Stuff happens because of kitchen gadgets.<\/p>\n
I was prepping carrots for a white bean soup when my vegetable peeler broke.<\/p>\n
It would have taken me ten minutes to run out and buy a new peeler. But I, a decent home cook, take pride in paring down my reliance upon gadgets that can be supplanted by gadgets I already own.<\/p>\n
I have neither full-size Cuisinart nor microwave. Nor do I have a toaster cluttering up my kitchen surface, accumulating crumbs and mouse incursions (yes, that’s why I tossed the last toaster). Instead, I use a saut\u00e9 pan from Germany. It replaced my old, intermittently toxic, Teflon pan, makes toast to taste and cleans with a swish of my hand.<\/p>\n
Thus, I was fearless as I dumped the broken peeler. Hey, if I was able to toast without a toaster, why couldn\u2019t I peel without a peeler? I grabbed my excellent paring knife and scraped the carrots. A disaster. I threw the carrots into the soup anyway \u2013 soups don\u2019t know about ugly \u2013 and ran out to pick up a new peeler.<\/p>\n
Which went into my essentials drawer with the Zylis cheese grater. But then, like dopey Pandora, I just had to open that other drawer, didn\u2019t I? The drawer containing mysterious implements I thought I\u2019d thrown out years ago.<\/p>\n
Gee, this pair of pliers must\u2019ve crept out of my tool box. Except, no, it\u2019s not pliers; it\u2019s a gadget to crack nuts or shellfish. I bought it when a Innocence Project client who\u2019d just gotten out of prison for a crime he hadn\u2019t committed arrived at the law office I then administered, bearing two live lobsters he\u2019d caught and presented them to me as a gift.<\/p>\n
They crawled around in my bathtub for three days while I researched the kindest way to boil them alive. I\u2019ll never cook a lobster again. Out goes the lobster claw cracker.<\/p>\n
I recently used this funky little pitter on a couple of pounds of cherries, and yes, my thumb was numb and purple for the entire evening. Back in the drawer it will go, however, because in six years I might need it again.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019ll keep the diamond file which I will apply, eventually, to the chipped rims of my late mother\u2019s old wine glasses.<\/p>\n
Still in its original box is a wicked little gizmo that could get me arrested. Labeled La Culinaire Flavorizer, it\u2019s a…junkie\u2019s syringe. The instructions congratulate me: \u201cYou are about to embark upon a truly unique experience in the art of fine cuisine,\u201d an embarkation that somehow I have never launched. I am supposed to fill the syringe with liquid like \u201cbeer an [sic] onion juice\u201d and shoot up a roast. I should use it once before throwing it out, right? (How does one juice an onion? Maybe there’s a kitchen gadget for that.)<\/p>\n
I can barely glance at the W\u00fcsthof oyster opener without gulping a tranquilizer, because the raw oysters for which I had purchased the opener stubbornly rejected German wizardry, leaving me with a shameful memory of screaming obscenities at them as they lay mute and obdurate in the sink.<\/p>\n
Hiding in a far corner are all eighty-nine mucky parts of an electric grinder I used once, to make pat\u00e9. No matter how much brandy I poured in (a lot), the pat\u00e9 never ascended to gourmet heights. In fact, it kept tasting like…chopped liver. It\u2019s a convenience to blame that particular failure on the grinder, so out it goes.<\/p>\n
I dumped a blender which did nothing effectively except clean itself, and a European food mill with insect legs and a medieval grinding arm. Both have been brilliantly taken over by my Cuisinart SmartStik, one of life\u2019s great, multi-purpose kitchen tools, which pureed that aforementioned white bean soup.<\/p>\n
But now I\u2019m gazing into the drawer and mourning the empty space where once lay a funny-looking gadget, a simple little citrus juicer. The exterior posed as a plastic egg. Tucked within the egg was a plastic tube about three inches long. One tube end had a teeny flap; the other tube end was serrated. You screwed the serrated tube end into a lemon, turned the lemon upside down, opened the teeny flap and squeezed out only as much lemon juice as needed. (You used the egg-shaped holder to store the remaining lemon.) Oh, and under the teeny flap was a strainer that caught all the pits. A work of genius.
\nIt cost $5.95. Over more than twenty years of constant use, the flap disintegrated and one by one the tube\u2019s serrations broke off. Weeping, I had to put it to sleep as if it were a toothless pet.<\/p>\n
Now I wander through the earth\u2019s kitchenware stores but have never found its like. If you know of one, please please tell me. I\u2019ve already made a nest for it in my essentials drawer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stuff happens because of kitchen gadgets. I was prepping carrots for a white bean soup when my vegetable peeler broke. It would have taken me ten minutes to run out and buy a new peeler. But I, a decent home … Continue reading