Hot Ginger Coffee

The first week without Amma in a kitchen. Not my kitchen or hers — any kitchen. The memory care facility doesn't allow residents to cook. Safety regulations. Reasonable, necessary, devastating. Lakshmi Krishnamurthy, who has stood at a stove every day for forty-five years, will not stand at a stove again. I know this is right. I know the risk — the gas left on, the oil overheated, the disease taking the last fortress. I know that the cooking was holding by a thread and the thread was fraying. I know. But the cooking was her. Not the thing she DID — the thing she WAS. The cooking was Lakshmi. Take away the cooking and what remains is a woman in a room with a Ganesh statue and a brass filter she can no longer use. Appa visited every day this week. He sat in her room and talked and held her hand and read the crossword clues aloud. She answered some — the easy ones, the three-letter words. She's still sharp in the short crossword-clue way. The brain is strange: it loses the name 'Arvind' but keeps the answer to '3 Down: cooking spice, 5 letters' (CUMIN). I visited Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday. I brought sambar, rasam, rice. I fed her — not because she can't feed herself (she can, mostly) but because feeding her is the only cooking I can do for her now. The sambar travels from my kitchen to her room. The recipe, made in the kitchen she'll never use again, eaten in a room she doesn't recognize as home. Anaya asked where Paati is. 'Paati lives somewhere new now, where people help her.' 'Can we visit?' 'Of course.' 'Can we bring sambar?' 'We always bring sambar.' 'Good. Paati needs sambar.' Paati needs sambar. The simplest, most accurate medical recommendation a five-year-old has ever made. I made the sambar. The Sunday version. The full production. And I portioned it into containers and labeled them and drove them to the memory care facility and left them with the nurse who stores them in the kitchen the residents can't use. The sambar arrives. The woman doesn't leave. The food finds a way.

Amma’s brass filter sits on the counter at her old house, unused now, but I think about it every time I make something warm and spiced — the hiss of the decoction, the smell that meant morning. This hot ginger coffee isn’t sambar, and it isn’t filter kaapi, but it carries the same instinct: steep something healing, let it warm through, bring it to the person who needs it. On the Sundays I pack the sambar containers, I make a cup of this first, for myself, before the driving starts. Grief needs something to hold.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

2 cups water
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced (or 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger)
2 tablespoons coarsely ground dark-roast coffee
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 cup whole milk or oat milk
1 to 2 tablespoons honey or sugar, to taste

Instructions

Simmer the ginger. Combine the water and sliced ginger in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 5 minutes to let the ginger infuse.
Add coffee and spices. Stir in the ground coffee, cardamom, cinnamon, and black pepper. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 more minutes. Do not boil vigorously or the coffee will turn bitter.
Warm the milk. While the coffee steeps, heat the milk in a separate small saucepan over medium-low heat until steaming but not boiling, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat.
Strain and combine. Pour the coffee mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into two mugs, pressing the grounds lightly with the back of a spoon to extract full flavor. Discard solids.
Sweeten and serve. Stir honey or sugar into each mug until dissolved. Pour the warmed milk over the top — or froth it first if you like — and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Hot Ginger Coffee — The Brass Filter She Can No Longer Use