The Spice of Life
Special Edition
So Epicurious, in celebrating their 15 year birthday, have unwittingly inspired a multitude of fun foodie projects for me. I hope I remember them all as I type but if not there will be more to follow:
To start, Epicurious has put together a bunch of fun lists to celebrate their birthday, a few notable ones I will list and discuss but for a more in-depth look you can check out all of their other lists here.
One of my favorites was the list concerning the Top Ten Best Kitchen Gadgets. These include:
1. Global Cooks knife: I want one of these sooooo badly. I have told Chris rather explicitly that a whole set will go on our wedding registry when we go dream-registry shopping at William Sonnoma
2. OXO good Grip tongs: such a good idea...will be grabbing a pair
3. Mandolin. Mine is much lower tech then the one featured but I thought I would mention that a mandolin is an amazing tool that I can't actually remember life before. It makes rather daunting tasks (like making a slice of something so thin you can see through it) as simple as gliding aforementioned item over the blade. Also good for slicing finger tips thinly and neatly. go get now!!!
4.Silpat...if you don't have one it's like your one of those people that drink Bud and Dunkin Doughnuts because it's "the best". I will just keep my mouth shut because at present you are happy not knowing just how good life can be.
5. Kitchen Aid: Ahh modern cooking's purple fashions, Herme's or automobiles: a clear delineating line between the culinary have's and have not's. Without this machine (as I sadly was for one trying year in my apartment) life is just harder and less fulfilling. This machine is a beast. No cooking technique cannot be managed at it's helm. It is a culinary Albatross and it sits, with a silent dignity, atop my dream registry. For now using Marilou's is still awesome....but this machine will be mine...oh yes.
6. Immersion blender: This is the last of those "what did I do before..." for me. This stupid little stick blender makes life exponentially easier. For instance: when making squash soup, I could blend, in batches the steaming hot, orange shirt-staining soup in a Cuisinart, risking life, limb, and about 10 cups of soup in the process as the recipe describes ...
ooooooor
I can just use the immersion blender. And the ability to blend a substance in it's own small cup rather then in a blender makes life so easy when making complicated recipes with a multitude of pureed elements. do yourself a favor.
7. Rabit Corkscrew: ok they got me here. Because the insistence that you need this motorized bottle opening monstrosity forgets one of the hallmarks of becoming a foodie and learning to cook. Looking down smugly at those that can't as classless swine. Snobby: hells yeah, but I feel earned. Those people who can't be bothered to boil water, eat frozen dinners everyday, and don't venture into the vast world of culinary adventure beyond Rachael Ray and her 17,00 recipes for hamburgers and mac-and-cheese are lazy. There it is. And they have every right to be. Not everyone reacts to food beyond needing it to live. Like all other facets of life it is our passions that define us. Ours is food. We have made recipes just because they look hard. We save our pennies to afford new and exciting culinary experiences in dim overprices cafes. We live for this. And that being said, when we have these non-cooking people over, why wouldn't we take an opportunity to show off our hours of work at the stove by rescuing them when they can't open your dinners bottle of wine (the vintage of course of no significance to them because their experience does not venture beyond the many color-coded version of Barefoot) with your handy dandy waiters friend. And they can watch in awe as you use this beguiling tool in a near expert fashion. Conclusion: your a damn snob so get a damn waiters friend and leave it at that.
8. OXO salad spinner: verdict: drying lettuce is a pain in the ass....though I want them to come out with a small bowl'd version of this so I can wash individual salad servings. Just a thought OXO
9. Cuisinart slow cooker. haven't actually used this one....mental note
10. Accusharp knife sharpener. never saw before.....WANT ONE!!!
In addition, Epicurious's list of Top Foodie Movies has given me a new list of things to put on Netflix. I promise to watch them all and see if I agree with their placement. Also, I feel Simply Irresistible was denied a place on the list wrongly. While it is a bit of superficial derivative fluff, it was still cute, featured the sublimely crush worthy Sean Patrick Flannery, and had a cute story line with some interesting food moments (crab Napoleons for example)
Also Tortilla Soup: I don't cook Mexican habitually, this movie makes me wish I did. No Spanglish!!!
My reading of the best chefs led me to 71 Clinton Fresh food (I want to goooo) and this recipie.
And finally, one criticism of their list of the "Next Martha Stewart". they forgot the #1 contender
me!!!
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