In lisa’s kitchen, we offer cooking classes to inspire home cooks to master basic skills, learn new techniques and find inspiration stemming from the garden’s bounty. We ‘promise’ at least on ah-ha moment in each class and after almost ten years we haven’t disappointed.
A running joke is that the kitchen generally has all the necessary tools and then some. So when a chef says he needs a microplane, it’s there; a silpat, check; squeeze bottle, got that too; mandoline, immersion blender, no problem. You might say any cooking program worth its salt would have these items. I would agree.
But over the years I have acquired some kitchen toys that might not fall into the essential category. For instance, there’s the pasta maker, no, not the roller type but the one that you add ingredients, point and shoot. The apple/peeler/corer may have been fun for the first spiral it created and then got relegated to the bottom drawer. And we can’t forget the onion goggles, a gift.
As unnecessary as they may be, gadgets are fun. My daughter Bari came home recently from a party in NYC where a whipped cream maker was repurposed to extract flavors from ingredients and infuse liquor. After hearing her description of this molecular gastronomic event, we rushed out to our favorite local store, Charles Dept Store in Katonah where we knew we’d find the device. Returning home, we assembled strawberries and bananas, coffee beans, chocolate and almonds and set at infusing vodka, supplied by my sister Karen, co-conspirator in this kitchen chemistry experiment. The results were delicious—but I sent the gadget home with Bar, knowing its fate if left with me.
Recently, back in lisa’s kitchen, we needed some freshly squeezed lemon juice so naturally it was time to talk gizmos & gadgets. In its simplest form, taking a lemon, rolling it gently on the counter, slicing along the equator and inserting a fork, efficiently extracts the prized juice. But then there are reamers (recently featured in Florence Fabricant’s New York Times column), citrus presses and of course electric juicers (yes I have two of those!). While I love having the juicers when I’m doing multiple fruits for my sponge cakes, I can’t help but chuckle as I pull them out, use and clean them before returning them to disuse for many months.
At the end of the day, my vote is for simplicity. To cook, you don’t need gizmos and gadgets—all you really need are a set of great knives (also available at Charles) and fire.
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