Eat Drink Man Weblog

I’m about to graduate. As I leave my dormitory and venture into the real world, I will become an apartment dweller once again. I’ve been contemplating what cookware I’ll need to gather in order to comfortably prepare food for myself. With the tools that follow you’ll be able to cook virtually anything you can dream up. Any one of these kitchen essentials makes the perfect graduation gift for an aspiring cook. They make wonderful wedding gifts that will find far more use than the fondue set of yore. And they are an excellent starting place for those who are dying to cook more, but don’t know how to begin.

In making my list I depended heavily on cooksillustrated.com. It’s quick and easy to sign up for a free trial. Once you do, you’ll have access to their whole catalog of equipment reviews. Cook’s Illustrated subjects cookware to a wide-ranging set of strenuous tests in their reviews, noting general performance and useful features alike. The Cook’s Illustrated “highly recommended” kitchenware I’ve bought for myself has never disappointed.

But if you don’t want to sign up, Amazon.com customer reviews are a good resource, too. Just avoid being overly influenced by the occasional bad review and try to pay attention to the overall force of the customer recommendations.

Knives and supporting players:

The knife is the most indispensable player in a kitchen. A clever cook can substitute ingredients. In a pinch, aluminum foil or parchment paper will make a wonderful cooking vessel. A grill or fire can apologize for a broken oven. But very few foods come into your house in the shape they will appear in your final dish. Knives are here to help. When you need a sharp piece of steel and you don’t have one, you have little recourse.

The Chef’s knife is the king of knives. It is long enough to handle big jobs without exhausting the cook. It will see you through slicing, dicing, julienning, chiffanading, butchering, and more.

The paring knife lies on the opposite end of the spectrum – it is short, stubby, and lightweight. You use it to “pare away” at foods until they are the right shape for the Chef’s knife to tackle them. You can take the bad spots off a bruised apple with ease; the small size gives you an enormous amount of control. You can dig eyes out of potatoes, and stems out of strawberries. You can quickly trim off the woody ends of mushrooms. Anything that would be unwieldy with a chef’s knife is a fine job for a paring knife.

Amazon has a great deal on a chef’s knife and paring knife set: Forschner 8″ Fibrox Chefs Knife – NSF and 3-1/4″ Paring/Fillet Knife set

The chef’s knife scored top marks in Cook’s Illustrated test in every category: handle comfort, blade shape and sharpness, as well as slicing, chopping, mincing, and butchering ability. And they praised the paring knife for its “great flexibility” and “razor-sharp edge.” The set is shockingly cheap to boot. You get two excellent knives for less than $25 dollars.

A good knife is like your heart: it can only take care of you if you take care of it. If you want to get the most of your new knives, I recommend picking up the Victorinox Cutlery BladeSafe for 8-Inch to 10-Inch Knife Blades and the RH Forschner by Victorinox BladeSafe for 3-Inch to 4-Inch Knife Blades. I have absolutely nothing against knife blocks – but as a once-and-future apartment dweller I know that counter space is too often a precious resource. A plastic knife guard for each of your knives helps them keep their top-rated edge while affording you some storage flexibility. Throw your guarded knives in a drawer, and you can use your countertop for cutting things with your knives, rather than merely displaying them.

My sister once had a landlord attempt to withhold an alarming amount of her security deposit because of a tiny scratch on a countertop. Don’t let this happen to you. Get a Totally Bamboo Congo Parquet End Grain Cutting Board. Cook’s Illustrated prizes it for having the solid feel of a butcher block but the light weight of bamboo. Wood is softer than your countertop, so it will be easier on your knives. If that isn’t enough, wood is a terrible environment for bacteria; they die off within three minutes of being deposited on the surface. (That isn’t to say you shouldn’t always be tremendously careful about cross-contamination in the kitchen, but wood works with you rather than against you.)

Pots and pans:

A cast iron pan is an insanely heavy piece of hardware. The Lodge Logic 12-Inch Pre-Seasoned Skillet weighs 8 pounds. But that heft works with you. 8 pounds of iron holds onto a lot of heat. So when you want to sear a steak, cast iron offers enough heat to brown both sides. And that much metal is virtually indestructible: I guarantee you that it will live longer than you. Which is actually a great thing – a cast iron pan grows more “seasoned” with use. It grows more non-stick with age. Just make sure you read up on how to care for your pan so that you don’t fight against seasoning.

But sometimes you want food to stick the pan – the little stuck, brown bits are called fond. When you deglaze your pan fond becomes part of a flavorful sauce. Pick up an All-Clad Stainless 12-inch Skillet. Cook’s illustrated gave it top marks in performance, sauté speed, user-friendliness, and durability, as well as praising its balance and even heat distribution.

Both the above pans can be shoved into the oven – their handles are 100% metal. So as well as handling stovetop-to-oven projects, like the frittata, they can be used as a roasting vessel in a pinch. (If you are attempting a frittata make sure your cast iron pan is seasoned enough to release it easily – I didn’t.) I’ve roasted chickens in my cast iron pan and enjoyed delicious results.

An overflowing saucepan can ruin a cooking experience. If your pan is overcrowded it is almost impossible to stir without spilling. What should be painless turns laboriously slow and risks a disastrous mess. So if you have only one saucepan, go for volume. The All-Clad Stainless 4-quart Saucepan will easily cook rice, steam artichokes, and even make a small batch of soup, as well as tackling whatever sauce you throw at it.

For those jobs that a saucepan can’t handle, you need a Cuisinart Chef’s Classic 12-quart Stockpot. With a good stockpot you can make large batches of stock, enormous quantities of stoup, cook enough pasta to feed a family, and enough chili to eat for a week. This pot is durable. It has wide handles that can be easily grasped with an oven mitt – a good thing if you’ve been boiling a stock for 12 hours. And it’s cheap.

Accessories:

I reach for tongs almost every single time I cook. Tongs flip steaks in the pan. They fish broccoli out of the steamer. They turn braising meatballs around in their sauce. Almost anything you would want to do with your hands can be done with tongs, but without those nasty second-degree burns. Locking tongs stay shut in the drawer for ease of storage. OXO Good Grips 12-Inch Locking Tongs, like most items in the OXO line, are excellent. Buy them and you will use them every day.

A wooden spoon is humblest of kitchen tools. It is the only thing in my kitchen I am 100% confident I could build myself. But it stirs a sauce without scratching a saucepan, and if left in a simmering pot, can be grabbed by your bare hand without consequence. The Mario Batali 13-inch Wooden Spoon is praised by Cook’s illustrated for a comfortable handle and a shape designed to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of a pan.

Unlike baking, very few rules are hard and fast in cooking. “1 ½ cups onion, chopped” is something you can often eyeball. Even if you are a stickler at heart, volume measure is tricky. Smaller pieces of onion are more easily compacted into a cup. So unless you know exactly what “chopped” means to the author of your recipe, the measuring cup is just a method of estimating. But there are times when it’s nice to have measuring cups. Perhaps you are just getting started cooking, and need a ballpark of what one cup of minced carrots looks like. Perhaps you are just getting used to a recipe, and you want to get as close to the author’s intent as possible before you start improvising. Or maybe you’re making a batch of rice, where the regular, hard grains make volume measure a great tool. In those cases, you’ll want a set of measuring cups that are accurate with easy-to-read markings that won’t fade or rub off after use. The Amco 4-Piece Stainless Steel Measuring Cup Set was rated by Cook’s illustrated to offer “near-perfect accuracy” and features markings etched into their handles.

Liquid volume measure, unlike dry volume measure, is more accurate, and often more important to get right in cooking. When making things like rice pilaf or lentils, where you want the liquid to be completely absorbed by the dish, you’ll need an accurate, easy to read liquid measuring cup. The Pyrex Prepware 2-Cup Measuring Cup is the gold standard in this department. It’s made of durable tempered glass, which is chip-and-shatter-resistant. It features bold, bright red lettering which is easy to read. I grew up with one of these. I have a hard time imagining cooking without one.

Though a paring knife can do everything a vegetable peeler does, it takes a lot of practice to get the same, even results with the same blazing fast speed. The Oxo Good Grips i-Series Swivel Peeler enjoys the fine features of the rest of the OXO line: comfort and durability. But it also offers replaceable blades – a feature that will keep your peeler out of a landfill when it gets dull.

Overview:

Chefs Knife Paring Knife set: $21.99

BladeSafe for 8-Inch to 10-Inch Blades: $5.85

BladeSafe for 3-Inch to 4-Inch Blades: $2.60

Cutting Board: $39.99

12-Inch Cast Iron Skillet: $20.14

12-Inch Stainless Skillet: $123.90

4-quart Saucepan: 159.98

12-quart Stockpot: $69.95

Tongs: $12.99

Wooden Spoon: $5.99

Dry Measuring Cup Set: $7.99

Liquid Measuring Cup: $6.99

Vegetable Peeler: $10.99

Total: $489.35

Get started:

Dropping nearly $500 on cookware all at once can be a tall order. So feel free to start small – get the knives, their guards, and the cast iron skillet. You’ll be amazed at the difference a good knife makes, and a cast iron skillet is cheap and lasts forever. So far you’re only out $50.58.

Cheap cutting boards, saucepans, stockpots, tongs, wooden spoons, measuring cups, and vegetable peelers are almost always available at thrift stores like Goodwill, and The Salvation Army, as well as local yard sales, and online resources like craigslist. You’ll get what you pay for – I’ve had half a dozen goodwill saucepans crap out on me as their handles fell off. Dented pans don’t distribute heat very evenly; I have found myself constantly scooting food around a sub-par pan to take advantage of hotspots. But you’ll still be able to cook perfectly delicious food while you piece together your dream cooking set.

And remember to search the internet for one-pan-wonders to take advantage of the cookware you do have. Or consider picking up Two Dudes, One Pan: Maximum Flavor from a Minimalist Kitchen. It organizes its recipes by cookware required. It will give you examples of foods to tackle with your new favorite kitchen tool, whether it’s a skillet or a stockpot.

I apologize for my extended and unannounced absence. Last fall I returned to St. John’s College in a desperate bid to finally get my hands on a college degree. It was a plan so crazy that it just might work: in just under two months I stand to graduate. But academia has spent many a month drinking my writing juice to its dregs.

Luckily I just enjoyed a brief reprieve from the ravenous, inhuman thirst of higher education– spring break. I have treasured my time with Darwin, Enstien, Nietzsche and Tolstoy. But when I slid my backpack off my shoulders and parked my ass on the couch, I celebrated my vacation with my first love: The Simpsons.

In 1995 the Simpsons was solidly in its golden age. Bart learned the cost of selling his soul. Homer realized a dream of working from home through hyper-obesity. And in one of the show’s few enduring character developments, Lisa became a vegetarian. And now that I have season seven on DVD, I can obsessively memorize every joke just like I did in middle school.

But unlike my middle school former self, I now live in an age which offers us the world’s most ingenious and profound technical wonder: the DVD extra. And disc one of season seven of The Simpsons holds a wonderful extra indeed: Paul and Linda McCartney’s favorite lentil soup recipe.

Even jet-setting culinary dynamos like me can get into ruts. It’s just too easy to just grab lunch at the subway next to your job for months in a row. It’s quick. It’s edible. And you can get your food and eat quickly enough that you can still squeeze a trip to the drugstore in over your lunch break. But if you keep your mind open, you can always find a new excuse for a culinary adventure. If the dvd bonus feature from a cartoon sitcom can move me to make a batch of lentil soup, the world will never run out of excuses to play with your food.

And you couldn’t ask for a better playmate than the lentil. Lentils are cheap. Kept in an airtight container in a dry place they will last almost forever. Unlike other dried beans, they can be cooked without soaking. They have a hearty, fulfilling flavor that makes them seem almost meaty in a dish, so lentils are a wonderful asset to the vegetarian. But even with their heartiness, they don’t overpower subtler flavors, so they work wonderfully with floral notes.

The McCartney recipe had my mouth watering. But it was recorded in order to be included backwards in the rendition of Maybe I’m Amazed which played over the closing credits. As joke-backwards-recipies-which-must-be-shorter-than-television-credits go, it is a fairly impressive recipe. But it lacks punch in the specificity department.

So I turned to my two main culinary muses: Cook’s Illustrated Magazine and Alton Brown. The cook’s illustrated recipe for “hearty lentil soup” looked promising. It had volume estimations for the ingredients, which is always a plus. What exactly is a medium onion? It had a tiny splash of balsamic vinegar to be added at the end which sounded like it would introduce a wonderful tart note to the soup. But it lacked the celery that was featured in both the McCartney and Brown soups. Furthermore, Brown calls for Grains of Paradise, a specialty spice which I had just happened to buy off Amazon only a few days before. I decided to make a hybrid recipe.

JP’s Spring-Break Lentil Soup:

You won’t need a lot of special equipment. Bare minimum you could scrape by with: A cast iron Dutch oven, or large stock pot, a wooden spoon, and your favorite knife and cutting board.

2 tablespoons butter. (Substitute Olive Oil for a vegan soup, or 3 slices of bacon, chopped, for omnivores.)
8 ounces onion finely chopped. (That’s one large or two small onions, about one and
a half cups.)
5 ounces carrot finely chopped. (That’s two medium carrots, about one cup.)
3 ounces celery finely chopped. (That’s two medium stalks, about half a cup.)
3 medium gloves garlic, minced, grated, or pressed.
a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes.
1 bay leaf.
8 ounces lentils. (That’s just over one cup. You can also eyeball half of a one pound bag.)
2 teaspoons kosher salt.

½ teaspoon grains of paradise.
¼ teaspoon ground coriander.

Stage One: The Softening

¼ cup dry white wine.
¼ cup sherry.
4 ½ cups vegetable broth. (Substitute chicken broth for omnivores.)
1 ½ cup water.

Stage Two: liquid

1 ½ teaspoons basalmic vinegar.
3 tablespoons minced parsley (about three handfuls of leaves.)

Stage Three: Endgame

General strategy:

The list of ingredients is divided into those three groups because there are three steps to this soup: soften, simmer, and endgame. Step one is designed to soften all your vegetables so that they offer the right degree of tenderness in the final soup. Step two introduces the liquids and in order to cook and plump up the lentils. And the endgame adds a flavor boost right before serving. I recommend prepping all the ingredients from step one before you start the dish – when you add garlic to the pot, it won’t need to cook for very long before your next step. It’s best if you have your tomatoes can open and ready to go, or else you risk scorching your garlic.

Place your butter in your large pot over medium high heat. Let rig heat up for a couple minutes until the butter has gotten hot. (If you have substituted bacon, you have to let the pot soak up heat until the fat has rendered out of the bacon – you’ll know you are done when the bacon gets crispy and smells delicious.) Add your onions, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, for about two minutes.

You'll only need to stir occasionally

Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until it starts to give off its trademark, garlicly scent. (It should take about 30 seconds. Add the can of tomatoes and their liquid, and the bay leaf. Cook for another 30 seconds, stirring. Add your lentils, salt, grains of paradise, and coriander. Stir until the lentils are evenly distributed.

Just get everything mixed together

Cover your pot. Reduce heat to medium low. Let the lentils cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Add your white wine and sherry. Increase the heat to high. Wait until the wine begins to simmer. Then add your broth and water. Wait until the liquid comes to a boil. Partially cover your pot, reduce to low heat, and let the soup simmer for 30-35 minutes, or until your lentils are tender. Remove the sharp, inedible bay leaf. It has done its job.

Don't forget to take out the bay leaf!

If you like your soup creamier, hit the soup with an immersion blender until it has the desired consistency. When you are ready to serve, stir in the vinegar, and all but one handful of the parsley. Dish into bowls, garnish with a pinch of the remaining parsley, and eat up.