Clueless Cuppa

I'm usually really unforgiving with most of the food writing that appears in The Star because well, they're just bad. I've lost track of the number of times I've read a food review only to discover at the end of the article, the address of the place has been left off. Today, I'm in an extra unforgiving mood after reading Faridah Begum's article in the Sunday Star entitled 'One Hot Cuppa'

If we wonder why the quality of knowledge about the gastronomic and culinary arts is so appallingly terrible in this country, I really think we can point a finger at the most popular English language daily in this country. Faridah Begum's story is is an excellent example of lousy food writing.

The writer discusses the how the arrival of a coffee machine in her office/household makes all the difference as far as a great cup of coffee goes. Fine. As someone who recently just got a coffee machine in the office, I can appreciate the point the writer wants to make.

If only she would actually make it convincingly.

And as I'm feeling particularly annoyed with the article (and in a less than charitable mood) I'm going to take the article apart.

Text in Italics and " represents the writer's original text, as copied from the article. Let me state, I do not know Faridah Begum and have nothing personal against her. I have a problem with BAD WRITING, and especially bad food writing that appears in a national publication.

The article opens with a relevant point (albeit after one useless paragraph that really serves no purpose except to suggest Asians are stupendously unsophisticated when it comes to discussing food): What makes a good cup of coffee?

If only she would bloody answer her own question.

"Let us take a good look at coffee and while we push our knowledge of this magic bean a notch up or two, let’s also learn to be connoisseurs that won’t be hoodwinked by some who claim to be coffee baristas."

A quick visit to Wikipedia reveals as follows on the term "Barista"

Within certain circles, its meaning is expanding to include what might be called a "coffee sommelier;" a professional who is highly skilled in coffee preparation, with a comprehensive understanding of coffee, coffee blends, espresso, quality, coffee varieties, roast degree, espresso equipment, maintenance, latte art, etc.

But for the average person, a barista is a person who makes the coffee. A barista is not necessarily be a connoisseur of coffee per the definition in Wikipedia although it is ideal if they are such experts. Honestly, I don't think the person who makes my Americano at Starbucks is a connoiseur of coffee. He is a barista in the sense of someone who knows how to make coffee and handle an espresso machine, but could not be said to be an expert.

An editor would probably have edited the sentence to read: "...let’s also learn to be connoisseurs that won’t be hoodwinked by some who claim to be coffee experts."

(generally as writers we try to avoid using the same word twice in a sentence - it's a style thing. This also avoids confusion to the readers on the term 'barista')

I might add, I find the whole tone of the article to be highly condescending, especially the use of "let's". This is so, 80s RTM cooking show. And hardly authoritative in it's tone.

So then blah blah blah she goes on and on about what it takes to be a barista - to which point, as a reader, I'm thinking: do I care?

The content meanders into a paragraph long discussion about coffee beans (which again, lacks substance - if I know nothing, have I learned ANYTHING by this point?) before meandering again into a discussion about coffee's positive effects on asthma.

At this point, the article has already strayed monumentally from the writer's seeming original purpose, which is to answer her own question: What makes a good cup of coffee?

Blah blah blah before we get to the point of the COFFEE MACHINE. To wit, the writer tells us:"My recent habit of having coffee on a daily basis is thanks to a new Gaggenau coffee machine that was installed in my new kitchen."

Hmm, is the mention of the brand and the photos meant as a sort of soft product placement? And since we're talking about what makes a good cup of coffee, SURELY some educated discussion about the different TYPES of coffee machines out there would have been relevant? There are many kinds, or perhaps the writer only knows whatever sits in her kitchen and nothing else? If that is not the case, she has failed to avert this thought.

" Like most Malaysians, having a coffee machine is, ahem, a great social leap and this machine, placed strategically in my dining area and it is the perfect excuse for most friends to invite themselves over to my home. For those who have attended etiquette and protocol classes, they would know that having coffee at the end of a meal is chic or recommended while tea hovers at a distance but given the English partiality for tea, it is given a 70% etiquette recommendation."

Okay, by this point, I'm thinking how much snootier can this article get. I know 3 people who own coffee machines, and by no means would they consider it a 'great social leap', by implication a suggestion that the sun now shines out of one's butt a lot brighter simply because of the presence of a coffee machine in one's office/home. And then, the absurd theory that offering coffee at the end of a meal is "chic or recommended while tea hovers at a distance but given the English partiality for tea, it is given a 70% etiquette recommendation.Oh, for coffee, you get 100 points as it is the right beverage to ask for to round off a dining experience."

I would love to say that this is the most vapid remark in the entire article, not to mention incredibly shallow, but I would prefer to deduct marks on the basis that it's UTTERLY IRRELEVANT to the entire discussion in the first place.

If someone comes to my house for a meal, and they would like a cup of tea to close off their meal, am I going to shove it into their face that they obviously lost out on the essentials of a Swiss finishing school education by so requesting teh instead of kopi? And for that matter, the who gives a rat's ass if coffee is chic? If a person is a guest in your home, you offer them whatever they want, within what is in your cupboard. And surely it depends also on WHAT WAS SERVED AT THE MEAL? If my friends just came over for a lunch of delicate sushi rolls, surely I would offer them some nice green tea? Or perhaps they popped by some mooncake to which shouldn't I be breaking out the top end oolong or Pu-Er? And what if someone doesn't drink coffee and asks for, HORRORS, a cup of hot chocolate as their preferred nightcap? (to marshmallow or not to marshmallow, that is the question? Which one gets the gold star score?)

And I'm just wondering why the topic of whether coffee should be accompanied by a petit four (home-made? store bought?) or biscotti, or a square of 80% dark chocolate or perhaps without any of the aforementioned does not appear in the article? This important issue seems to have escaped the writer, but the 70% etiquette recommendation about tea (or is it coffee? And aiya, are we talking English or American or European or Scandanavian or South American etiquette here again?) appeared in the sentence.

After this long pointless 8 paragraph meander into the realm of the irrelevant, we get to some measure of meat, which is the point that a good cup of coffee starts with good beans.

To wit then the writer provides us with these two 'invaluable' nuggets of information:

"Good coffee beans can be purchased at coffee boutiques but alas! we don’t have them here in Malaysia. My recommendation for those in the Klang Valley is to head over to the Mercato Supermarket in The Pavilion or Hartamas Shopping Centre or the Village Grocer in Bangsar Village for a selection of good coffee beans.For beginners, get a medium roast to start off. It is best to keep opened coffee bean packages in the freezer, sealed and bound."

Firstly, I would consider Bangsar Shopping Center to have a much wider selection of coffee choices compared to BSV. And it is also much more central in terms of location. So why it was left off is a puzzlement. Similarly, are the selection of beans in Starbucks lousy? If so, shouldn't the writer be offering up an informed opinion as to why this is the case? And why is a medium roast best for beginners? Surely some sort of justification would be appropriate and necessary? And what about a little background about the different types of beans? After casually dropping in Kona and Robusta into the previous paragraph, the writer just conveniently forgets this and summarily points the reader towards 'medium roast'. Medium roast from what kind of beans yields what kind of flavour? And who are these 'beginners' she is talking about? People who are drinking coffee for the first time? People who have drunk kopi-o all their life and thus are but the coffee hoi polloi?

Cue her next nonsensical sentence:

"The secret to good coffee is freshly boiled water that has been allowed to cool for just about five minutes. If you pour hot boiling water onto freshly ground beans or ground coffee, you might end up with a bitter and choking flavoured beverage and this would put you off coffee, believe me!"

This would make sense if in her original opening paragraph or section, she had discussed the alternative method to having a fresh cup of coffee aside from a machine, and that is the French press. Then this sentence about pouring hot boiling water onto freshly ground beans makes sense. But if her only reference has been to her coffee machine (picture prominently displayed, even in the WEB VERSION of the article), then erm, where does the question of pouring water come into the picture?

Just when the writer seems to finally be getting to the POINT of her article, oops guess what? We're at the end. Hurry hurry wrap it up with the following three paragraphs:

"The real experience of coffee drinking is to take it without sugar. It is not bitter but you must allow it to grow on you to enjoy it. For those who need the sugar, use brown or raw sugar. Coffee is recommended without sugar as it brings out the flavour of the dessert served at the end of a meal.

Perhaps many don’t realise that taking a dessert with sweet coffee will leave a bitter taste on your tongue!

I leave you this week with a quick fix caffe latte, which is constantly made for friends who I believe, are friends with me only for my coffee! Enjoy your coffee, folks!"

As a writer, I have always found the use of the term 'take' to be of highly objectionable use in proper English writing. Only in Malaysia do people say 'Have you taken your lunch?" The correct way to express the questions above (and yes, I'm going to be snobbish here) is to say "Have you had lunch". You would only use the word 'take' with 'lunch' if your reference is taking lunch to work. Ie: will you be taking lunch to work or eating out?

"Take" is a colloquial Manglish way of speaking and again, is nonsensically inappropriate in a newspaper that actually has a section on how to speak English properly. The sentence construction of the first sentence is also questionable. What is the "real experience" that she is talking about here? It makes no sense. Editorially speaking, it would have been better to have expressed it as follows: "The best way to appreciate the true flavour of a cup of coffee is to drink it black".

Simple, to the point.

It is ludicrous to follow it up with "It is not bitter but you must allow it to grow on you to enjoy it". To say it is not bitter but to add a 'but' implies the first part of the sentence is clearly wrong because otherwise, the writer would not put a "but". (In fact, I considered figuring out how to correct the sentence but couldn't because I could not be sure of the intention of the writer.)

And then to UTTERLY contract herself, she recommends brown sugar or raw sugar. But then reiterates, NO SUGAR.

"Perhaps many don’t realise that taking a dessert with sweet coffee will leave a bitter taste on your tongue!"

If this sentence does anything, it illustrates with absolute clarity how awful the standards of English in the Star have sunk. This sentence is just wrong, wrong wrong. It reads awkwardly, and is just grammatically odd. And worse, it is absolutely condescending in it's tone, and puts the reader off. It could have been sub-edited to read: "Drinking heavily sweetened coffee as an accompaniment to a sweet dessert will actually leave a bitter taste on the palate, ruining both the coffee and dessert experience"

The assumption here of course is that the coffee is accompanying a sweet dessert. What if the coffee is accompanying the cheese board?

And then there is the absolutely APPALLING mistake made in the caption:

"Creamy head: A good cup of coffee will always have a nice golden head that marks a good brew."

The correct term here is crema. That is the appropriate and correct reference for the foam generated by the brewing of the coffee, and it is indeed the hallmark of a good cup of coffee. Head is the term used to refer to the foam in a glass of beer. And for god's sakes, creamy head? It's pornographic sounding. Someone in the sub-editors department should get a good tongue lashing.

This article is at best, a filler. At worst, 800 words of product placement promotion. And in the entire 800 words, the writer doesn't once bother to attempt to break up her text into sub-paragraphs. She sees no need to guide her reader on the path towards the goal of the article. It's like she just sat down on her throne, booted up her laptop and sprayed words on the page without any consideration whatsoever for her audience in 30 minutes. It has come to exemplify the kind of mindless writing that comes out from the Star's feature section. Why would any RESPECTABLE publication with a food section resort to printing reviews from blogs to fill up the pages?

Now, obviously I am going to be accused of going all 'eunuch' on the writer (you know, critique without any idea of how to actually fix the problem).So here's how you would write a PROPER article on the subject matter of coffee. There are several ways in which this can be executed but here's how I would have done it:

A) Begin with an overview of the different factors that come into play when making a cup of coffee: these would include the skill of the person making it, the method used to make the coffee (press vs steam-powered machine), the subject matter of water (filtered? Unfiltered?), the beans and finally, accompaniments such as milk, cream, biccies, and other incidental issues like accessories and nice coffee cups. This is also a good section to provide some education on the difference between different types of coffees (espresso, machiato etc)

B) Methods - explore the advantages of the press vs the steam-powered machine, and of course, the different types of machines available in terms of cost. A list of outlets where coffee machines can be purchased would also be helpful. A small note on accessories might also be relevant - if you own a coffee press, then a coffee grinder is a necessity most of the time. And this itself is a subject of a mini-thesis that needs to be condensed for the article.

C) Water - a brief overview of the issue of water and it's impact on the taste of coffee. It is also useful to explain at this point the impact of extremely hot boiling water on say, beans in a coffee press (since a coffee machine automatically heats the water to presumably the right temperature).

D) Beans - A discussion of the different types of beans, and how one distinguishes between different roasts would also have been informative. Also, it is important to explain to the audience the difference between using beans, and pre-ground coffee blocks. And where to buy and if any, personal recommendations of the writer.

E) Sugar, Milk and Accompaniments - an important subject matter since few people can actually handle coffee black and without sugar. Sugar of course should be cane or raw sugar (this is a good time to helpfully point the reader in the direction of WHERE to buy decent sugar for coffee). Milk is of course also something worth considering - cream gives a more luxurious cup of coffee to wit, which kind is best for coffee so that it doesn't end up floating in clumps? And when it comes to foaming milk, some coffee machine manufacturers actually recommend using UHT milk to get more foam. This is also a good point to discuss how different types of coffee are best enjoyed. For example, espresso is usually drunk very sweet, hot and neat. A cafe americano on the other hand should probably be enjoyed black. Again, this would also have been a good point in which to discuss different techniques for foaming milk (handheld device vs steam machine foam). This is also the right point in the article in which to then discuss or expose the reader serving ideas such as accompanying the coffee with biscotti, a petit four or perhaps a nice square of solid dark chocolate.

Blogged with the Flock Browser