Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets

I am a control freak.

I think most good chefs are.  Leaving things to chance is how you get in trouble in the kitchen- so I’m an avid organizer, chronic double checker and maniacal listmaker.

But food is funny about control.  I am not a machine that orders chemically processed and manipulated items into submission.  The best ingredients we all cook with are fluid, not static.  They come from the land, sky, soil and sea.  As much as we understand the science behind nature, it’s important to remember its unpredictability.

And that, your honor, is the case for the defense.

Perfect food presentation is my Achilles heel.  I fantasize about serving scrumptious morsels of food that no one wants to touch – let alone eat- because they are just so beautiful.  I spend a lot of time in the kitchen with my inner critic (I call her Martha, for pretty obvious reasons) telling me I’m not good enough.

From the LA Times

Ah, the first warm days of summer, when some mysterious force compels even the most hapless cooks to start a fire and burn some meat. Walking around my neighborhood last weekend, the smell of flaming beef fat was everywhere.

It made me wonder: Really, how hard can it be to grill a good steak?

You shouldn't even need a recipe. Take a good piece of meat (bright red color, nice flecks of white fat inside the muscle, not just around it, at least an inch thick), season it simply (salt and pepper, that's it) and put it on the grill over a moderately hot fire (not too hot or it's "Towering Inferno" time — when you can hold your hand about 5 or 6 inches over the grill for four or five seconds, that's right).

Beyond that, it's all detail. But, as in anything, those details are exactly what make the difference between good and great. Fortunately with a steak dinner, they're really pretty simple, even if they can be a bit geeky.

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Today I want to discuss Pepper.    

Yes, Pepper.  

I feel the eye roll.  You think you know what there is to know. It's sat on the table, every day, for a lifetime in an arranged marriage to Salt.  A couple.  Separate but not equal.  I mean, really, isn't Mr. Pepper, in our culture, sort of the lesser of the two?  The sides of the shaker by the stove are not as greasy.   Pepper is....

A kick.  A punch.  A jab. 

Salt knows her boundaries.  She comes to you in the right size. Pepper, the guy, has to be ground down, beat up, knocked into shape.  

But what is he really....?   

What is the nature of the love affair – not just between them – but between us? 

From the New York Times

The tech revolution has been a long time in coming to the kitchen. Our coffee machines are so advanced that they can practically drive us to work, but Internet-controlled toasters and Web-enabled refrigerators became punch lines.

One high-tech cooking tool, however, has transformed the kitchen lives of many Americans: the cellphone. It has become the kitchen tool of choice for chefs and home cooks. They use it to keep grocery lists, find recipes, photograph their handiwork, look up the names of French cheeses, set timers for steak and soft-boiled eggs, and convert European or English measurements to American ones.

“It taught me to cook, really,” said Kelli Howell, a college sophomore in Chicago, of her Nokia phone. Its photography, Internet and instant-messaging capabilities let her consult with friends, family and online sources as she got started in the kitchen. “I e-mailed about 20 pictures of a vegetable lasagna to my sister’s phone while I was making it,” she said. “And then I I.M.’ed with my mom about the topping.”

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