Food Quote Friday: Rose Art Industries

"This unit is equipped with a safety system using magnetic fields, infrared beams, thermal controllers and time base logic to ensure the accurate and safe functioning of your new Cotton Candy Machine."

— Excerpted from the Rose Art Cotton Candy Machine Instruction Manual

More sugary-sweet food quotes can be found within the food quote archive.

Sharper-than-Ginsu sharp

Russkoe vooruzhenie from the beloved NYPL Digital Gallery

To a cook, knives are important. Really important. Cooks talk about their knives the way motorheads brag about their cars, pumping up their knives' past achievements, comparing the relative advantages of German vs. Japanese blades and busting each other's chops over sharpening technique. Water stone? Oil stone? How many strokes across the surface? How hard? What angle? Take a honing steel to it afterward?

There's a lot of professional pride wrapped up in a cook's tools. I've known that for years. But there's something I didn't know until today: when it comes to sharp knives, there's sharp, there's really sharp and then there's Scary-Sharp.

If you're deep into woodworking, maybe you've heard this one before (and if you like, you can read the long tale of obsessive woodworkers and their blade-sharpening experimentation here), but in essence, the "scary sharp" sharpening method involves a series of progressively finer-grit sandpaper strips which are applied to a smooth, flat surface (like marble, granite or heavy glass) with the aid of adhesive spray.

If it works for chisels, it's bound to work for kitchen knives. And though it sounds like fair bit of fuss for those of us who don't have a lot of fresh sandpaper laying around, the sandpaper method apparently takes about 10 minutes to do (as long as you happen to have all the materials on hand) and produces an edge that's, oh yes: scary sharp. So sharp the blade is shiny like a mirror and capable of cutting pine shavings that are four ten-thousandths of an inch thick. (I know I'm in constant need of supremely thin pine shavings. How about you?)

As a person who's spent a good amount of time on blade sharpening (and, admittedly, occasionally dropped some cash when I've felt lazy about it), I really like the DIY angle in this method. Scary sharp is an awfully attractive promise.

Truthfully, I'm not sure I want that kind of power. I wonder if I really need my kitchen blades to be all that they can be. I mean, a sharp knife is a thing of beauty. A knife that whips through tomatoes (and then steel cans!) is an enviable possession. But a knife that could fillet my fingers with the effort of a whisper? With great power comes great responsibility.

A year of food, G-Cal style

It's 46°F in New York City, and I just watched a guy walk down the street in a tank top and running shorts. Nevertheless, I'm feeling some holiday spirit. (Of course, that might just be the whiskey in my eggnog.)

As my gift to all y'all, I've compiled the US Food Holidays list in an ever-available, easy-to-install Google Calendar format.

Now you'll know the appropriate day to celebrate pigs in a blanket (inexplicably, it's April 24) and the proper night to sneak zucchini onto your neighbor's porch (August 8, naturally). Together we can all puzzle over the meaning of Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day or Ice Cream and Violins Day.

A few caveats: This won't work with non-Google calendars. I've not included the national food months (too cumbersome), and I really have no way to verify the dates, so if you have quibbles about whether Lemon Cupcake Day is really on December 15 or not, I'm not sure we can really resolve the issue with complete accuracy. Therefore, take these with the proverbial grain of salt. They're just for fun.

Ready to install? Click the cute little button below, or search for "US food holidays" in your Google Calendar.

Recipe Rock Star #4: Tools make the chef

Dave's skilled paws chop ginger at lightning-speed

The Recipe Rock Star is a cooking tutorial series. We've covered one focused minute, mise and the importance of quality. Feel free to read them in whatever order you wish. Moving on...

Recipe Rock Star Lesson #4:

Tools make the chef

In a professional kitchen setting, those who clock into work with dull knives have doomed themselves to an 8- to 13-hour shift of culinary hell. Delicate herbs will be crushed, not sliced, beneath a shoddy blade. Vegetables are hacked into misshapen chunks that cook at different rates, making some pulpy while others are crunchy. Because dull knives tear meat rather than carving it, the resulting slices are clumsy, thick and ugly. A cook using a dull knife has to use force to cut things, increasing the risk of chopping up fingers. (Unfortunately, I know this from experience.)

This is why chefs baby their tools. They sharpen their knives, massage oil on them and take them everywhere. Why? Any chef worth her salt knows she's more like Batman than Superman. That is to say, chefs might appear to have superhuman superpowers, but (like Batman) it's all about ace skill augmented with impressive hardware. Take away the utility belt and the Batmobile, and you've left Batman in a bad, bad place.

It's not just the knives. Inexperienced cooks usually don't want to invest much money in a new endeavor, so they tend to purchase inexpensive pans made with thin, flimsy metals. That's about the worst thing a newbie can do, since this type of pan is extremely difficult to use. Because heat is distributed unevenly, these pans tend to warp or develop hot spots.

What does this mean for your dinner? In a cheap pan, you're almost guaranteed to burn your meats, scorch your sauces and find your fish fillets, omelets and cutlets sticking anxiously to the surface of the pan, rather than sliding easily onto your spatula. I've found that a plate of shredded omelet alongside a pan of charred remains doesn't really boost a new cook's sense of accomplishment. Don't worry, though. It's probably not you. It's the equipment.

Though I could go on forever about various pieces of equipment I love, here, in brief, is what I consider to be the very basics for your utility belt (along with some nice accessory items listed thereafter).

Essential Kitchen Equipment

1. A set of sharp, good-quality knives (and a safe place to store 'em):

• chef's knife (about 8")
• long serrated knife
• short paring knife
• honing steel (to keep those knives in shape)

I have a set of Wüsthof-Trident knives I picked up on the cheap, but there's a lot of good brands. Just find something that feels good in your hands. Some people also like a mid-length utility knife, but I never use 'em.

2. Two non-slip cutting boards.

I prefer wood. You'll need one for meats and one for fruit/veg. Label the boards with a permanent marker. On the fruit/veg board, use one side of the board for veg and the other side for fruit. Nobody likes their apples to taste like onions. Or raw chicken. Bleah!

3. A very basic set of high-quality pans:

• small saucepot with a lid
• large, heavy-bottomed stockpot with a lid
• small sauté pan
• large sauté pan
• large roasting pan

If you have extra interest and money, it's really nice to have a large cast-iron pan, a wok and a dutch oven.

4. Bakers will need a few extra pans:

• muffin tin
• sheet trays (It's good to have two.)
• 13"x9" cake pan
• 9" round cake pan (It's nice to have two of these for doing stacked birthday cakes.)
• What they now call a "fluted tube pan." I call it a bundt pan.
• 9" pie pan
• 9" tart pan
• loaf pan
• a cooling rack (or two)

There's a host of other pans for specialty items. These few will assist you with the basic pies, cookies, tarts, muffins, cupcakes, brownies, cakes and quickbreads. Folks who really dig baking will need to get springform pans and pans that accomodate additional shapes.

5. Other necessary tools:

• timer (Unless there's already one on your stove)
• meat thermometer and oven thermometer (You'd be shocked to know how many ovens run too hot or too cool...)
• vegetable peeler (the OXO one rocks)
• mixing bowls (I'd advise a small, medium and large one. The metal Martha Stewart ones at K-Mart are good and cheap.)
• heat-proof rubber spatula
• metal spatula (I believe these are also called pancake turners.)
• whisk
• set of teaspoons
• set of dry measuring cups
• liquid measuring cup
• ladle
• long-handled meat fork
• ricer or potato masher
• slotted spoon
• wooden mixing spoon
• colander
• strainer
• citrus reamer
• carving fork
• heavy-duty kitchen shears
• butcher's string
• grater
• pepper mill*
• metal steamer basket of some kind
• can opener/bottle opener/wine opener
• blender/food processor (immersion blenders are nice, but heavy-duty stand up ones work well, too)
• rolling pin (or a clean wine bottle)
• fire extinguisher

If you're a baker, add in a candy thermometer, pastry brush, sifter, pastry bag and a pastry scraper (also called a "bench scraper").

These days, I might be tempted to list a stand mixer, a Silpat tray liner, a kitchen scale, a microplane and a spice grinder (aka coffee grinder) or mortar and pestle as essential equipment as well, but since I got along without 'em for many years, maybe they're not essential... just awfully nice.

With all this stuff, you'll have a properly equipped utility belt, or at least a nicely stocked kitchen. In the next edition, we'll work on the other part of the Batman equation... skills.

* Cooks grind a lot of pepper, so we have arguments about the best one... I dig my Vic Firth, while fellow cook Molly loves the Unicorn Magnum. As long as it puts out a satisfying grind and volume, you're fine.