dimanche 13 octobre 2013

On the seperation of eggs and state of mind.


Please, bring back Home Economics in our schools!

When you buy a new tool for your kitchen, what kind of questions do you ask yourself?
Do you ask something like, `Will I use this? If so, how often? where will I put it?' Or do you ask, 'will this utensil change my life?'

It is time for change. This isn't just about trimming the fat off your kitchen. It's time to change the way home cooks think about kitchen tools altogether. We must educate ourselves so we can better the culinary market place. We need greater standards for kitchen stores in Canada. Too many gadgets that get thought up these days are silly excuses for innovation. When you buy a tool for your kitchen it ought to do everything and it ought to last.

This would be an easier feat if the capitalist market didn't prey on the very ignorance our changing educational system promotes. We fail to teach basic home cookery to young people which means that ignorant citizens are preyed on by the capitalist agenda. Granite rolling pins, garlic presses, and glass baking pans are all good examples of this phenomenon.

When you go into a kitchen store to buy a soft spatula, there are many to choose from. There are plastic white ones, wooden ones with removable tops, rubber, or silicone, who knows! So many spatulas with varying makes, materials and prices. Why do so many spatulas exist? So that they can charge more for better spatulas. If they only made great spatulas and decided to stop making terrible spatulas, the price of a good spatula would become less, because consumers wouldn't have the price of terrible spatulas to compare them to. The production of spatulas would become more efficient because we would only create one type of spatula and humanity's continued elevation would strengthen. Bad spatulas would be left behind, a relic of the early human ages.
The only spatula worth having is the one with a red handle. That type of spatula is a tool that does everything. It scrapes better than other spatulas, it is generally thicker and better made, but more importantly, it can handle extremely high temperatures without difficulty, which makes it the ultimate tool for anything from caramel to chocolate, or scraping the bottom of a pot while you poach a crème anglaise. It is a stick with a paddle on it and yet it is the tool of an elevated species.

Humans have an amazing capacity for imagining up tools. With the creation of the vaccuum packer, chefs created an entirely new mode of cookery. From compressed fruits, to flavoured salts, super slow poached meats, and gelatinous eggs. One discovery led to another, coupled with enhanced freshness and convenience, the tool itself became a staple and in some aspects the saviour of fine dining restaurants. Vaccuum packers also unfortunately come in varying qualities and prices. Like the spatula market, the sous-vide marketplace is a dangerous one. It seems to me that offering a cheap and poor alternative to the real thing is a sort of trickery. Companies try to get consumers to buy cheap tools when they can't afford better ones, but they usually work poorly and break easily.

I think that we can relate this whole phenomenon to the very idea of the tool itself. If you ask any chef what the most important tool is in a kitchen, they will tell you that it's a knife. A common chef's knife or a paring knife, depending on personal preference. No professional chef will tell you that it's their bread knife, their boning knife, their filleting knife or their cleaver, and yet, when we are faced with buying knives for a home, kitchen shops push knife sets and blocks. Who the hell wants a knife set and a block to dull their edges? As if home knives weren't blunt enough - lets rub the edge against a piece of wood daily, to really make it impossible to cut a tomato without it bursting to a pulp.
One knife - one good knife, that's all that is needed. You can do anything with that guy. If it's sharp and you know how to use it, it will cut. If you are concerned with seeming professional, consider the Chinese method of cookery. Consider the cleaver. One knife.
When partnered with that single piece of information, the task of stocking a kitchen is less daunting. The budget you have for your kitchen knives becomes the amount you can spend on one great knife - one single piece of metal all the way through the tool, nice and sharp, no block necessary - the humble beginnings of a perfect kitchen.

When you seperate an egg, do you use the shell? That shell is an important tool. It encapsulates every tiny egg and protects it. It can also be a cooking vessel, but it can also help you separate two bodies with differing properties.
Sure you can buy an egg seperator, but don't. It's a tool that is destined for the bargain bin at that grotty store on the corner. If you think you're Jaques Pepin and are truly concerned with the amount of egg white that escapes you into those buttery yellows, then be a romantic. Use a metal bowl and a clean hand. Every egg should be cracked into the bowl delicately to not disrupt the yolks, and delicately they should be taken out one by one, hand gently plunging into the slime you've gotten yourself into.
For me, the shell will do just fine.

Every tool should at least be as useful as that basic tool, that fundamental aspect of human brilliance, when knowledge and material create an advantage, an innovation. Why do we not want to teach our children the disadvantages and advantages of such equipment anymore? Surely something as ubiquitous as food preparation should be important to everyone.

I like to think that if we had a culinary-educated consumer body, we would have better kitchens period. I feel the same way about music. If young people learned about Stravinsky and Mahler in schools, would they still listen to Miley Cyrus? Perhaps for a lark. Perhaps everything from N' Sync to Robin thicke would wind up in Museums as well - distant memories of Humanity's early mistakes.

Please, bring back Home Economics in our schools!