(1) I like strong coffee from my Bialetti stovetop cut with a hefty measure – about a quarter of a pint – of hot milk.
(2) I started as a drinker of instant coffee in Karachi, graduated as a university student in upstate New York to the filtered version, and flirted briefly with the french press cafetière in London before a summer at a writer's retreat in Tuscany introduced me to the Italian stovetop coffeemaker – and the long espresso and I found each other.
(3) It was a desire to hold on to that Tuscan summer as much as anything else that made me return to London and seek out a stovetop coffeemaker of my own; for years it travelled with me as my life bounced between London, upstate new York and Karachi.