What do I want for Christmas?

I ought to come up with some kind of kitchen thing that I want for Christmas, so people who are inclined to buy me something are directed toward something I really want and not, you know, George Foreman grills or bloomin' onion makers or something.

But what? I don't buy gadgets for things I'll only make once or twice a year, don't want to invest the capital or the space. I have whatever I use regularly, though I suppose better versions of a few old things wouldn't be a bad idea. What's that cool thing that I never got but once I have it, I won't believe I did without it all these years?

Mike,

I suggest a really good knife

Enjoy,
Gary

The item at the top of my food-related wish list this Christmas is an immersion blender.

How about the "Alinea" or "Day at ElBulli" books? Either costs about the same as a small appliance.

In terms of hardware, some things I've acquired recently that I wasn't sure I'd use, but now use all the time include a salad spinner, and a squeeze-till-it-turns-inside-out citrus juicer.

A replacement for an old pan is never a bad suggestion: nonsticks are more durable than before.

Hi,

A wide mouth funnel. I bought one years ago for neat and clean filling of jars. I used to store it with my canning equipment. However I use it all the time, especially for filling ziploc storage bags without messinging the tracks with liquid or food bits.

Regards,

In addition to various widgets I can't justify buying myself, my Amazon wish list has caviar on it - I opted for the American caviar gift set (I can't justify even somebody else spending the $200/oz for "real" caviar) Why not? It doesn't take up any space, and you can certainly justify only using it once...

Funny, but outside of my knives, Le Creuset, pots/pans and the like, the item I use most in my kitchen is my timer.

It is really the brains to a probe thermometer from William-Sonoma, but has very handy timer/alarm (none of my other probes have this feature). In fact I no longer use it for reading temps.

Click the top and it starts a timer or hit the minute/hour buttons to set a coutdown. It is magnetic and small so I can carry it around when grilling, bring it downstairs when we have something in the oven, use in kitchen when the microwave and stove timers are already assigned duties. It especially comes in handy for long BBQ cooks as I just have it start counting away when I put meat on. Nice to wake up in the morning during an overnight cook and not have to do math

One other thing I can think that I am glad we bought is a high quality springform pan. Was tired of leaky ones, etc so nice to get one really good one. It is almost cheesecake season after all.

Jamie

One of the best things I own is a Thermapen. It's an instant read thermometer that is usable in almost any situation. I pull it out all the time.

I would suggest a nice electronic scale if you don't have one already. We use it a lot more than we thought we would. Several nice, sleek Soehnle models around $40-50. All 11-pound, 1/10 oz accuracy, tare function, English or metric. We like it so much we gave one to eack of the children, at appropriate gifting occasions.

I just went nuts and bought a 100-hp (sort of) blender/juicer- the Vita-Mix. This was just before the stock market meltdown. It will grind up absolutely anything, probably including whole coconuts.

I excused it to my wife by pointing out that Michael Chiarello has one just like it. Then I fed her several magnificant frozen daiquiris, and I think she's forgotten all about it.

It does make great smoothies and vegetable purees, and I can make my own ground horseradish.

It's going to be a fun gadget, but then, I'm a tool nut anyway, and since I don't have my wood shop since moving to the condo, I need something to keep me off the streets.

I think your kitchen seems to be fairly well equipped—I agree with Gary—a chef’s knife would be a great gift. I’m guessing, though, that you already have good quality cutlery—and purchasing a knife is a very personal process—certainly one that I would not leave to the same relatives who wouldn’t see the difference between a hand-crafted, carbon-steel blade and a $500 Bloomin’ Onion Maker.

In the small appliance category—I would say any of the following have expanded what I perceived as possible in the home kitchen:

Technivorm Coffee Maker – Some of the best coffee I’ve had outside a professional coffee house, actually better than most restaurant and café brews out there. The freshness and richness of a French Press, but brighter and cleaner on the palate.

Breville Juicer – There are a lot of benefits to be gained from juicing—but in the end the taste of a glass a fresh juice is something special. I’ve used it for making sauces and soups—even juicing corn for a creamed corn recipe. The only drawback is that it’s wicked loud.

It would seem that there is a lot of meat-related equipment out there that would fundamentally change your cooking abilities. Things usually associated with the professional kitchen or butcher. There are sausage-making, meat-grinding attachments for your Kitchen Aid mixer which you may already have. But what about a professional meat slicer? I know you said you didn’t have the space to invest—but I think there are models out there that are compact enough without sacrificing quality. A friend has a Chef’s Choice, which works like a dream. I recently went to a few excellent charcuterie markets that were filled with amazing cured meat products which I would have purchased more of had I had a slicer to take them home to. And you, curer of meats, could slice your own.

On a slightly smaller scale, though still electronic-- gadgets like a vacuum sealer, mini food processor and a rice cooker are, in my estimation, all worthy candidates.

For someone with kids and deep-fryer, I would think a wall-mounted french fry cutter would be a big hit—you might as well throw in a milkshake mixer and mechanical doughnut filler!

And the stocking stuffer must-haves—

 Kuhn Kikon Saftey lid lifter – No more shards of can in your food! No more lid-related injuries
 Potato Ricer for perfect mashed potatoes and other tubers.
 French rolling pin
 Off-set spatula
 The new tongs—what did we do before tongs? The cool kids all have Saute or Plating Tweezers for making sure each leaf of chervil or egg of salmon is situated just so.

trixie-pea wrote:Technivorm Coffee Maker – Some of the best coffee I’ve had outside a professional coffee house, actually better than most restaurant and café brews out there. The freshness and richness of a French Press, but brighter and cleaner on the palate.

The Technivorm just bounced to the top of my holiday wish list.

A really good mandoline for potato chips, beet chips, sweet potato chips (you get the point).

KitchenAid Pasta Roller attachment.

Stocking Stuffer: Silpats.

[That's pretty much my Christmas list; though, I could do with a less expensive mandoline.]

aschie30 wrote:A really good mandoline for potato chips, beet chips, sweet potato chips (you get the point).

[That's pretty much my Christmas list; though, I could do with a less expensive mandoline.]

CostCo had what appeared to be a very nice mandolin a few weeks back. Can't remember price but thought maybe $50-80.

I was temped until I looked at the scar on my knuckle from my last use of one

Jamie

Mhays wrote:In addition to various widgets I can't justify buying myself, my Amazon wish list has caviar on it - I opted for the American caviar gift set (I can't justify even somebody else spending the $200/oz for "real" caviar) Why not? It doesn't take up any space, and you can certainly justify only using it once...

American caviar is real. The American gift set seems overpriced, especially since you don't know much about the quality of the product. I recommend trying caviar from The Fishguy Market. They have good prices and will let you try most of the varieties in stock. Their Illinois Sturgeon caviar is wonderful.

The Fishguy Market
4423 N. Elston Ave. Chicago, IL 60630.
Phone: 773-283-7400
bill@fishguy.com

G Wiv wrote:

trixie-pea wrote:Technivorm Coffee Maker – Some of the best coffee I’ve had outside a professional coffee house, actually better than most restaurant and café brews out there. The freshness and richness of a French Press, but brighter and cleaner on the palate.

The Technivorm just bounced to the top of my holiday wish list.

I've been using a Technivorm KBT 741 for about 6 months now. I love it, especially because it gives you a lot of individual control over the brewing process.

It is really important to use a decent burr grinder, though. Otherwise, you aren't using your $250 coffeemaker to its full potential. If you also make espresso, I recommend the Rancilio Rocky (which is also available at Intelligentsia). If you don't make espresso, I recommend the Capresso Infinity. Save your whirly blade grinder for spices.

Two good resources on the Technivorm are are http://www.sweetmarias.com/prod.technivorm.shtml and http://www.sweetmarias.com/Tip-Sheets_P ... orm_SM.pdf

Another gift idea for a coffee enthusiast is a vacuum brewer. I like the Bodum Santos. Vacuum brewed coffee tends to be cleaner tasting and is especially good for picking up subtle nuances of flavor. Two notes: first, don't buy the electric vacuum brewers. You lose essential control over the process. Second, in my experience you need to brew a full pot (or at least 75% of a pot) of coffee with this method. With the Bodum Santos, this is about 4 cups of coffee.

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

I actually had thought about several of them. I suppose a slicer is the most practical and logical thing, given that I have pork belly becoming bacon at this very moment and the one part of it that is anything less than joyous, is in fact drudgery, is slicing what usually works out to something like 240 slices of bacon from two bellies.

A fine knife would be a fine thing, but I can't see spending what I paid for my flat screen TV for one, unless I needed a Hattori Hanza for revenge. And though I've followed the Technivorm coffee saga with interest, I want to taste that coffee before I spend that (or induce someone else to). Plus, it really bothers me that it's the least attractive looking coffeepot in the universe. It shouldn't, but it does.

Anyway, thanks for some thought provoking thoughts, which I am thinking about.

HI,

You may want to beg and borrow someone's slicer before you pull the trigger. I have had some in the past and got rid of them. My biggest fear was quickly slicing deeply into my thumb. I had a nightmare along those lines one night and swore off those devices.

A $20 Benriner (Asian mandoline) made fast work of pickle slices for bread-and-butter pickles this summer. Yes, I did ding my fingers. I slow down when I come to the nub.

Regards,

Mike,

Be careful what kind of slicer you ask for, if you go that route. I'm not thrilled with my Chef's Choice at all. There's a pretty big design flaw. It has a cradle on which the meat is suppposed to be moved back and forth across the blade. The cradle is notched, which prevents it from coming off the track that guides it. But the cradle is not very deep, so with a larger cut of meat, you can't pull it back far enough to begin the cut at the edge of the meat. This renders it somewhat useless for larger cuts like brisket and belly.

You can use the slicer without the cradle for these larger cuts but when you do so, there are a few problems. First, when you do this, the meat needs to be slid across the base of the slicer to bring it in contact with the blade. This method creates extra friction because the base, which is chrome, does not move and the meat tends to stick to it. Also, because the meat sits a bit lower than it does when on the cradle, it doesn't come into contact with the blade at its intended point. This can result in uneven cuts as well as some rough/visibly frayed edges on the individual slices. Going without the cradle also causes a fair amount of additional mess and since the slicer is not easy to clean, that can be very annoying.

It's fine for stuff like salami and bologna because the cradle can accomodate these smaller pieces pretty easily.

Perhaps they've changed the design recently but the last time I checked them out, they still had this significant limitation.

=R=

I want ronnie suburban's entertainment expense account.

The kitchen equipment all sounds wonderful, but I'm asking for a subscription renewal for Gastronomica this year:
http://www.gastronomica.org/

Mike G wrote:And though I've followed the Technivorm coffee saga with interest, I want to taste that coffee before I spend that (or induce someone else to). Plus, it really bothers me that it's the least attractive looking coffeepot in the universe. It shouldn't, but it does.

Technivorm has a new, somewhat sleeker design for the Moccamaster CD Thermo, which may be the successor to the KBT 741. I saw the new model at Intelligentsia on Randolph for about $250. You can find it online cheaper, such as at Terroir Coffee (currently on sale for $209). I have the KBT 741 and love it; right down to the 1970's Dutch science lab design. Highly recommended.

Well, I thought about all these things, and I finally decided, based on the way I work (and the various places that I have repetitive motion stress like all computer slaves), that what I needed was a good chef knife with more curvature to it for rocking back and forth over some onion or garlic or whatever. Not $1000 good, like G Wiv's suggestions above, but at least Wusthof good. So I looked at Wusthof knives and there was a nice 8" Classic Ikon knife shaped like what I wanted for $139.

But wait, there's more! My wife went to Williams-Sonoma to acquire said knife (I had already gone there to check it out in person) and it turned out that the white handled version of said knife had apparently been a big flop... and so it was on sale for, I don't know the exact price, but $30 or $40 less. Since it wouldn't fit into my existing block anyway the color difference wouldn't spoil the feng shui of my kitchen, so she nabbed it for the mere price of enduring my pretend horror at the wrong color (no, I wouldn't do that right after opening a gift, son #1, who is incapable of keeping a secret for more than a second and a half, spilled the beans at lunch as we were still last-minute-shopping).

So it's a deal, if you want one of these, go get it for under $100 right now (Old Orchard store sold out, fyi). It is shown here with a Christmas cookie of a gorilla in boxer shorts, which I am very proud of (since my ever-nontraditional sister is visiting, we broke out the neon and black food coloring this year, so our cookies are not especially Christmasy).



Anyway, thanks again for the suggestions, they may yet get use and certainly at least gave me some things to think about.

Mike G wrote:Not $1000 good, like G Wiv's suggestions above, but at least Wusthof good.

Mike,

Very nice knife, I am sure you will be very happy with the Wusthof, but you seem to have jumped to conclusions as to what I was suggesting from Korin. For example, an 8-inch Misono Swedish Carbon Steel chefs knife is currently $78.20 and the 10.5-inch $133.45

Enjoy,
Gary