[Looking for Part I and Part II?]

Sharp things

I am not a knife geek, so you won’t find any opinionated, my-knives-are-holier-than-thine talk here. The three simple pointers I can share are: 1- you should first and foremost choose knives that feel comfortable, hefty (but not heavy), and well-balanced in your hand, 2- a high price doesn’t necessarily equate a high performance (see edifying rating here), and 3- less is more. Here’s my basic kit:

– A 20-cm/8-inch chef’s knife (couteau de chef), to cut, slice, mince, chop, and dice. My first was a stainless steel Dumas. Years later I won a Füri knife (with dimples on the blade) at a festival, and I’ve been quite happy with it ever since (although I wish the company hadn’t felt the need to get a celebrity chef endorsement; I find it mildly embarrassing).
– A 12-cm/4.5-inch paring knife (couteau d’office), for when the item to work on is small or handheld and more control is needed. I started with a basic one from Dehillerin‘s own line, until Maxence came home one day with a Wüsthof; we like it.
– A knife sharpener to keep these two knives happy. I use a diamond-shaped stone that looks like this one, bought at Dehillerin and used according to the salesguy’s instructions — I soak the stone in water first, set the knife at a 15° angle, and swish the blade away from me.
– A 25-cm/10-inch serrated bread knife to slice bread and cakes without making a horror movie scene out of them. Mine is, again, from Dehillerin’s line.
– A swivel-bladed vegetable peeler. I use it to peel vegetables (how very creative of me), but also to cut shavings of hard cheese or chocolate (chill the chocolate first). It is worth investing in one that has a good, sharp blade; I am very happy with my OXO peeler. It is in fact the second one I buy, since the first one disappeared one day: it either ran away with the lobster cracker or, more likely, I threw it in the trash along with the potato peels it had helped produce. Such is the saddening fate, I hear, of 90% of vegetable peelers throughout the world.
– A four-sided box grater, for cheese and vegetables; my favorite side (of course one has to have a favorite side) is the large hole one. Again, make sure it is sharp as a whip (I can recommend the Gefu brand), otherwise the merest carrot to grate will be such a hassle you will stop eating grated carrot salads and that would be a pity, wouldn’t it, because grated carrot salads are rather nice, not to mention good for your complexion.

Not indispensable but nice to have:

– A mandoline, to slice vegetables and fruit quickly and in thin, regular slices. It can also be used to cut matchsticks or crinkled slices, which is pretty neat, and chunks of your fingers, which is pretty painful (be careful with that thing). Depending on your budget, you can go all out and get a professional model (mine is a Bron) or buy a cheaper plastic one outside any Parisian department store: the latter may not have as long a life, but it will work acceptably well.
– A microplane zester to grate citrus zest, cheese, ginger, chocolate, etc. finely and effortlessly.

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[Part I can be found here.]

Utensils

– A slotted turner, to lift and turn food in the skillet or sauté pan. Choose a heat-resistant one made of silicone or nylon so it won’t scrape your pans.
– A pair of locking tongs, to grab, flip, and arrange food in the pan as precisely as if you were using your fingers, minus the burns.
– Wooden spoons, to stir and mix. It’s nice to have at least two of these. Choose them with a long handle (about 30cm/12”) so your hand will be far from the heat source as you stir.
– A slotted spoon, to lift the solids from a pan and leave the liquids behind. Very handy to serve stews, too.
– A ladle, to transfer and serve soup.
– A heat-resistant silicone spatula, to scrape bowls to the last drop, and smooth out the surface of cake batters.
– A wire whisk.
– A set of measuring cups and spoons. I personally use the same set of cups to measure liquids and solids, and I am still alive.
– A nesting set of mixing bowls. Three is enough; don’t get tricked into buying one of those rainbow-colored sets of ten, however good-looking. Choose plastic or stainless steel; make sure they are stable and don’t tip over too easily. If you’re short on space, get glass or ceramic bowls attractive enough that they can also be used as salad bowls.
– Cutting boards. Wood and plastic are both fine; I myself am partial to bamboo boards. (Note: to avoid cross-contamination, our friends the food safety experts say you should assign three different boards to work with produce, cooked products, and raw animal products.)
– A cooling rack, to speed up the cooling of baked goods so you can eat your cookies sooner.
– A fine-mesh sieve, to strain sauces and marinades. I use mine to sift the flour for cakes.
– A large colander, to drain pasta and set vegetables aside as you chop them.
– A salad spinner to dry your salad greens. It does a good job with fresh herbs, too, no real need to get the miniature one.
– A pepper mill. I love the one Meg gave me, which you operate with one push of the thumb (although, when the reservoir is full, my thumb is not quite strong enough).
– A can opener, preferably one that also has a little metal lip to open jars of jam (and, incidently, bottles of beer).
– A nut cracker. I use a simple yet sturdy vintage one that Maxence’s grandparents gave us.

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I have recently received several emails from readers who were asking if I could share my ideal set of kitchen equipment. I can’t think of a more fitting time of year to do so, as some of these tools may make good items to add to your wish list if, like me, you are usually stumped when people ask what sort of gift you would like to receive.

The following list, which will be published in three installments, is a very personal one I’ve established based on 1/ the content of my own extraordinarily messy cabinets and drawers, and 2/ what I actually use — I’m sure some of you are aware of how different these two concepts can be.

These tools can be found in cookware stores (in Paris, you should visit E. Dehillerin, Mora, La Bovida, and A.Simon, as well as Eurotra), but also online, in thrift shops, or at yard sales. And if you have friends, neighbors, or coworkers who cook, ask if they’d be up for a swap or a loan: one person’s neglected kitchen gadget is another’s treasured acquisition.

Cooking

– Two round skillets or sauté pans, with lids: one small (20cm/8”), one large (25-30cm/10-12”). Choose heavy ones with a thick bottom, as they will conduct the heat better. (A sauté pan has straighter and higher sides than a skillet, so you can flip the contents with one adroit shake of the pan, but in most recipes they are interchangeable.)
– Two saucepans, with lids: one small (1 liter/quart), one large (3 liters/quarts).
– A heavy pot or Dutch oven, for soups, stews, and no-knead bread. Choose a large one, round or oval, 6 to 8 liters/quarts in capacity. I wholeheartedly recommend a cast-iron cocotte, enamel-coated or not: it’s definitely an investment, but the heat conduction is perfect and it will last several lifetimes. I own one large Staub and one smaller Le Creuset. These two brands I recommend if you can buy yours in France, but they are pretty pricy abroad and I hear there are now good-quality, cheaper alternatives in other countries. Make sure the handle of the lid can take high temperatures without melting, so you can use your pot in the oven, too.
– A steamer insert, with lid, to steam vegetables and fish. I use a basic set of stackable bamboo baskets (dirt-cheap at any Asian store), which you simply set over a pan of simmering water.

Not indispensable, but nice to have:

– An oval skillet, to cook whole fish.
– A grill pan, to sear meat and give it those nice, appetizing grill marks.
– A ceramic terrine dish, with lid.
– A Römertopf dish. This is on my wish list, to make Muriel’s chicken just like she does.

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Le Pain qu’on ne pétrit pas

Complete fiascoes are few and far between in my kitchen. I’m not sure whom to thank for this — my lucky star, my karma, my mom? — but the fact is that the things I cook or bake very rarely end up in the trash. I have disappointments of course, dishes that turn out a bit meh despite my high hopes, but nothing quite as débâcle-like as when I tried my hand at the recipe everyone has been raving about lately, stressing how laughably easy and forgiving it is: Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread.

As laughably easy and forgiving as it may be, it did take me three trials and three days to get it to work. What went wrong, you ask?

Problem number one: the consistency of the dough. The New York Times recipe gave the amount of flour in cups: this introduces a considerable bias depending on how one measures (spooning vs. scooping), a bias that is further multiplied by the fact that the recipe calls for three cups of flour. I used the generally accepted volume-to-weight conversion for flour (one cup = 120 grams), and this produced a dough that was so soupy — more like a batter, really — I found it impossible to work with as instructed. This problem was solved by turning to C&Z readers and then bread experts, who had kindly calculated the right weight of flour based on the target hydration of the dough.

Problem number two, my stupid fault entirely. I own a sugar thermometer, an oven thermometer, and a medical thermometer, but I don’t own a thermometer that will measure the temperature of a room and I have no notion whatsoever of how warm my apartment is. So when the recipe said, “warm room temperature, about 70°F,” I decided that it meant, “on top of the radiator.” The unfortunate consequence of this — and it took me two failed attempts but just one question to Maxence to realize my blunder — was that the dough overproofed like mad. By the time I was supposed to fold it and gather it into a ball (try shaping soup into a ball, it’s fun), its peak state of proofing was a distant memory: it played dead during the second rise, and baked into a gummy pancake so sorry-looking that even Parisian pigeons would have turned their beak up, and those guys will eat anything.

Embitter or discourage me these failures did not. Judging by the number of happy customers it had garnered, the recipe had to have something going for it, and by Toutatis I was determined to catch the magic by its fluttering wings and slam it down on my kitchen counter. So on day three I prepared a new loaf, and this one turned out to be so astonishingly successful it was worth every single minute and every single gram of flour sacrificed in the process.

My third loaf was baked late on Sunday evening in my chick yellow Coquelle, and this gave it a nice shape not unlike that of the Scrameustache’s space shuttle.

Our neighbors happened to drop by for a drink and a chat just as I was taking it out of the oven (I suspect they just followed the smell from the landing); we murmured words of support to one another during the forty-five excruciating minutes it took for the bread to cool down properly. And when the time had finally come for me to slice it and we each tried a few bites (with and without demi-sel butter), I just about fainted from the combination of joy, pride, and sensory bliss.

A golden crust of ideal thickness and consistency, offering just the right amount of crisp ridges and chewy valleys, a crumb so supple and fleshy it almost felt alive, and a subtle complexity of scent and flavor that wasn’t so assertive as to overwhelm what you’d serve the bread with — this was a loaf I would be more than willing to pay good money for at the boulangerie. By the following morning it had developed the faintest hint of a hazelnut smell — this went remarkably well with a good spread of macadamia butter — and it kept very well for the two days it took us to munch our way through it.

I haven’t yet had time to start a fourth loaf, but I plan to sometime over the weekend. I feel reasonably confident about it (whichever way you look at it, there is no way my one successful loaf in three could have been beginner’s luck), and I am curious to try using a bit of chestnut flour this time and to follow Sam Fromartz’s advice to set 1/4 cup of the dough aside, let it develop in the fridge for two days, and use it for extra flavor in the next loaf.

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