Don Genova's Blog

Every artisan uses tools of some sort, but who makes the tools?  Sometimes the tools themselves are made by an artisan, and such is the case of this month’s Island Artisan.  I want to introduce you to someone who makes a tool that plays a large role in just how good your morning jolt of java may taste.

The tool is a coffee tamper, a tool that most of us probably don’t use at home, unless you have your own espresso machine.  But it is a vital tool used by every barista in the world who fills a brew basket, or porta-filter as it’s called in the trade, by hand.  After you put the ground coffee in the porta-filter, you need to tamp it down so that it is packed nice and even so the hot water slowly flows through all the grounds at the same rate.  A lot of the tampers you see are just made from a simple hunk of cast aluminum, fairly rough in nature, but this is where Reg Barber comes in. 

Reg was a laid-off government worker who decided to start another career running a coffee shop. As he was learning how to pull espresso shots in Seattle, he  realized that the world needed a better tamper.  So he just went ahead and made one for himself.

“One of the coffee machine companies saw my tamper, liked it, and ordered one.  And one turned into twenty, and twenty turned into forty, and it just keep going.”

Now Reg has four employees in his Saanichton workshop, which is bursting at the seams. It is jam-packed with all the raw metal and wood materials needed to make the tampers…a few work stations where all the fine finishing is done, a shipping area where Reg showed me the waybills of tampers being sent all over the world, 50 different countries, and the walls are covered with posters and photos of Reg with world barista champions who have used his tampers in competition. 

Then there is this really slick machine called a CNC or Computer Numerical Controlled lathe that allows Reg to do the first cuts of all the metal bases and handles right there in the shop.

The tampers range in price between $60-$120, but baristas don’t seem to mind paying that price, especially since they can have them customized and have so many options as to style and colour.

The first time I met Reg was in a coffee shop, of course, and he had a magazine with him, a coffee magazine from Australia…and he was the cover story! He is held in high regard around the world for these tampers, and it’s a career he certainly never thought of when he got laid off over 14 years ago.

So the next time you are in a coffee shop, have a look around the espresso machine and see if they are using a Reg Barber tamper…chances are good they are if they are baristas who care about the coffee they make.  You can find out more about Reg and his tampers at his website. He also makes beautiful wooden boxes that baristas knock the spent grounds into from their portafilters.

No, I'm not going back to school again, but you could be!

Enrolment is now underway for the various courses I teach at UBC and the University of Victoria.  At UBC I teach Food and Travel Writing, so whether you want to write for newspapers or magazines, or just want to make sure your food or travel writing for your blog is the best it can be, that's the course for you. More about that course later. Oh, and I'm teaching a tomato cooking class as well, read on.

The first course of the fall season takes place on Saturday, September 18th at Silk Road Tea in Victoria.  It's called Introduction to Tea and I will be helped by the staff at Silk Road to take you through the history of tea along with extensive tastings.  For more tastings, join me for five delicious Wednesday evening starting October 7th in a course called Cooking the Books.  I'll examine (and cook from) a number of books I consider to be essential parts of our food history and culture and how these books affect how we cook today, especially in our current economy and heightened awareness of where our food comes from.  For more information on both of these courses you can click on the links above, or download or pick up UVic's Continuing Studies calendar for Fall 2009.  My courses are listed on page 45 of the physical calendar, page 47 of the download.  Yes, you can register on line!

That's me…looks like I am about 12 years old, sitting in our backyard tomato patch back home, holding a tomato that weighs about 3 pounds!  Tomatoes have been an important part of my life for a long time, so on Thursday, September 24th, I'll be teaching an all-tomato cooking class with Chef Eva Cherneff at the Thrifty Foods Cooking and Lifestyle Centre in Victoria.  I'll share some of my favourite recipes like roasted tomato soup shooters, panzanella salad and my quick, no-fail, make-it-from-scratch pasta sauce.  Okay, with meatballs, too.  It promises to be lots of fun, and you don't even have to help clean up the mess.  You can register online for this one as well by following the link.

Finally, my Food and Travel Writing courses begin in October at UBC.  The good news is that you no longer have to travel to UBC to take the course if you don't live in Vancouver!  The online version of the course begins the first week of October as well.  I cover all the same material as in the in-person class and give you personalized feedback on your work.  Hope to see you soon at one of the above classes!

Satisfaction in the summer for me comes from spending hours in the kitchen, preserving stuff from my own garden or from local farms.  Does that sound weird?  I guess I get it from my mother, although I never heard her say how satisfied she was after spending her mornings harvesting and her afternoons and evenings blanching, freezing, canning and so on.

At the end of the day she would come into the living room, settle into the couch, pick up the newspaper, and listen for the 'pop' of her lids sealing on her jars.  That was satisfying for her. I get that same satisfaction when I hear them pop, and think about her often as they do. Today I stemmed, seeded and chopped a couple of pounds of red jalapeno peppers I got from a greenhouse grower, and made them into a hot pepper jelly. (recipe at the bottom of this post)  One jar will be cracked open this Saturday as part of a barbecue dinner I'm putting on with Bill Jones at his Deerholme Farm. (only 3 spaces left!)  The jelly makes a great pairing with goat cheese, almost any kind of cheese, actually.

While I was making the jelly, a few more pounds of peppers were sitting pretty on my Traeger pellet smoker.  Smoking jalapenos turns them into chipotle peppers.  They spent almost 12 hours on there today…some are completely dried out and I will store them in plastic bags or containers.  Those that are still a little moist will be canned in abobo sauce…tomorrow.

Here are some of the smoked peppers.  If you start with 10 pounds, by the time they are fully smoked and dried, you get 1 pound.

I also harvested my garlic today, I actually planted it last fall, probably a little too close together in not-so-great soil.  Almost every clove I planted grew into a new head of garlic, however, even if some of them are a little small.  57 heads, now drying under my balcony.  I love it when something you planted 9 months ago bears fruit!  Gee, just like giving birth, ha ha.

Oh, and yesterday I built a new herb garden around this huge rock we had left over from the excavation we had done recently in our back yard.  I have some more herbs to plant, but so far so good!

Time for bed.  The lids have popped, the peppers are off the smoker.  Now here's the jelly recipe:

This is adapted with very few changes from Mary Anne Dragan's excellent book, Well Preserved.  I have the first edition, but a third edition was just published in May, so you might want to make you buy that one if you want to try some more recipes.

Red Jalapeno Pepper Jelly
Makes about 6 to 7 8-oz. (250-mL) jars
25-30     medium red jalapeno peppers
1 ½ cups    cider vinegar
6 ½ cups    sugar
½   tsp.     salt
2   3-oz. (85-mL) pouches liquid pectin  
Prepare the peppers, cut them into chunks, discarding the stems and seeds.(you should wear disposable gloves for this.  Grind the pepper chunks in the food processor until they are smooth and uniformly ground. Measure out 2 cups.  Prepare the preserving jars.

Combine the 2 cups of peppers, vinegar, sugar and salt in your preserving pot. Bring to a boil over high heat, keeping a close watch and stirring occasionally.  Once the mixture has reached a full boil, stir constantly. (it can really boil over quickly!) Boil for 5 minutes. Stir in the pectin, and when mixture has returned to a full rolling boil, boil for exactly one minute.

Remove from the heat. Stir and skim off any foam from the surface of the jelly. Stir the jelly for 3-5 minutes (this will help the peppers from floating to the tops of the jars). Pour the jelly into hot, sterilized jars, leaving a half-inch head space. Wipe the rims clean. Seal according to manufacturer's directions. Process the jars in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.