December 2004

What You Need: Essential Gear Only
The Kitchen Samurai

This year has been a good one for me. My dear, sweet monkeypanda (read Beloved Darling) and I have just put a contract on a house, so, at long last, we'll finally have A Place of Our Own, our own little plot of earth for just the two of us to share. Well, just the two of us and His Other White Meatliness, aka. Behemoth Jehosaphat Cat.

The trouble is, we bought, my monkeypanda and I, in the Del Ray area of Alexandria, Virginia, the newest hip burg in the finest Commonwealth known to the crotchety god of Commonwealths, so all our precious, precious monies got us little more than a walk-in closet with a water closet. Our new kitchen is visible only under a microscope. In order to fit my bulk into the kitchen and still have room left over for a pork chop, it seems we have to revisit our kitchen gear and throw out everything we cannot do without. To this end, we are winnowing through our pots, pans, knives, and spatulas, and giving away anything that we can part with without feeling as though we're losing a limb. The goal is to have a lean, mean functioning kitchen with only the bare minimum of stuff. Which brings us to the point of this here column.

Though you good people are probably not in the same pickle I'm in, you probably are thinking of what to buy peoples you know for Christmas, Hannukah, Yule, Hogswatch Eve, or what have you. Some of you might even be thinking of giving your dear friends and relations cooking stuff.

Stop. Don't. Please.

People who give cooking gear as gifts are an odd lot, motivated by impulses I do not understand. When buying for experienced cooks, they buy odd, "neat" gadgets that said cooks will never use. When buying for young cooks new to the game, they go out and buy huge sets of cheap nonstick pans, half of which will wear away in two months, and the other half will sit for years on some back shelf, untouched. In my own experience, I have received olive pitters, plastic "lettuce" (wtf?) knives, peelers, pokers, prodders, shrimp deveiners, garlic presses… myriad toys designed to replace a knife, which simple hunk of metal does all these tasks with far greater ease than the specialized tools and with far less space needed for storage that what amounts to a drawerful of junk. In the case of the young cook, every novice I know seems to own a 10" nonstick skillet from Ikea that burns anything set in it over all but the lowest heat, as well as a collection of pots they have no idea how to use. It's no wonder people think cooking is hard; the wrong tools badly designed are everywhere, like little landmines on the path to culinary achievement.

So, for YulemaskuhzaHogswatch this year, buy your friends and family useful shit. Here are some ideas and guidelines:

As a general rule, buy nothing for the kitchen that serves only one purpose. If it is SO specialized it can only perform one task, it is only taking up space for every second you aren't using it to perform said task. Fuck it.

As another general rule, buy open stock. Yes, sets are cheap. Right up to the point you realize, "Hey! This 8 piece set contains 3 pans I really want, 2 pans I'll prolly want to change or upgrade in a year, and 3 lumps of metal whose purpose I can only hope to guess! I'd be buying this set for 3 fucking pans!" It's not a deal if you buy 3 pans for the price of 8 while the others just come home with you to take up real estate.

The same rule applies to knives. Buy. Open. Stock. You do not need a sandwich knife. You do not need a tomato knife. If you are most people you do need:

As many cheap paring knives as you can fit in your kitchen; the average person never has enough because the damned things wander off (probably with your socks), so you need about 8 to ensure you always have one to hand. Spend no more than $6 per knife.

A chef's knife. One, decent knife, at least 8" long. If you chop a lot of vegetables and little meat, look into picking up one of the newly popular Santoku-style knives, a slightly Westernized take on the Japanese vegetable knife. No matter the shape, everyone needs one good chef's knife because they are the kitchen workhorse par excellence: they chop, slice, smash, tenderize, and all without being so skinny you rap your knuckles on the board chopping garlic. You can spend a lot of money on a chef's knife, but it's worth investing in a good one since they'll last, if cared for, for 100 years or more. Even if you want one on the cheap, you can pick up a stamped knife from Forschner, or buy one of the new Henckels line forged in Spain; they're not the classic German knives our parents loved, but they're good knives at half the price, without any of the quality issues that plague the "higher-end" Henckels lines. I like them better, and you can find them for around $40 at Target.

A steel. This aligns the edge of your knives, making sharpening a rare necessity. If you buy someone knives, buy them a steel. Force them, at gun point if you must, to use it every time they use their knives. A couple of licks on each side of the blade at 20 degrees is all it takes to keep your knives sharp for a year between sharpenings.

Other knives, such as a serrated knife for bread or a boning knife for trimming meat and boning chicken legs, might become necessary later, but the set above will do most folks at first.

Similarly, most folks struggle through lives with crap pans. For those starting out, two are necessary, unless they're starting out cooking for 3 or more: most folks need an 8" and a 10" skillet. For ease, both these should be ovenproof so they can sear on the cooktop and finish in the oven; i.e., no plastic handles. I'd recommend cast iron, assuming your recipients can be trusted not to rust cast iron to death, otherwise, spring for stainless steel.

Saucepans are great. Make sure they have a 1 quart and a 2.5 or 3 quart. If your cooks are doing nothing too complicated, any old crap nonstick pot will do. If they work with sugar, sauces, chocolate, etc, you might want to invest in copper or stainless steel for them, and you'd best love these folks a lot - you can run into money here.

Half sheet or cookie sheet pans. Shiny aluminum is good, Costco has them in packages of 3 for $13. Dark, non-stick stuff overbrowns your cookie bottoms. If you want to buy a baker or cook you know a newfangled gadget, invest in a silpat. The things are ingenious; silicone baking mats to line baking sheets, and NOTHING will stick to them. Not even pure sugar. O, Lord, they're so pretty. And, if you don't know if your recipient already has one, I've never met anyone who would balk at having two or more. Bring on the silpat army!

Pyrex baking dishes, 8x8 and 9x13. They work. They're cheap.

Silicone spatulas from Le Crueset. They are not cheap. They are, however, heatproof up to 800 fucking degrees. Unless you cook on the sun, that ought to do you.

Lastly, cookbooks are always a great investment, and for anyone who does not own it, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything is an impressive tool for the novice or the cook looking for ideas. Everything is not as comprehensive as The Joy of Cooking, but it's even less intimidating than that old chestnut, and has a more modern sensibility even than the latest revision of Joy. If you're buying for a serious cook, by the way, or a particularly curious one, check out James Peterson's Essentials of Cooking, a technique-based book that might come as close as a book can to being a cooking course splayed out on paper. If you know someone who's serious about cooking, they need this book.

Go forth and buy, kiddies, unless you live close to me. In which case, come browse through my stuff before I give it to Salvation Army.