Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

'Tis the season: Special kitchen edition

Y'all know I like to cook, as does the rest of my family. So we spend a lot of time asking ourselves "What do you get for the cook who has everything?" (One previous suggestion here.)

Here's a slam dunk for a big gift, a KitchenAid mixer. It is one of the joys of my culinary life. I have the big, super-powerful one:

A friend came over to cook with me on Saturday, and we used my KitchenAid to make souffles. She was blown away. No scraping the sides? she asked in awe, and I realised that yes, there are people who still have to stand next to their mixers with a rubber spatula, scraping the batter on the sides into the bottom because the mixer blade doesn't reach. I, on the other hand, just set the thing and go back to fixing the rest of my recipe--a huge time saver. Then, of course, there's the speed of the thing, which is breathtaking -- it whips egg whites and cream so fast that you barely have time to get the rest of your recipe ready.

Then there are the attachments. The mixer comes with not just a normal blade, which you use for batters, but a whisk (egg whites and whipped cream) and a dough hook--and yes, a machine really can knead your dough just as well as you do by hand. I know I sound like an infomercial here, but that dough hook really does turn breadmaking from a major undertaking into a minor escapade. (Mmmmmm . . . homemade bread.) You can also buy all sorts of extra attachments: a meat grinder, a pasta-roller, a juicer, a slicer, a grain mill and even a special bowl for making ice-cream . . . KitchenAid guarantees that all their attachments (other than bowls) fit all their mixers, including the first ones it made back in the thirties. The mixers are pricier than others, but you literally have them for a lifetime; my Mom's had hers since the 1970's, and there are people out there using KitchenAids from the 1930's. Every woman in my family has one. And since my computer-phobic mother never reads this site, I can safely tell you that my sister and I are getting her the attachment pack, which has a meat grinder, food strainer, and slicer, for Christmas.

But if you don't want to pay the price for the super-deluxe model, there are more reasonably priced versions. While I recommend the extra power, even the smaller KitchenAids, the five quart professional or the compact version are worlds above the average stand mixer, in terms of power, reliability, and ease of use. (Several family members own--and love--smaller ones than mine.) They also come in multiple colors: black, my sister's favourite cobalt blue, ultra-hip nickel, and a bunch of other colors, some of which are a little extreme (grape, tangerine, and cranberry, for example . . . whose kitchen will match these colors in 30 years?). If you have a cook that you shop for, and you don't know quite what to get him or her, and they're using the same old Sunbeam their mother left them that has barely more power than an old-fashioned hand-operated rotary egg-beater, then I guarantee you this will change their life.

Little pricey for you? Their hand mixer also rocks; I had one until I accidentally submerged it in a sink full of dirty dishwater for 30 minutes. As you can see, there's one on my wish list, so I'm not just saying this.

Jacques Pepin's Fast Food My Way is my current new cookbook obsession. The idea is things that are fast and easy to make, but from a master chef (he and Julia Child have done many wonderful cooking shows together.) Since I'm single, and it's fattening and wasteful to whip up major meals for just myself, I love it.

I've been encouraging my friends who cook for more than one to get a mandoline. A pricey one like the Oxo is great for the gourmet chef, but a model like this Hoffritz is within reach of just about anyone, and extremely useful for slicing, shredding potatoes for latkes, or shredding onion without crying (because it immediately falls into the bowl). I'm also a huge fan of gadgets to grate your own spices (doesn't take as much time as you think, and it makes a huge difference in flavour). I endorse shredders that let you shred straight into a container. I adore my food chopper, which really takes the work out of the inevitable task of chopping mounds of onion, celery, and peppers for recipes--not to mention nuts and cheese. And if you want the single best stocking stuffer for a chef, for my money it's the microplane zester, which lets you remove the zest (the colored part of the rind) from lemons and oranges. It seems awfully specialised, when you first hear about it. But an amazing number of recipes call for zest, and this does a really unbelievably superior job, removing just the flavourful colored part of the rind, and leaving the bitter white part you don't want on the fruit.

Posted by Jane Galt at December 9, 2004 6:40 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>