Here I am in the middle of making some Hatch chile sauce. These chiles have been fire roasted by the grocery store. The skin has been blackened into a state resembling activated charcoal. And nothing has been done to these chiles before roasting, so I have to remove the stem, seeds, and blackened skin. I add some onion, chicken stock, and vegetable stock.

Now I consider a thickening agent. And I am in the mood for a roux. I put two tablespoons of butter and flour in a small non-stick pan and stir vigorously over a medium heat. The mixture turns from white, to yellow, to light brown, to coffee milk color, to peanut butter color. I remove the pan from the stove and continue to stir madly. There is a lot of residual heat left. Even when I dump the mixture into the sauce, the super heated oil flash boils the sauce. Which is when the smell overwhelms me. And I bath in a primal memory of coffee…