Cooking and Gadgets

perfectomeletteI was never a fan of the omelette until I tried the one at Petit Trois, Chef Ludo Levebvre’s LA-based French bistro. It is quite rich and intense - thanks to a very generous helping of Black Pepper Boursin cheese - yet light and creamy, just melting in your mouth. What other cooks call an omelette is just a dry, tasteless, overcooked travesty compared to this version. It is a simple plate of food perfectly crafted each and every time. Chef Ludo has exacting standards in the kitchen and he expects his cooks to make it the same, classic way plate after plate.

We aren’t overly talented in our kitchen, so we figured this dish would be relegated to our sporadic visits to the restaurant. Lucky for all of us, in his new video series, Ludo à la Maison, he shares the recipe and shows you how it’s done. Now you don’t have to live in LA to enjoy the Perfect French Omelette. The Boursin is a must - though thankfully widely available and inexpensive - and most kitchens should readily have the other ingredients on hand - butter, eggs, salt, pepper and chives. Only six ingredients. Totally easy, right?

After watching the video a few times - he talks you through it, but it’s still sort of freeform - we gave it a try and did, for two amateur cooks, a pretty good job. Yes, it took two of us. There were some tense moments in the middle when it looked like it was too wet and was going to color before it set, but we managed to keep it from browning (a super big no-no) and properly wrapped it. While not perfectly pretty, it disappeared from our plate as quickly as the true version does. Success!

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ants-on-a-log.jpgI hate 3:00 p.m. on a school day. It means I’m a failure. Once again, I’ve failed to come up with a “healthy snack” for my ravenous Varsity Cheerleader.  Our routine was to just go over to Chipotle which wasn’t really great because those burritos, even though they were pretty clean, would stuff her until around 5:30, at which time, I’ve lost the will to live because I’m tired and I don’t want to come up with any kind of dinner, so she’s left to forage which makes me feel like an even worse failure.

And, for the record, all those parenting books that suggest those ‘healthy snacks’ are full of it. No kid I’ve ever known, except maybe one that grew up on a commune, would ever think that shit is good.  “Oh yummy, celery with peanut butter and raisins! Ants on a log! Thanks mommy!” There’s also Amir. He’s the Fox that led Pinocchio to the world of the Lost Boys, otherwise known as the guy with the snack truck parked outside the gym. I can’t tell you how many times my daughter has come to the car with a piece of cellophane wrapped cake bigger than her face along with a jug of orange Gatorade. Jesus!

It’s a landmine of insulin torment out there. BUT…there are flashes of genius.

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arturo.jpgI think I'm taking this cooking business a little more seriously than I thought I would.  You may not actually call it cooking.  It's more Sandra Lee than, say, Ina Garten.  But I think I am truly more Sandra Lee than Ina Garten.  In the days when my kids were actually kids, I got a meal on the table every night.  Sometimes I did a complicated dish, but mainly it was throw together.  And they loved it.  To this day, when asked, any of the three of them will point to my tuna casserole as the finest of meals.

Noodles, canned tuna, canned peas, parmesan cheese, buttered dish. Who couldn't turn that baby out.  In my present circumstance, cooking for one but cooking lots of it for "later", kind of rules out the fabled tuna casserole.  So I'm turning to some of the other family favorite standbys, that actually also involve cans.

Did you know, for example, that a truly delicious way to make sweet and sour meatballs involves simmering a can of  Sauce Arturo with a can of whole cranberry sauce and then dropping meatballs of your liking in, and cooking, is foolproof.  If only there were canned rice.

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We asked our regular contributors what's the one cooking utensil or gadget they just couldn't or wouldn't want to live without. We were suprised to find there was one clear winner...

microplanezester.jpgMy favorite kitchen tool is our Microplane Grater/Zester. Peter and I took a basic cooking class right before we got married, and on the first day we both accidentally sliced our hands open and had to wear giant Band-aids. At the end of the class series, we got a little gift certificate to Surfas restaurant supply, and we bought the lemon zester, and now when I use it I think about how hard we laughed when we both sustained consecutive ridiculous kitchen injuries on Day One of cooking school. It was pretty embarrassing; no one else in the class shed a drop of blood the whole time. — Emily Fox

Okay, don't laugh. For several years I've had a Microplane Grater/Zester that I just would never be without. Can't be beat for grating chocolate, parmesan, citrus. I was shopping at Target recently and noticed this foot buffer (made for TV commercials) that looked a lot like a food grater. So, I went home and tried my Microplane on my calloused feet. Yep – worked great. So, now I have two of my favorite graters – one in the kitchen drawer and one in the bathroom drawer. I'm not sure what the people at Microplane would think of this!
Sue Doeden

microplane.jpgMy favorite kitchen tool is the Microplane grater, it works for cheese, chocolate, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, etc. I recommend all the different size graters that the company makes. I use it daily. — Brenda Athanus

This is the desert island question: what kitchen tool I can't live without.  Without a doubt, that would have to be a freshly sharpened chef's knife.  Beyond that it would be a Microplane Grater/Zester, possibly one of the smartest, coolest tools ever adapted to the kitchen.  Mine makes fluffy grated cheese for pasta and fantasy-small shavings of chocolate to top ice cream and cakes. — David Latt

My favorite kitchen utensil is the oft ignored chef's knife. It is essential to have a very sharp and versatile knife in the kitchen in order to ensure efficient and in fact safer preparation. It has been proven that a sharper knife minimizes the risk of cutting hands and fingers because of the sureness of the blade which reduces the risk of overexertion, slippage, etc. The chef's knife is hands down my favorite kitchen tool. — Jackson Malle

cleaver.jpgMy Kyocera Ceramic Nakiri Vegetable Cleaver, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how you never ever get dull - never and when you do (about 1 or 2 times a year) I send you off  to some strange little shop in Irvine along with $10 and you come back resharpened with all the nicks honed out. I love how you can slice a garlic clove as thin as Ray Liotta was able to in that great jail cell scene in Goodfellas. I love how I can cut perfect geometric squares out of diamond hard celeriac. But most of all I love how easy you make every single cutting job known to man. You, my black Kyocera vegetable cleaver, are even more dear to me than my 33-year-old ginsu knife. — Paul Mones

oxocup.jpgI would personally like to kiss the ring of the genius who thought of the
Oxo Angled Measuring Cup. No longer do I have to execute a Grand Plié every time I need an exact 2/3 - cup liquid. Now, you just pour, look down into the cup from a standing position and watch the liquid rise to the desired line. A revelation. — Katherine Reback

peanut-butter-mixer.jpgI have to call this a thingamajig. It is a device that has a jar lid on it, a crank and hook on the bottom. Can you guess what it's for?  Peanut Butter. You know how the oil is separated on the top and how much work it is to mix it together. It's messy, too. Well, with my  thingamajig, I simply replace the jar top with my thingy, screw it on, turn the crank and voila....less of a mess.  I used to have one of  those apple peelers that gives you perfect round slices in an  accordion, along with the peel in a single strip, but it broke, and  THAT was my favorite.
Laraine Newman

cookbookholder.jpgI have a countertop book stand that keeps my cookbooks clean... and open to the right page.  It makes me feel like a professor with a lectern, which is a good way to feel when you're cooking.
Agatha French

An antique herbal appetite stimulator  grinder. The one that looks like a metal pill box. Perfect for chopping basil, tarragon, and other legal substances. — Michael Elias 

My favorite kitchen tool is my phone because I can order in, tell Len what to pick up, find out what Emily wants to eat for dinner after she is done playing soccer and seek out recipes from friends all over. — Betsy Sherman

I cannot live without a salad spinner.  There is nothing worse than watery, wilted lettuce and since I eat salads nearly every day it is essential to my well-being. — Nancy Mehagian

kitchenaidmixer.jpgMy favorite kitchen gadget is my red KitchenAid stand mixer. My husband bought her for me for Christmas several years ago, and her name is Mildred, after the woman who “did for” my grandmother. I love Mildred more than words can say; she kneads my bread dough, whips my cream and looks impossibly cheerful on the coldest, darkest days. I also love my chef’s knife, but it’s hard to get all sentimental and cozy about a knife.
Ann Nichols

winepull.jpgThough it has nothing to do with cooking – unless you consider wine essential to food – my favorite and most used "kitchen gadget" is my Legacy Corkscrew. Sure, it takes up some counter space and seems a bit over the top, but it looks fancy, can pull the cork out through the foil (which is cool, but not classy and not recommended) and also allows you to re-cork the bottle as well. All it takes is one simple pull. Receiving this item as a "gift" from someone who didn't want it cluttering their kitchen, only made me cherish it more. In fact, when I broke it (a dark day and not easy to do), I loved it so much I spent the money to get another one. I could certainly live without it – though my regular corkscrew skills have dulled over the years since its arrival – but I'm glad I don't have to.
Lisa Dinsmore 

 

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fish.jpgDuring my first fall as a single person, I started eating fried fish for dinner a few nights a week. I cooked it with ingredients I bought at M2M, a Korean bodega across the street from my apartment building in the East Village. M2M sold three types of fish: salmon, sole, and basa. The salmon was bright orange and fat, the sole was thin and yellow with odd raised bumps like pores, and the basa was light pink and smooth-fleshed. I have a bourgeois distaste for salmon stemming from a childhood vacation to France where it had was served at nearly every meal, and I feared the wan, pebbly sole. So I always bought the basa, despite the fact that before moving across the street from M2M I had never heard of this fish.

Each package of basa contained two fillets; when I cooked dinner for myself, I used only one, leaving the other piece in its yellow Styrofoam tray and covering it with cellophane wrap to spend another night in the refrigerator. I rinsed the basa fillet under the water, sometimes squeezing the juice of half of a lemon onto the slippery flesh. Then I traced the seam that ran down the center of the fillet with my small ceramic knife and divided the fillet in two parts. There were no bones. I cut each of the twin pieces into smaller chunks, then broke an egg into a bowls and beat it. In another bowl I mixed together equal parts flour and cornmeal with half-teaspoons of black pepper and oregano and a pinch of salt. I dropped the pieces of fish into the beaten egg, rinsed them around with the fingers of my left hand, and then dropped them into the flour mixture. I tossed them in the flour with the fingers of my right hand.

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