Got me some new steel:
This razor sharp beast has been my ally for a few weeks now, and I love it. Well, not the one in the picture… mine is the 240mm version.
Check out this site for a lot of super cool knives not otherwise available in the USA. Another noteworthy thing is that when they say five day delivery, they mean it! That includes business days…
The packaging also contained an origami swan.
-shogunmoon
So yesterday over my lunch hour I walked over to “Let’s Cook”, a kitchen supply store on Hennepin & University, to buy a citrus press and oddly enough they have a magnetic spice rack just like the one I made that they are selling for over 100 dollars. Here’s a crappy photo I took with my phone:
It’s basically the exact same thing, although I admit this one is a little more blinged out looking.
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As I write this, I have been informed over instant messaging that Syd Barrett has passed. He was only 60. Shogunmoon turned me on to The Madcap Laughs and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in highschool and those albums were played heavily through many lonely teenage days. He will be missed.
As requested, here is the magnetic spice rack I made recently.
I am absent minded, and although I try to follow the principals of Mise en Place in the kitchen, I often find myself scrambling around at the last minute to grate ginger or find a heat resistant spatula for something that requires immediate attention. These are the kinds of instances that make cooking stressful, and keep pizza delivery numbers on speed dial. One way to mitigate these situations is by making ingredients and kitchen tools as accessible as possible.
We have, I think, an obsession with putting things away. When you are young you are constantly being told to put your things away; “Fold your clothes and put them away”, “Put your toys away”, etc. I would try to reason that when all my stuff was scattered across the floor, it made it really easy to find things. I could stand on my bed, and get a panoramic view of my entire inventory. If all of my things were sequestered away in drawers and closets, I might not be able to find something when I needed it, or worse, forget that I owned it in the first place. This argument never got me very far, but I still stand behind it..mostly.
Not that I am advocating keeping kitchen tools and appliances scattered across the floor, but there is a happy medium between the chaotic-and-cluttered, and the hermetically-sealed, we-don’t-actually-cook-here approaches to setting up your kitchen. Check out Julia Child’s kitchen as it appears on display at the American History Museum in Washington D.C. Everything you could possibly need is in plain view. I love the measuring cups hanging to the right of the window, and the fact that she has knives stashed in two separate locations; on the butcher block cart and just to the left of the window. So cool.
So I have been slowly trying to improve my kitchen’s accessibility. I put a single wall shelf above the stove where I now store my salt cellar, olive oil, cracked pepper, and anything else that I might need easy access to while I am cooking at the stove. I installed a magnetic knife holder on the wall above the counter so I have my full array of knives and kitchen sheers available and in plain view when I am doing prep work. But my favorite addition so far is the magnetic spice rack which I “made myself.”
I first stumbled onto this idea at the Washington Post’s website, where they have a semi-regular column on home DIY projects. I really wanted to make it, but the project called for things like metal drill bits and glue guns which would require a trip to the Home Depot which meant that I probably wasn’t ever going to make it. I don’t like the big-box home improvement stores; They make me feel like I am being crushed by the weight of my own inadequacies. I put the project out of my mind until I discovered that Ikea sells large magnetic boards that can easily be screwed onto the wall, and you can order magnetic storage containers online here. This was within my margin of ability so I went ahead and put it together. It was a simple matter of screwing the magnetic board into the wall, washing and then filling the magnetic storage containers with the assorted spices I had scattered around the cupboard, and then labeling the containers. Label makers are cheap. I use this one. This system is awesome for 3 reasons:
1) Spices are easily identifiable and accessible. No more foraging around in the cupboard for spice stored in various sized containers and unlabeled plastic baggies.
2) The wide opening of the containers make it easy to access with measuring spoons. No more trying to jam a tablespoon into one of those skinny McCormik jars, or trying to pour the spice out onto the spoon without dumping the entire contents onto the counter.
3) It looks really cool. Like, expensive cool. I would like to think Julia would be impressed.
So there you have it. Go make one. On the next Swell Stuff for the Kitchen I will be rambling on about my ice cream maker which I am suddenly obsessed over. Take care till then.
I thought I would start a new semi-regular (or perhaps one time only) column in G&P to review helpful tools and products for the kitchen that are not of the garden-variety, or are of the garden-variety but possess some kind of awesome quality that might not be immediately known to the dabbler, like kitchen knives for instance. Speaking of kitchen knives, I happen to know that our own Shogun Moon is an expert on that subject and this whole review column idea is in part just a clandestine attempt to get him to drop that knowledge on us. I have been using the same fifteen dollar cleaver I bought at Sears for over 10 years now and it always seemed to do the job just fine, so I never thought it was worth it to make the 3-figure investment required to obtain a decent set of knives. But the other day when I was cutting up shallots at the Shogun manor for some collaborative cooking that we were doing, I felt like I had super powers. It really is a beautiful thing to cut through some produce with a quality knife. Anyway, on to my tribute to industrial food wrap.
When working in the kitchen everyday you begin to accumulate a lot of little wads of food-stuffs that need to be stored in the refrigerator: leftovers, extra sauce, prepped produce, etc. Unless you have a legion of lidded Pyrex,Tupperware, or Cambro containers at your disposal, you probably use some kind of food wrap or foil to cover your containers. I have always hated those skinny little rectangular boxes of Saran wrap. They are too unwieldy to use. I usually end up yanking the entire roll right out of the box, or surviving that, the cellophane will not dispense uniformly, causing me to have to perform surgery on the thing to reestablish it’s symmetry. Even if you are one of those annoying people who do everything perfectly and are scratching your head right now wondering just what the hell I am talking about because you are a master of the skinny food-wrap boxes, you have to admit that if you are covering a giant bowl of pasta salad to bring to an office potluck, it is irritating to have to dispense 2 or 3 sheets of wrap to cover the entire thing. Reynolds Food Service Film, or similar product, totally alleviates this stress. Anyone who has worked in food service is probably familiar with these giant boxes of food wrap. They can be purchased for home use from any giant-can-of-tuna style store like Costco, or a restaurant supply company. In addition to being easier to dispense sheets of wrap that are large enough to cover any size container you can throw at it, it also lasts forever. This post is in part a tribute to the box I had that just ran out on Monday. I had it for six years(!) I have not lived in the same location for two consecutive years since moving away from home 13 years ago, but I have carted this box of food wrap around with me for 6 years. Good times.