The Moka Gets a New Gasket

The day stayed overcast and mild, with no wind at all — that flat white light that makes the street look unfinished. The coffee was what started it. For a week the moka had been behaving badly: the water coming up in a sputter instead of a steady thread, half of it left behind in the base, and what did arrive tasting burnt and thin at the same time. I’d been blaming the coffee, then the flame, which is what you do when you don’t want to take the thing apart. This morning I took it apart.

The gasket had gone hard and flat, black and shiny, no longer sitting proud of its groove, and the filter plate was furred with old grounds. So: a new gasket from the drawer where I keep two, the filter scraped with a pin, everything rinsed but not soaped, because soap goes into aluminium and stays there. The first pot afterwards came up slow and even and tasted like coffee again. It’s a part that costs almost nothing and fails so gradually you never catch it failing, so I’ve stopped pretending otherwise — I’ll change it every year whether it looks tired or not. Same lesson as the laptop, which had been quietly filling up while I blamed the backup program: df -h prints how much room is genuinely left on each volume, in units a person can read, and it took four seconds to see the answer. Check the boring thing first. It’s usually the boring thing.

In the afternoon I carried the two geranium pots in off the step, wiped the saucers, and set them on the kitchen sill where the light still reaches. They’ve been out there since April and they’ve earned a window. I’d been meaning to do it all week, waiting for a proper frost warning, and then I thought — what am I waiting for? The nights are cold now and the plants don’t read the calendar. Some things are worth carrying in before winter, and they’re rarely the things you’d put on a list.

Supper was a wedge of zucca from the market, cooked down with onion, vinegar, and a little sugar until it went dark and glossy, with mint torn over at the end. I ate it warm with bread, standing at the counter, and it was better than it had any right to be for the trouble. The house smells of vinegar and mint, the geraniums are on the sill, and the moka is back in service.

Recipe: Zucca in Agrodolce

Ingredients

• 800 g firm pumpkin or squash, peeled and cut into thick slices
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1–2 teaspoons sugar
• a handful of mint leaves
• a pinch of dried chili
• salt
• optional: a tablespoon of raisins and a few pine nuts

Preparation

1. Warm the oil in a wide pan and cook the onion gently until soft and pale, about 6 minutes.
2. Add the pumpkin in a single layer, season with salt, and cook covered over low heat 15–20 minutes, turning once or twice, until tender but not collapsing.
3. Stir the vinegar and sugar together and pour it over. Raise the heat and let it bubble 2–3 minutes, until the liquid has reduced to a glaze rather than a sauce.
4. Add the chili, the raisins and pine nuts if using, and most of the mint. Cook one minute more.
5. Take it off the heat and let it sit at least 15 minutes — it’s better warm than hot. Scatter the rest of the mint over. Keeps several days in the fridge.