A satisfying dessert that’s a cross between mousse, cheesecake filling and blancmange – enjoy with a glass of something strong
His prototype in one hand, a cigar in the other, Alfonso would fall asleep in his armchair. This happened most nights, according to his wife Ada, who passed on the story to her grandson. It was 1933, in the village of Crusinallo in Piedmont, and the engineer Alfonso Bialetti’s aluminium prototype, octagonal in shape and taking inspiration from both art deco and futurism, would soon be perfected. He called it La Moka, after the city of Mocha in Yemen.
Bialetti’s Moka, the design of which remains unchanged 87 years later, has three main components: a base boiler pot into which you put the water, a funnel-shaped basket that holds the ground coffee (and balances neatly over the base) and an upper pot with an internal column, outer handle and spout. The principle is steam pressure. By heating the water until it boils in a contained space, it becomes steam-driven and is forced up the funnel, through the coffee grounds and into the middle column, from which it pours, like lava from a volcano, into the upper pot. It’s the best sound in the world at 6.45am, 9am, 11am, after lunch, on the tail of an afternoon slump, a full-stop after a big meal – but it has to be big, otherwise it stops being a digestive and returns to being a shot.
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