Steve Cooper's Personal Blog

My inexporable book writing continues. I’m now at a stonking 137 pages.

I should comment that, although the taste is at first unfamiliar, by the bottom of the cup I’d really gotten into it. It might become a regular feature of my liquid diet.

After Spence commented on tea, I felt it was necessary to perform some experiments…

In order to extend our knowledge of the Fine Drink, I attempted something this morning that I believe is a world’s first.

The worlds first Capputeano.

I will share with you all…

First, get an espresso machine, and add tea to the attachment that usually holds coffee beans. I find that three ripped-up tea bags fills it up. Then, make tea concentrate in the same way you’d make your espresso. I like to call this ‘teaspresso’. The resulting teaspresso should have a good crema – the light-coloured foam you get on the top of a proper espresso. If it is anything like coffee, this should be a mix of strongly brewed tea and emulsified tea oils. Mmmm! Then, fire up the milk steamer and steam yourself some foamed milk. Add the teaspresso. Voila! one capputeano.

If you are feeling adventurous you could add a second shot of teaspresso, and maybe sugar, to counteract some of the bitterness of six teabags worth of tea concentrate. I also hope that a finer grind of tea would give better teaspresso. I also susprect that an ice-blended version would be magical on a hot summer day.

Expect it in Starbucks from early autumn. But remember you saw it here first.

S.

Wow. I went through my hard drive and all over the web, grabbing pits and pieces that I’ve written over the years and throwing them all into a single big source file, for my role-playing book. It’s now a whopping 109 pages, although none of the pieces really form any kind of coherent whole, either in style terms or in structure terms. However, what is important is that it’s a great deal of ideas, some kind of structure, and it’s a very strong indication that I can actually write enough to fill a book.

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