Tea Towels: The Softer Side of the Industrial Revolution
Once upon a time, back when horses and wagons roamed the Earth and the telephone was a twinkle in Alexander Graham Bell’s eye, tea towels were found in every Victorian English lady’s kitchen. Typically made from absorbent, finely woven soft linen, tea towels were ideal for drying china, glassware and delicate serving pieces without fear...
Be Useful: Utility in the Kitchen
At some point, a newfangled gadget in the kitchen becomes a hindrance. Maybe it’s a city thing, where in a small apartment, every inch of storage is at a premium. But it’s also a chef thing. I realized that the basic tools I rely on as a professional cook are, well, basic. There’s very little...
From Ground to Grounds: A Coffee Bean’s Journey
The people behind the Brooklyn Roasting Company and the products they make may typify the Ralph Waldo Emerson axiom, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Called the “Hardest Working Cup” by Off Track Planet in its highlights of New York’s 10 Best Cafés in 2013, Brooklyn Roasting (BRC) is an ongoing journey that began with a...
Black Beauty: Cooking with Cast Iron
There’s a reason certain things have, in Darwinian fashion, managed to survive in the face of so-called “advances” in technology. Even though you can get amazing musical replication from a synthesizer, for example, true aficionados would claim it can’t replace a Steinway or a Stradivarius. In the kitchen, nothing cooks quite like cast iron. Stainless...
Flying the Coop: The Return of the Backyard Chicken
While eggs have been called Nature’s miracle food, they simply wouldn’t exist without chickens. Or, wait… would chickens not exist without eggs? Hmm. The age-old riddle. Like the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa, we’ll probably never know, but in the spirit of fowl play I did some digging into the homegrown chicken industry and made some...
A Culinary Legacy: Cast Iron’s Revival
There are some foods—scallops, a steak, pork chops—that cry out for a solid, gorgeous, homogeneous sear on the outside. Sure, you can get browning from a regular sauté pan. But let me speak plainly: Nothing cooks like cast iron. Cast iron, you say? That heavy, slightly dirty-looking skillet your grandmother used? The skillets the pioneers...
Preserving Memories
When I was growing up in North Carolina, we had a huge garden. My mother hated to garden or pretty much anything to do with the Great Outdoors, but with three young children at home, she was thrifty. While Dad and we kids toiled in the soil, she came up with ways to use the...
Purity of Purpose
When I ditched the corporate life and enrolled in culinary school, and one based on French technique no less, I was prepared to be overwhelmed. All the terminology, the sauces, the variations, the pace, the chef-instructors whose accents and creative use of English made everyday a linguistic adventure. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was...
