Busily improvising coffee in northwest Maine, off duty from sipping around Cambridge and Somerville, I learn the Hindi word jugaad and am delighted to add this most useful term to my (coffee) vocabulary. It translates loosely as “making do with what you have,” using available technologies and substances to attempt a (usually more simply achieved) desired outcome.
I ignore the burned, overroasted, thinly infused or warmed-over brews within 10 miles of my rental “camp” up here in Maine. I must make do, must jugaad in the log cabin. There is a grinder. There is a Mr. Coffee sort of machine and an electric tea kettle. Easy – if you’ve brought two weeks of reasonably freshly roasted beans or ordered them delivered from Tandem, a very good roaster in Portland, way over on the coast. (And easy if the thunderstorm doesn’t shut down the electricity.)
Remove the filter holder from the Mr. Coffee and put it over a thermos jug or even over a cup, use the papers to hold the grounds you’ve only just made and pour the hot water, cooled slightly from boiling. And voilà!
This reminds me of more difficult jugaad situations. On a flight to Tokyo when 14 hours without coffee might be intolerable, my son brought out a folding filter holder, a paper filter and some coffee ground a bit before liftoff and asked the flight attendant for hot water and a real cup. Provided with these on pull-down tabletops, he produced a pour-over worth sipping.
He’s done this before. At the hospital where I was recovering from an appendectomy, he prepared excellent coffee on the floor near the bed.
And in many many hotel rooms, I, armed with the collapsible filter holder, papers and recent-enough coffee ground, have jiggered the Nespresso or Keurig machine to produce hot water – running it a few times before pouring to remove the stale capsule coffee taste. Companions have been amused, doubtful, but in the end pleased.
There was even a terrible time when hot tap water was the only recourse. Ruefully remembered.
So I’m lucky up here. Home coffee with a lake view is best. Next week I’ll be home and appreciating the ingenuity of jugaad, but there will be no need to juggle at home or in our many good cafés.
Corky White, a food anthropologist at Boston University, has lived in Cambridge since 1953 with long sojourns in Japan. She has written articles on coffee for Standart Magazine and books including “Cooking for Crowds” (in its 40th Anniversary edition) “Coffee Life in Japan” and, with her son, Ben Wurgaft, “Ways of Eating.” Corky is grounded in coffee and welcomes suggestions at cwhite@csindie.com.
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