  “The wheels of justice perpetually grind, don’t they, dear? Well, if he doesn’t make it, Otto and I will be happy to give you a lift home.”

  “Thanks. Matt made the same offer a little while ago— in front of Breanne, unfortunately. I told them I’d take the subway.”

  “Well, he knows you don’t have that little Honda anymore—”

  “Yes and that’s fine. I’ve decided to live without a car for a while. After crashing two of them in one day, I probably couldn’t get affordable auto insurance, anyway.”

  As I sipped my sparkling wine, I noticed Tucker and Esther bantering (or bickering—who could tell?). They shared a booth with Kiki and Bahni, Dante’s fawning apartment mates. The girls looked thrilled that their boy was finally getting some critical attention from the press. I was happy for Dante, too, but worried I was about to lose one of my best baristas to the fickle arms of the art world.

  “Did you notice that sign across the street when we came in?” Madame asked. “It says the Pink Mirage is coming to Long Island City.”

  I nodded. “Dean Tassos isn’t stupid. He closed the Red Mirage to relocate in this hotter area. Did I tell you that Valerie Noonan is working for him now?”

  “That lovely girl from the bake sale?”

  “Yes, she’s overseeing the activities at all of Dean’s catering halls . . .” My eye wandered back to another section of the astounding mural, one of Enzo’s later editions to the sprawling piece. Madame noticed my interest.

  “That particular image intrigues you, I see.”

  “Self-portraits always intrigue me.” Enzo had painted himself into his mural, a stylized figure peering into a mirror. “But I suppose it’s really two self-portraits, if you consider the mirror . . .”

  “That’s right . . .”

  “And the face in the mirror has a different expression than the one looking in—impish, slightly mischievous. More like a dark doppelganger than a reflection.”

  “Yes, I see that . . . now that you mention it,” Madame said, slipping on a delicate pair of glasses. She glanced at me. “So how is that fire captain?”

  “The former captain, you mean. I hear he’s very happy as a civilian now, up in Boston . . .”

  At the urging of his little brother, Michael Quinn resigned from the FDNY and took a job consulting for the company where Kevin Quinn worked. (Now I knew what Michael meant when he’d told me James Noonan was his last. James was the last man he intended to lose under his command.)

  Madame nodded. “Best for everyone, I think, that the man’s not going to be tempted to drop by the Blend for your espressos . . .”

  “I agree,” I said. “And I’m sure Mike would, too.”

  A short time later, the party wound down and the dining room emptied. I was still alone. No call from Mike, no sign of him, either.

  As the lights dimmed, Madame and Otto moved to the back of the restaurant to give their final farewells—and I spotted a familiar trench coat coming through the front.

  “Hi, Clare.”

  “Hi, Mike.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I wanted to get here sooner, but . . .”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “You’re here now.”

  Mike sniffed the air, still aromatic with butter and lemon, rosemary and thyme, sizzling seafood and caramelized garlic.

  “The party’s over, right?” he said.

  “Why?” I asked. “You hungry?”

  “Starving.” He held my eyes. “Feels like I haven’t eaten all day.”

  “I can fix that.”

  He smiled. “I know you can.”

  Then Mike reached out his hand, fingers open. I placed mine in his and we found our way home.

  AFTERWORD

  ALTHOUGH the firefighters of New York City use plenty of specialized equipment in the course of their hazardous and heroic work, including personal escape ropes, the spike device in this novel is not one of them. As mentioned in the acknowledgments, however, a very real incident did inspire the creation of this plotline.

  On January 23, 2005 (a day known in the FDNY as “Black Sunday”), two members of the department lost their lives in the line of duty—and four more were very badly injured—because they did not have escape ropes. After that terrible day, the FDNY changed its policies and now provides high-heat resistant ropes to their firefighters.

  This true, tragic incident left a lasting impression on me and my husband as we began to consider how the life and death of any firefighter may hinge on something as simple as possessing a single piece of reliable equipment.

  Like the spike device we invented, the charity in this book is a fictional creation, but there is a very real firefighters’ charity that I’m pleased to tell you about right now.

  The Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing firefighters and their families with financial assistance for their educational, medical, and equipment needs. This charity was formed in honor of Terry Farrell, a decorated firefighter with FDNY Rescue 4 who perished on September 11, 2001, while fighting fires
and rescuing victims at the World Trade Center.

  Originally based in New York, this charity is currently expanding with chapters in other areas of the country. To find out more about the Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund, including how you can help simply by buying a specially labeled bottle of Jim Beam bourbon or purchasing a California Firehouse Cookbook, visit the fund’s Web site at www.terryfarrellfund.org

  RECIPES & TIPS FROM THE VILLAGE BLEND

  Visit Cleo Coyle’s virtual Village Blend at

  www.CoffeehouseMystery.com

  for coffee tips, coffee talk, and the following bonus recipes:

  * Crunchy-Sweet Italian Bow Tie Cookies

  * St. Joseph’s Day Zeppoles

  * Brutti Ma Buoni (“Ugly but Good”) Italian Cookies

  * “Malfatti” (ravioli filling without the dough)

  * Dutch Baby Pancake (Bismark)

  * Honey-Glazed Peach Crostata with Ginger-Infused

  Whipped Cream

  * Mini Italian-Style Coffeehouse Cakes

  (with Coffeehouse-Inspired Glazes)

  * Pistachio Muffins

  * “Stuck on You” Linzer Hearts

  * Three-Alarm Buffalo Wings with

  Extinguisher Gorgonzola Dip

  * Puerto Rican-Style Pernil (Pork Shoulder)

  And more . . .

  GUIDE TO ROASTING COFFEE

  COFFEE roasting is the culinary art of applying heat to green coffee beans in order to develop their flavor before grinding and brewing. The entire process is highly complex, but this brief guide should give you a helpful overview—as well as something to consider the next time you sit down to enjoy a cup of joe.

  Factors of flavor: According to food chemists, roasted coffee has one of the most complicated flavor profiles of all foods and beverages with over eight hundred substances contributing. Many factors influence the taste of the coffee you drink. Coffee beans grown in different microclimates of the world, for example, will display vastly different characteristics with flavors that may range from deep notes of chocolate to bright overtones of lemon.

  Botany also plays a role. Coffee comes from a plant (genus Coffea) with ninety different species. Only two of those species (Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta) are primarily grown as cash crops, but different varietals (or cultivars) within those species are cultivated all over the world. Kona, Geisha, Blue Mountain, and Bourbon are just four examples of the many Arabica varietals.

  Finally, the journey coffee takes from the seed to your cup will also influence its flavor. Let’s begin our coffee trek with . . .

  The coffee cherry: Your cup of joe begins its life as a seed or pit within the fruit or “cherry” on a coffee plant. (The coffee plant is often called a tree but is really a shrub.) The cherries on the coffee plant will ripen from green to yellow to red. They are then picked, either by hand or machine.

  The coffee bean: Each coffee cherry contains two green coffee beans, which grow with their flat sides facing each other. The exception is the coffee cherry that contains a “peaberry,” which is a single, rounded seed. (The peaberry is rarer and for a variety or reasons considered to be of better quality than regular coffee beans.) Once coffee is picked, it must be “processed” as soon as possible to prevent spoilage.

  Processing: Most coffee drinkers never consider this un-glamorous step in the seed-to-cup journey, but how coffee is processed can greatly affect its final flavor. Before the hard green coffee beans can be roasted (which will turn them brown), they must be extracted from the skin and pulp (or flesh) of the fruit surrounding them. This is usually done by a dry, wet, or semidry processing method.

  Dry, natural, or unwashed processing: This method of processing coffee is the oldest and is still used in many countries where water resources are limited. After the cherries are picked, they are spread out to dry in the sun for several weeks. The outer layer of dried skin and pulp is then stripped away, usually by machine. This method is used in Ethiopia, Brazil, Haiti, Paraguay, India, and Ecuador. Because these beans are dried while still in contact with the coffee fruit, they tend to have more exotic flavor profiles than wet processed coffee. They often display more fruity or floral characteristics, for example, and are heavier in body.

  Wet or washed processing: Special equipment and large quantities of water are needed to execute this processing method, which gradually strips away the layers of soft fruit that surround the hard coffee beans. The beans are then dried in the sun or machine dried in large tumblers. This processing method, used in major Latin American coffee-growing countries (except Brazil), produces more consistent, cleaner, and brighter flavored coffees than the dry method.

  Semidry or pulped processing: This method is a kind of combo of both. Water is used to remove the skin of the fruit but not the pulp (or flesh), which is left on and allowed to dry on the bean. After it is dried, the pulp is removed by machine. This method, which is used in Brazil and (a variation of it) in Indonesia, produces coffee that has the fruity and floral notes of dry processing with the clarity of wet processing.

  Home roasting: After green coffee is fully processed, it is ready for roasting. Until the early twentieth century, coffee was primarily roasted in the home, over fires or on stoves, using pans or a hand-turned drum appliance. In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, stores and cafés also used small “shop roasters” (also called micro-roasters) to roast fresh coffee for their customers.

  As the twentieth century progressed, however, coffee roasting became a major commercial endeavor. Preground, packaged coffee roasted in factories overwhelmed the market. Home roasting disappeared along with most small shop roasters until late in the twentieth century when coffee drinkers rediscovered the superior quality of freshly roasted coffee. Now the United States and other industrialized countries are enjoying a Renaissance of “small batch” or “boutique” roasting.

  These days, a variety of small appliances are available that allow you to roast your own green coffee at home. To learn more, visit the Sweet Maria Web site, which sells home roasting equipment, green beans, and includes information for the home roasting enthusiast: www.sweetmarias.com. Kenneth Davids’s excellent book Home Coffee Roasting is another great resource.

  Roasting Stages

  Given all of the factors that can influence a coffee’s flavor, roasting has the greatest impact. As Clare well knew from her Village Blend roasting room, “The right kiss of heat would bring out the absolute best flavors in these green beans—and the wrong would destroy them forever.”

  The roasting itself goes relatively quickly, 11 to 18 minutes. Here is a short list of very basic steps that should give you a general overview of a typical small-batch roasting process.

  Stage 1—Raw Green Coffee: The green, grassy-smelling beans are released from the roaster’s hopper into its large drum. The drum continually turns the beans to keep them from scorching. As the beans dry and cook, they start to turn yellow to yellow-orange in color and give off aromas like toasted bread, popcorn, or buttery vegetables.

  Stage 2—Light, Cinnamon, New England-Style: As they continue to roast, sugars start to caramelize and the beans begin to smell more like roasting coffee. At around 400°F, the small, hard green bean doubles in size, becomes a light brown color, and gives off a popping or cracking sound, which is why this stage is called “the first crack” stage. What the master roaster is seeing now is the change in the chemical composition of the bean. (The process is called pyrolysis and it includes a release of carbon dioxide.) The acidity or “bright” notes in this coffee will be powerful, and its unique characteristics (based on the origin and processing of the beans) will be pronounced, but the body will be pretty thin. The surface of the light brown bean will be dry because the flavor oils are still inside.

  Stage 3—Light-Medium, American Style: The temperature rises to about 415°F and the color of the bean changes from light brown to medium brown. The acidity or “bright” notes are still there but not as strong. The characterist
ics of the varietals will still be pronounced but the body will be fuller. For residents of the East Coast of America, this is the traditional roasting style.

  Stage 4—Medium, City: The temperature rises from 415° to 435°F and the color of the bean is a slightly darker medium brown. The subtle flavor notes in the varietals are not as strong but still quite clear, the acidity or “brightness” is still present, and the body is even fuller. This is the traditional style for the American West.

  Stage 5—Dark-Medium, Full City, Viennese Style: Now we are moving toward “the second crack” stage (this stage sounds less like corn popping and more like paper crinkling). This second pyrolysis usually happens between 435° and 445° F, the roast color is dark medium brown, and the beans begin to take on a slick sheen as the roasting “sweats out” the oils. The smell in the air is sweeter, the body of this coffee is heavier, the acidity or “brightness” more subdued. Coffees with more pronounced characteristics (such as Kenyan) will retain their strong flavor notes, but those with subtler notes will be lost to the increasing caramelized “dark roast” flavor of the process. Coffee drinkers in the Pacific Northwest, including northern California, traditionally enjoy this style of roast.

  Stage 6—Dark, Darker, Darkest: Continuing to roast from this point will yield increasingly darker styles of roasted coffee. (See the basic styles and temperatures below.) Sugars continue to caramelize and more oils will be forced to the surface. The roasting smells turn from sweeter to more pungent and finally smoky. Pushed to the limit, beans will turn very dark and shiny, taking on intense flavors before they become completely black, charred, and worthless.

  * Espresso, European Style: (445° to 455°F) This style of roast displays a moderately dark-roast flavor.