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The Kitchen Confrontation
by George W. Hamilton
AS ANYBODY KNOWS who knows anything at all about the art of cooking these days, no kitchen is complete without an assortment of accessories and devices which, one is assured, not only make light of the otherwise most taxing chore, but accomplish it with a speed hardly to be believed. The results not only rival grandmother’s achievements, but indeed are implied to be better, earlier generations having suffered for lack of all the modern devices which mix/grind/whip/beat/scrub much better than anything of which she might have dreamed. Granted we are all one or another subject to the hypnotic powers of advertising, but my New England background, conservative vis-a-vis such claims, has left me with a measure of skepticism which, if properly and regularly applied, enables me – or should – to achieve substantial savings as a result of things not having been acquired.
That, of course, is fine theory. For years I resisted the temptation to make as much as a passing acquaintance with a dishwasher, other than the old-fashioned, manual kind, hopefully two-person variety, one for washing and one for drying. Father, who was an archetypal New Englander and passed along to my sister and me that Scottish lineage which makes life all the more trying at times, had forever insisted that a dishwasher was nonsense.
“Why have to wash the dishes, just to put them in a machine which rewashes them and dries them off, leaving spots on the glasses (that was indeed the case in those days) and taking a lot of energy and water which could be saved by only slightly more thorough washing the first time around?” was Father’s argument. It made sense. Or it did until I acquired a house in the States that just happened to have what the realtors refer to as “a fully equipped kitchen.”
The dishwasher was included. I must have lived in the house for over a month before I got up the nerve to overcome my inbred prejudice that dishwashers equalled profligate, spendthrift living. After all, so went my reasoning, I bought and paid for the machine with the house (or the inverse), why not see what it does? I’ve never looked back, and upon selling assorted properties in the US and returning to Vienna, the first move was to rearrange and re-equip the kitchen, but I’ll not do without a dishwasher again if I can help it.
The same mental block applies to an assortment of other kitchen devices, although I must confess that I succumbed years ago to a microwave oven. Again, though, it was the Scotch side of the family that was at fault. It was in Bahrain, and the microwave unit was so reasonably priced that, well, such bargains just can’t be passed up. It functioned as advertised, was a dream and when it finally gave up in Vienna after having been hauled halfway around the world, nothing would do but to find a suitable replacement – for which the kitchen had been designed in the remodeling.
But one device I have resisted all along is a so-called kitchen machine. Devotees of the culinary arts will know of this by brand name as a Cusinart. But what can one of those machines do that I can’t manage with either a mixer, blender, or sharp knife? No, an unnecessary amusement, and not exactly inexpensive at that. Then my neighbor bought one. Not a contemporary made-in-Japan Cusinart (as they have been for several years now), but an honest-to-goodness Robot Coupe, made in France by the people who invented the thing (including the Cusinart) in the first place, and who also make heavy-duty restaurant equipment, including kitchen machines, so ought to know what they’re talking about.
Finally, I thought, I’ll have a chance to see what one of these beasties can really do. Well, neighbor was keeping up with the Joneses, and found the Robot Coupe somewhat complicated to use (as is any one of the machines.) She used it once. I never did get a demonstration. But when I heard she was going to repack the machine in its carton and pass it over to friends who assured her that they could get back the original price at a garage sale, that was too much. I would pay the same, I declared, and thus acquired the machine.
How do you test such a device? Slice carrots? Mix bread dough? I thought that simple bread crumbs would be a nice idea. After all, when our kaiser rolls or unsliced bread go stale and dry, they still make lovely crumbs (that Scotch influence again!) for a meatloaf, roast chicken stuffing or casserole topping. My usual method for bread crumb production involves putting the bread or rolls in a tough paper bag, banging it with a hammer on a cutting board, and dumping out the assorted but more or less even pieces. It is admittedly a noisy, crumby and haphazard system, and takes about five minutes for four or five dried rolls. How marvelous to accomplish all this in seconds with the new machine!
First problem: the rolls have to be cut before they will go down the machine’s feeder tube. Stupid. Put them in whole, you say, then put on the lid. Fine, but then they jump around like tennis balls and no crumbs result. Alas, the necessary cutting resulted in a bit of untidiness around the kitchen. More stray crumbs than with the bag-and-hammer method, but presumably that’s part of the price of progress.
Well, so much for that aspect of convenience. The lumps of stale bread knocked about inside the machine making a noise that easily rivaled the decibel level of my usual hammering procedure. In the bottom of the container was a layer of fine crumb dust, while other pieces bounced about merrily, oblivious of the sharp blades. Three batches and some ten minutes later, I had the kitchen more or less back in order, crumbs neatly put away in a labeled jar and a messy machine to be wiped out. Granted, I now know more about the machine’s workings than before the experiment, and probably the next effort really ought to be bread dough or something else that really challenges both of us.
On the other hand, maybe I’ll just develop a specialty and stay with bread crumbs. No device yet chops ingredients for my favorite pickle relish recipes as well as a sharp knife held in the right hand and applied with an even pressure and consistency.
The kitchen revolution? Father may not have been so far off the mark after all.
Fish Baked in Foil
2 lbs. fish fillets (cod, perch, or flounder)
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 carrot, julienned
1 lemon, quartered
dry white wine
Mrs. Dash (a mixture of herbs and spices)
Divide fish into four portions. Place each portion in center of a 12-inch square of foil. Brush fish with oil, sprinkle with wine then with Mrs. Dash. Put slivers of carrot in each packet. Seal foil.
Place foil packet in a shallow pan, and bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Fold back foil and serve in packets with quartered lemon.
Hand set, printed and published by Leah G. Warner at the Boxwood Press, Greenbelt, MD 20770.