Espresso at home

Well, dear readers, it has been a while, and I apologise. Between the Winter of Doom (five bad colds and counting) and the various social events I've attended/catered/organised, there has been no time for you.

However I find myself with a rare five minutes' peace - the baby is napping, the kitchen is clean - and a troubling problem that you, reading this, may be able to help me with.

I recently had a birthday, and requested and was granted an espresso machine by my generous parents. My very generous parents: I requested Sunbeam, I got deLonghi.

Let's all take a moment to admire it because it is very pretty. It conjures up images of lazy sunday mornings, sitting on the couch opposite my husband, each of us luxuriously imbibing a hot, rich, freshly brewed coffee while the baby sits on the floor and does adorable things and shows no interest in our coffee whatsoever. There is laughter and sunshine and pyjama pants, and possibly a lazy cat being cuddly and interacting with the baby.

Is that too much to ask?

The problem with this picture is the coffee. Neither husband nor myself know the first thing about using an espresso machine at home. Well, that's not entirely true. But neither of us know the second thing, and there seem to be at least ten things before you can get to a decent cup of coffee.


At work we have a lovely Miele espresso machine where you put your pods in here and your cup over there and your milk in this jug and then go and get a tim tam and when you get back, there is a perfect latte waiting for you. At home, I get something like coffee flavoured dishwater with milky bubbles. Help! What am I doing wrong?

Part of the problem is that the coffee I make looks like this:

When it should look like this:

Husband very helpfully tells me that I have too much milk (he knows a lot about milk in coffee; he's been drinking long blacks for about fifteen years). I know that's not the problem because I have loads of milk in my coffee at work and that just makes it taste more like milk, not like dishwater. This morning I decide to just let it keep pouring until it stopped naturally. I had a mug completely full of espresso before I hit the off button. I've tried finely grinding the beans, coarsely grinding them, packing them tight, not having much in there at all - does anyone know the answer to this terribly important first world question? How do you make a decent cup of coffee at home?