archives: Kitchen & Home
If you’ve ever set foot in a Sur La Table, other fancypants kitchen store, or kitchen of a home cook with delusions of grandeur, you’ve doubtless seen one of these:
That is a silicone baking sheet liner, of which the best-known brand is Silpat. These silicone and fiberglass roll-up sheets come in several sizes to go with various sizes of cookie sheets. Put one on your baking sheet and you don’t have to use cooking spray or parchment paper to get lovely, quick-release baked goods that never, ever stick.
Stick-free cookies! Save the environment from spray-on oils and wasted parchment paper! We all need this, right!….Right?
When I got married, I took the opportunity to register for the kind of specialty cookware I would never have bought for myself, including a couple of Silpat silicone mats. I was going to be an advanced home cook! I had arrived.
Well, I may sacrifice any advanced home cook street cred I might have by saying this, but after several years of using those things I found them…meh. In fact (um, running through mental rolodex to remind myself who gave them to us, confirming that they do not, in fact, read this website, yep, I’m in the clear here…) I gavethemawaytoafriend.
Phew. I feel better.
Honestly, they were a total pain in the neck to clean, and you had to let them dry completely before you rolled them back up and put them away (they never really seemed to get dry with a towel). I used them mostly for cookies and I actually didn’t like the way cookies responded to them. It was like the bottom of the cookie didn’t get hot enough quickly enough, so the cookies spread too much and got thin at the edges instead of setting up properly. Plus, they didn’t brown as well as they did with a regular cookie sheet. (That might be a good thing for delicate sugar cookies, but I’m more a rustic chunky chocolate chip kind of girl, where a slightly browned bottom is a good thing.)
As ashamed as I am to admit it, for those times when I want a non-stick layer, it’s hard to beat plain old wasteful parchment.
The best use, in my experience, for a silicone baking mat like this is as a kneading or rollout mat for pie crusts and bread doughs. The non-stick surface means you have to use less flour on the kneading/rolling surface. This is particularly helpful with pie dough, when adding too much flour can make it tough. But for that purpose, I prefer a larger rolling mat with measurements and rolling guides. (I use this one.)
Look, if you make a lot of super delicate thin lacy cookies, or caramels or other candies- the kind stuff that’s really hard to get off a sheet even with parchment- you might find that silicone baking mats are just the ticket. But otherwise? Save your money.
The verdict:
Do I need silicone baking mats? No!
Silicone baking mats, price varies by size, but a standard-size Silpat model is available for $15 on Amazon.
Here in Chicago, the weather is threatening to jump straight past autumn and into full-blown winter. I wore GLOVES to work yesterday, people. GLOVES. In October. This just isn’t right.
I’m not ready to give up on fall just yet. I LOVE fall. It’s the season of crunchy leaves and rich butternut squash soups and yummy local apples just begging to be baked into rustic spice cakes. It’s just too great to skip, in my humble opinion. So if the weather won’t give us fall, we’ll just have to create it ourselves! I have just the thing:
“What are those?” you ask?
Those, my friends, are cake stencils. Are you the type who gets a little droopy just thinking about the effort involved in frosting and decorating a cake? Me too! Cake stencils are MADE for folks like us. You place a stencil on a cake, dust it gently with cocoa or powdered sugar, carefully remove the stencil – and voila! Beautifully decorated cake, without all the calories and spreading and swearing involved in frosting.
Making a single-layer cake and decorating it with a stencil is a simpler, breezier version of dessert for a casual dinner party or fun holiday party. Just imagine the possibilities- gingerbread dusted with powdered sugar! Super-orange carrot cake dusted with cocoa powder! Apple cake dusted with a cinnamon-powdered sugar blend!
Or, if you have kids and are looking for a super-fun Halloween treat, there’s a set of Halloween stencils- and it’s on SALE!
Can you imagine how cute that witch one would be with powdered sugar dusted on a dark chocolate cake?
I love how easy these stencils are. You could even use them to trace shapes to cut out decorative pieces of pie crust for your Thanksgiving pies! I’m not one for buying lots of specialized holiday gear or decor, but these are so cute, and take up so little space, at such a low price, that they’re hard to resist.
Note: the Halloween set is the only one that’s showing on sale online, but my local Macy’s had both of these, plus the super-duper adorable pumpkin-carving kit, on dramatic sale in store this weekend. If you have a Macy’s near you, it might be worth checking out.
Martha Stewart harvest cake stencils, $14.99, and Halloween stencils $8.99 on sale, in stores and at Macy’s.com
It’s no secret that I like to cook. Baking, braising, broiling, brining- I do it all, my friends. But I also like to fit into my pants. These likes are in constant tension in my world. Lemon shortbread cookies? Like. My new straight-leg jeans (which I previously would have called “skinny” until the Gap employee corrected me snidely)? Also like. And want to fit into them. Which I won’t if I don’t lay off these cookies. Well, maybe just one more…. *munchcrunchomgsogoodlmunchmunchcrunch*
Hm. We seem to have veered off course there.
To be a little more serious for a second, healthy eating has been a priority in my family for a long time. Since I was six, to be specific. Wen I was six my father, at the ripe old age of 45, had a stroke, It was caused, in part, by high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Nothing says “hey kids, learn how to be healthy ASAP!” like riding in a car to the ER at three in the morning with your unresponsive father passed out in the front seat.
My dad is (thank god) totally healthy now. From that day forward, my mom eliminated virtually all salt from our diet, and we were ahead of the curve on whole grains, low saturated fat, etc. And I’m mostly really grateful for that. As an adult, I don’t eat as restrictively as we did in those early years after my dad got sick, (I keep salt in the house, for example, something my mother hasn’t done for over 20 years,) but it’s a lot easier for me to eat healthy because I don’t have a lifetime of bad habits to break.
But my mom, god love her, does not love flavor. So we ate a lot of healthy food, but it was also often really bland. And I am a food nut. I love food. I love the taste of food. I love the social experience of food. I cannot live a life where every day for lunch I eat the same salad and every day for dinner I have a broiled salmon fillet with steamed broccoli. (My mom can, god love her. I would just be bored to TEARS.)
So as an adult, when I learned to cook, part of my goal was to replicate some of the flavors I’ve come to love in healthier dishes that I felt okay eating every day, instead of just as a special treat. This has involved reading a LOT of cookbooks and magazines. One thing I’ve noticed, reading “healthy” and “light” cookbooks, is how many of them suck. Too many use recipes that just don’t taste good. Or they call for lots of fakey chemical- and additive-laden ingredients that just skeeve me out. (Fat free cheese? No thanks!) I’d rather eat a small portion of the real thing than a large portion of something fake and weird that doesn’t taste nearly as good. (Sorry, Hungry Girl.)
My go-to cooking magazine is Cooks Illustrated, which I trust entirely. They’ve never steered me wrong. So when I learned that Cooks Illustrated had put out a light cookbook, I broke my own “no new cookbooks” rule and bought it.
I am so glad that I did. This book is full of recipes for delicious, normally deadly foods like chicken pot pie and spaghetti and meatballs. And get this- they all taste good! The editors say in the book that they couldn’t find a low-fat recipe for yellow cake that tasted good enough- so they didn’t include one! How’s that for novel? If it tastes like crap, it’s not worth it, healthy or not.
There are SO MANY recipes that have become standards in our house from this cookbook- French potato salad, artichoke dip, amazing turkey burgers, the aforementioned pot pie- and they’re all fabulous. Even the cheesecake is to die for. Is it fat free? No. Is it a lot healthier than your standard cheesecake, while still tasting delicious? Yes. That’s a compromise I can live with.
Technically this book costs more than $15 (the lowest I can find it for is $20.99, on Overstock.com,) so I’m going to have to categorize it as “splurge-worthy”. But I can tell you- we save a lot of money every week because I meal plan and cook most of our dinners at home- way cheaper than takeout- and this is our most frequently-used cookbook. So, despite the higher-than-usual pricetag, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
The Best Light Recipe, $20.99 on Overstock.com, also available at Amazon and other bookstores
This morning while I was wrestling a very pissy 15 month old, Husband comes into the nursery and says, “Hey! I have something for you to put on your blog.” Lordy.
“What’s that?” I say. Meanwhile wishing he’d just contend with his son who recently decided I’m chump change and his father is King of All That’s Better Than Mom.
“You should talk about name brand things versus generic!”
(Blank stare from me.)
“You know that deoderant I used earlier in the week? Well, that was a store brand and I was stinky by 2pm. The other stuff is fine through the day and I’m not rank.”
And there you have it: one man’s experience with Old Spice deoderant v. jenky store brand.
I’ve been mulling it over all day and have decided to not do a review today, but simply put it out to the masses for you to tell us what’s been better in your experience: generic or name brand?
Leave your feedback in the comments section and be sure to mention a specific product and let us know whether you thought the generic or name brand version was better.
You know how some people love to browse the aisles of Sephora, dabbing on lotions and tinctures, dusting themselves in the fine powdery glow of bronzers, carefully evaluating the subtle differences between two apparently identical eyeshadows?
I am not one of those people. I ENVY those people, as I suspect they know how to apply eyeliner in such a way that it does not look like a toddler was practicing his artwork on your eyelids. I envy them, but I am not one of them.
But I CAN easily burn a couple of hours wandering through stores that sell craft supplies, paper goods, and kitchen wares. John, my husband, finds this habit charming.
Katie: “Look, honey! A ravioli press! If I had one of these I would totally make us ravioli, like, at least twice a year.”
John: “can we go now?”
/scene
Usually, these treks through kitchen and craft stores leave me marveling that anyone is so silly as to purchase most of these products. (Really? You need a separate device for slicing an avocado? It is like the softest food in the world! You could slice it with a chopstick!) But sometimes, my fiscal responsibility flies out the window and I impulse purchase something that seems frivolous, but ends up being AWESOME.
My Opinel knife is just such a thing.
I have long aspired to be a perfect picnicker, (if only so I can maximize my opportunities to use the words “picnicker” and “picnicking,” whose surprising “k” in the middle brings me inexplicable delight.) I imagine myself buying a crusty baguette, visiting the cheesemonger for something stinky and delicious, and taking myself and my darling, sailor-dress wearing children to the Jardin du Luxumbourg to eat and bask in the afternoon sunshine. Sure, technically, I don’t have children, and I do not live in Paris. But I have a vision.
So when I saw the Opinel knife in a bin in a kitchen supply store, I bought it because it looked, with its smooth wooden handle and sturdy looking folding blade, like something a French woman with sailor-dress wearing children would have for her picnics.
It turns out it looks that way because it IS something a French woman would have in her arsenal. Opinal is a family-owned French company that has been making these knives in virtually the same way since 1895.
The design of the thing is brilliant as well as lovely. (In fact, according to Wikipedia, the Victoria and Albert Museum selected the Opinel as one of the “100 most beautiful products in the world.” Don’t I have good taste with my impulse purchases?) When folded, the blade is stored safely stored in the handle. When you unfold it you twist the ingenius metal ring at the base of the blade to “lock” it open so it doesn’t slip.
That blade itself is nice and sharp- I’ve used it successfully on cheese, apples, bread, and once, in an emergency, a Snickers bar. Just wipe it clean when you’re done and you’re good to go.
The one I have is the “number 8,” which is apparently the most popular size. It’s small enough to carry anywhere, but the blade is long enough to slice comfortably through a block of cheese. Recently, I’ve been putting one of these and a corkscrew in the utensil pockets of a hand-sewn picnic mat and giving them to people as shower gifts- huge hit.
Opinel folding pocketknife, $11.95 at KnifeCenter
If you’ve been paying attention to the kitchen gadgets section of stores in the past few years, you’ve probably noticed a dramatic upswing in the number of these for sale:
This is a microplane grater/zester, and I’m guessing several of you already have one in your kitchens. But I’m also guessing many of you are holding out, wondering, as I did, whether you really NEED a separate grating device when you have a perfectly functional box grater sitting in your cabinet already.
A microplane grater has very thin, sharp blades, which create a very fine grate. Its best known for its excellent work with cheese and fruit: it makes lovely pillowy piles of hard cheeses, like Parmesan, and it zests citrus peel thinly so you get the good stuff without catching any of the bitter pith underneath.
But it’s a star at other tasks, too. It grates fresh nutmeg effortlessly (and once you taste freshly grated nutmeg, you’ll be a convert, I swear to god. Buy some at Spice House, it’s cheap.) It shaves chocolate beautifully. And, I was delighted to discover that it excels at grating fresh ginger into a nice fragrant paste, a task that I’ve found to be pretty much impossible with a standard chef’s knife.
All told, given its small stature (its long and skinny and fits easily in a silverware drawer) and its excellent performance in a variety of tasks, I’d say its a keeper.
So: Do I need a Microplane Grater?
Verdict: Yes!
Microplane zester/grater, $11.95 on Amazon
It seems, my friends, that moving season is upon us. Across the country, recent high school grads are gearing up to go to college, current college students are readying their duffel bags and keg tubs for another year, and recent college grads are moving to new cities to start new jobs. (Um, hopefully. Good luck, recent grads! So sorry about the lousy job market!)
And some of us full-grown adults are also moving, to be closer to our spouses’ graduate school programs. Ahem.
All of this moving means assembling and disassembling furniture, which can only mean one thing: we need tools.
Enter the MUJI screwdriver set:
MUJI is a Japanese company whose name is derived from the Japanese phrase for “no brand goods,” and they make basic, well-designed products that are well-designed, affordable and compact. They’re sold in the U.S. through the MoMA store, and they’re just generally swell.
Now, this set is not going to be enough for you if you’re, say, building a house from scratch. But for most dorm-dwelling, apartment-renting types, this is a thoughtful, lovely gift. It’s got 8 interchangeable magnetic screwdriver heads, a handle with a sturdy diameter (just about the only thing I remember from physics is you need a decently wide handle on a screwdriver to achieve the necessary leverage), and a compact carrying case small enough to stash in a desk drawer or under the sink. And did I mention it’s from Japan? Via MoMA? Seriously, what could make that college-bound kid in your life feel more worldly than that?
Best of all? You’ve just nailed the sendoff gift for a mere $10.
MUJI screwdriver set, $10 at MoMa Store
I’ve mentioned before my disdain for single-purpose kitchen gadgets. The last thing my already overcrowded kitchen implements drawer needs is an avocado slicer or a strawberry huller. But sometimes (as was the case with that Zyliss garlic press) a single-purpose gadget is so useful, so life-changing, that it’s worth purchasing for its one itty bitty use, just because having it makes cooking so much better.
Today I’m launching a semi-regular series entitled: “Do I need this?”, in which I’ll evaluate some tools I’ve been duped into purchasing over the years, with a candid assessment of whether they’re worth (a) the money and (b) the drawer space.
Our first contestant here on “Do I Need This?” is: the cherry pitter!
(applause, cheering)
A cherry pitter is PRECISELY the kind of gadget I would normally sneer at and swear up and down I would never buy: it’s a little bulky, it only does one thing (pit cherries), and that one thing occurs only rarely (when I need to make a cherry pie, which is almost never).
But about a year ago, I worked for a minute at a fancypants bar that made its own maraschino cherries, and I will not lie: a few weeks eating those delicious, homemade, so-far-from-the-formaldehyde-soaked-jar-kind-they-shouldn’t-even-bear-the-same-name cherries spoiled me forever. Ever since, whenever I have a manhattan, or a daquiri, or heck, even just a craving for something sweet out of the kitchen, I have found myself wishing we had a mason jar full of cherries in sweet boozy syrup chilling in our fridge.
The trouble is, to make homemade maraschino cherries you really need sour cherries (sometimes called pie cherries) instead of the sweet, wine-dark cherries we’re used to eating. And, of course, I developed this affinity for homemade maraschino cherries just after sour cherry season ended last summer. So I have had almost an entire year to work myself up into a lather at the prospect of making homemade cocktail cherries. I have considered various recipes and techniques. I have prepared mason jars. I even, god help me, purchased a cherry pitter.
When, finally, sour cherry season rolled around a few weeks ago, and I bought a quart and got out my cherry pitter and…promptly started swearing as bright red cherry juice splattered all over my clothes, my counters, and my hands. Yes, the cherry pitter takes a little getting used to, and it makes an unholy mess if you don’t use it right (despite its little plastic chamber designed to shield you from spattering). But once you figure out where to line up the little dowel that punches through the fruit to remove the pit, it gets easier. And, to an extent, it works: it surely made shorter work of the otherwise hours-long task of pitting enough cherries to fill a half dozen mason jars, but it still took an awfully long time. And it did do a nice job of pitting the cherries without hacking the fruit into two pieces, the way I invariably do when I try to do it by hand with a paring knife.
Well, turns out the joke’s on me: I made a few jars of cocktail cherries with pitted cherries, and a few jars with whole cherries, and the intact cherries both look and taste better, so it turns out I didn’t need the pitter after all. And while I’m not going to throw the thing out, it’s definitely getting shoved to the back of a rarely-used cabinet. I don’t like cherry pie.
So: Do I need a cherry pitter?
Verdict: No, unless you’re planning on making a LOT of cherry pie and don’t mind cleaning cherry juice splatters off every surface of your kitchen. Save your drawer space.
Oxo Cherry Pitter, $12.95 at Amazon.com
UPDATE: Want to make your own maraschino cherries? Click here for recipe!
There are many reasons to cook at home: it’s a good way to be healthy, save money, and bond with your loved ones as you eat off your laps on the couch around the dining room table.
Regular cooking, though, takes a decently-stocked kitchen, and stocking a kitchen can be expensive. I vividly remember, in my first post-college apartment, painstakingly picking out recipes to try and going to the grocery store to pick out ingredients, only to fall over dead when I saw the exorbitant price of the various spices called for in the recipe.
There are some ways, though, to build a well-stocked spice cabinet without going into hock. The first thing I’d suggest is stepping away from the spice aisle and heading to the international foods aisle. In many grocery stores, there will be a selection of spices in the Mexican food section, or the asian food section, sold at a fraction of the cost of what’s offered by McCormick and Spice Islands. You can also strike spice gold at specialty ethnic markets.
But if you live in a land of poorly-stocked ethnic foods aisles, or are just too busy to make another trip to another store, I’d highly recommend checking out The Spice House.
Located in Chicago, the Spice House has an online mail-order business where you can get any spice imaginable, at way higher quality than what you find in your supermarket, often at substantially reduced cost. They sell all of their spices in bulk by the ounce in little baggies. If you buy 4 ounces, they’ll put them in glass shaker jars which will fit perfectly into your spice rack.
I particularly recommend checking them out for spices that are astonishingly overpriced at the grocery, such as cloves and saffron, and things that may be hard to find in your average store, like smoked paprika and dried mushrooms. In fact, my holy grail of cooking publications, Cooks Illustrated, recently rated Spice House’s paprika as the best in a taste test. (You can see why: they sell half a dozen different kinds:)
They also hand-mix dozens of unique spice blends and rubs, which make great gifts. (To date, the only successful gift I’ve ever given my father in law was a gift set of their grill rubs for various meats. It cost less than $20.)
Good quality spices are a key to healthy, delicious cooking without a ton of unnecessary salt and fat. Don’t be afraid of recipes calling for cardamom, or Mexican oregano, or garam masala. Just buy them, try them, and wonder how you ever lived without them.
The Spice House, prices vary but are generally very reasonable, thespicehouse.com
As I’ve mentioned before, space is at a premium in our kitchen. For something to earn a coveted place on the shelf, I need to use it a LOT. So it’s saying something that I recently went out and bought more of the following:
These are ramekins. They are small ceramic dishes with stright sides, like you would make a souffle in, but smaller. They’re glazed on the inside and sides, and unfinished on the bottom. They are, in short, magical, and everyone should have some.
Things I use ramekins for (a partial list):
- Holding prep ingredients (spices, herbs, mustard, etc) while cooking
- Separating eggs
- Making jello in individual servings
- Eating yogurt
- Serving small accompaniments to our meal (nuts for a salad, brown sugar for oatmeal, etc)
- Holding a spent teabag
- Baking individual fruit crisps or custards for dinner parties and/or for portion control
- Holding individual flowers as part of a casual table centerpiece
- Chilling butter, a la fancy restaurants (okay, fine, I only did that once, but it looked super cool)
As you can see, these are real workhorses. They’re microwave, dishwasher, oven, and freezer safe, so you can use them for just about anything. And because they’re simple and white, with nice fluted sides, they can be used on the table for serving just as easily as for prep in the kitchen. Plus, and this is important: they’re CHEAP. If you break one in a fit of pique when your flan separates on you? No biggie.
I have sets in two sizes: 4 ounce, which is perfect for prep and measuring spices, and 6 ounce, which is good for yogurt eating and dessert baking. Both are available in sets of six on amazon. They also come in a tiny 2-oz size, like a restaurant would use to serve salad dressing or ketchup, but I find those too small to get regular home use. I highly recommend both the 4- and 6-oz sizes, but if you’re going to get just one, I’d recommend the 6 ounce for maximum versatility.
Porceliein Ramekins, $11.99 for 6 4-oz cups; $14.99 for 6 6-oz cups, both on Amazon
