Katja Wulff, coffee pot cook
Interview by Paul Oswell, Photos by Dan Sörensen

Katja Wulff lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. She has been running her blog, Coffee Machine Cuisine, for five years. In it, she details her culinary adventures as she makes, well, pretty much anything and everything with her coffee pot and a variety of household accessories. Her boyfriend Dan takes the photos. Her cats photobomb them sometimes. Adorable hilarity (and actual good food) ensues.

You discovered coffee pot cuisine when you made noodles the first time. What was the next dish you moved on to? How long before you were making recipes with three or four steps? (In short, was it a quick evolution?) 
The next dish was instant soup, so that was easy, I just cooked some water and added the soup. After that, hot dogs. Maybe after about a week after I started the Swedish blog (5 years ago) I prepared a dish and it was a pasta dish with parmesan, bacon and some other stuff. I invited a friend of mine over to taste it and he got sick (I thought he overreacted though, he was just dramatically picky). The thing was that I fried the bacon inside of the carafe and as you can imagine the texture of the bacon wasn't what it was supposed to be, it got really mushy. After a while i realized that I had to fry directly on the coffee maker heater if I wanted to fry something crispy. So now I know how to cook bacon perfectly! Directly on the heater for 40 minutes. 

Is the coffee pot good for a lot of traditional Swedish dishes? 
Yup! All of the Swedish dishes I know of I can cook. But I prefer the untraditional ones with ingredients like fish head, squids, testicles, pig tails etc. For me it's more important that it's interesting to cook, catchy names (Testicle Tacos), cool to look at and that it should be funny and inspiring rather than it should taste good. I'm not a particularly good cook, I never was. Not taste wise that is. My boyfriend Dan (who also take the photos) always tells me that I over spice everything, but he's kind of picky as well. But I know well how to prepare stuff with a coffee maker and I learned to cook many things this way. I wasn't interested in cooking at all before this (and I'm still not, this is more of an experiment for me if that makes sense). The first time I boiled an egg on a stove I had to ask Dan how to do it. I knew that it should cook for like 45 minutes in the coffee maker, but didn't know how long it should take the "traditional" way. 

What's the most people you have cooked for with your pot? Can you host a dinner party now? 
I don't like to host dinner parties (like I said I don't like to cook!) so I've never done it and probably I never will.  The recipes I make are mostly for two persons (or three cats if I make cat food) but that depends on what I prepare. I think the most people I cooked for was three dishes for 5 people. It was on live TV and I had to do it in 45 minutes. They let me use three coffee makers and they actually thought it tasted great! 

Have any of your experiments gone very wrong? Has anything broken the coffee pot?
The first time I was invited to a TV show was just after a couple of weeks after I started my coffee machine experiment. (That host thought it tasted awful but that's another story...) I broke my coffee maker during the trip to the show, but after that coffee maker (that broke almost five years ago) I've been working with the same one. I smashed a couple of carafes though, but that happens easily. 

Is there a particular brand or model of coffee pot that you favour or recommend? 
I like my old fashioned Melitta, but my dream coffee maker is a pink Mocca Master. The important thing is that the heater isn't like a "cave heater". I don't know how to explain it on English but if you compare this picture with this you will probably know what I mean. It's easier to fry on the heater when it's free and not surrounded by the plastic wall.  A Coffee Queen would be nice to have if I'm gonna start to host those dinner parties one day...

Have you made meals in hotel rooms with the in-room coffee pot? It seems like that's a good cheap way to avoid paying for room service? 
Yes I have. Once me and Dan had a romantic bath tub date in a hotel room and I plugged in the coffee maker on a table next to the tub and lit some candles. We ate different coffee maker-made tapas and drank lots of wine in that tub for hours. We were full, tipsy and wrinkly when we finally got up.

Do your cats have a more varied diet because of your experiments? I imagine they are used to eating almost anything by now...
They have tried some different stuff yes. Gucci and Iggy are a bit picky sometimes but Zappa eats everything, except for the birthday cake I prepared for them in my coffee maker using lots of different cat food and treats. It smelled horrible and it took hours to cook and decorate. 

Is there a food community (online or real life) of people using strange implements to cook? I know you use...hair irons for waffles and steaks...what else can be used from around the house? 
No, not that I know of. Well I've heard of Car-b-q, dishwasher cooking and similar experiments but nothing as wide as the Coffee Machine Cuisine. I've used hair curler, iron, bread roaster, toaster, dishwasher, hair waffle iron, vacuum cleaner, hair dryer... and probably a couple of more stuff. I really want to try cooking with a washing machine but Dan has forbidden me. None of the other appliances are nearly as good and versatile as the coffee maker but it's fun to try it sometimes. 

Tell us a bit about your travel life. Where do you like to go? Anywhere on your wish list? Do you travel with your coffee pot? 
I love to travel to warm countries with nice beaches and live on hotels with dreamy pool areas... I prefer to really relax rather than explore when I travel. I would like to have the opportunity to visit epic cities like Los Angeles, Hong Kong, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, Tokyo, Sydney, San Fransisco, Peking, Shanghai... You name it! But when we finally have money for it we spend it on a trip to Thailand and a hotel with that dreamy pool area I always long for.  My dream is to go on a trip around the world with my coffee maker and prepare different local food with my coffee maker. I think that would be an amazing blog, series of articles or even another published book, don't you think? :) Oh, that would be so cool!

Gothenburg is a beautiful place, but what are your favourite parts of the city? Why should people come to the west coast?
I guess the coast outside of Gothenburg is fantastic, I never go there though. But if you visit the west coast you should probably go there somewhere. And Liseberg is fun! No, my best tip if you visit Gothenburg is to visit when the fantastic local artist Håkan Hellström has a concert. Warm up before the concert with some wine and beers in the park. After the concert visit the pubs at the "Andra Lång" street and celebrate with cheap beer all night long. 

Do you think being Swedish helps with having these eccentric ideas? Do you think being called Katja meant you were destined to love cats? Do you also love wolves? 
My mother always tells me when I go on and on talking about my cats that "I knew when I got you that you loved cats, that's why you got the name Katja". That's just a load of crap though. I grew up with a lot of cats around me, but also dogs and lots of birds. I would love to have much more animals but cats are the most manageable when you live in the city in an apartment (but they definitely are my absolute favorite animal). I hope that we someday will have a big house outside the city core where we could have lots of different animals. Not wolves though. I don't like wolves. Oh, now Dan (whose latest tattoo was a picture of a wolf) told me when he read my answers that "WTF don't you like wolves?! How can you NOT like wolves?! They are majestic and cool animals... and blah blah blah". So I guess I kind of like wolves. He does have a point.

All photos are by Dan Sörensen.  To find out more, visit CoffeeMachineCuisine.com and follow Katja on Twitter: kaffekokarkock

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