It's said that it was Coco Chanel who made this little number a wardrobe requirement

Most every woman has heard that to have a complete closet, a fully equipped wardrobe, one must have a little black dress. This is the item one dresses up or dresses down, depending on need, but it is the rock solid center of a clothing collection, at least since Coco Chanel popularized it in 1926 and Vogue pronounced it the Ford of clothing and a uniform for all women of taste.

In the kitchen I have my little black dress. It’s my black baking pan, and though it has been through a lot, like the best black dress it doesn’t show its wear. It’s heavy and solid, so much more than a baking sheet, which is its size. But it is French, which I’m sure would please Coco.

I bought my French baking sheet years ago when I worked in a cookware store in Boston. Now they are a bit hard to come by, but the best available is Matfer Bourgeat.  Norpro and Lincoln Foodservice Products (also called Lincoln-Wearever) have commercial gauge baking pans though not black. Nonstick pans won’t give food the browned crust that is really the point of one of these pans, so avoid them.

Okay, not so sexy but one you'll use almost every day

My pan is blue-black steel, 19 x 13 inches, and weighs in at just over 4 pounds. It’s a workhorse, but it requires a little special care. It rusts easily if I don’t dry it immediately, and can’t be put in the dishwasher. The idea is to get a pan that is heavy enough to withstand some high heat, with a thickness that will hold enough heat to actually promote cooking and browning. I rarely use mine for cookies, since it browns the bottom so well it’s almost too well. It is perfect for breads and pizzas, when you do want a well-browned crust.

Also in action, this time for focaccia

It is also the pan I turn to when I want to roast vegetables. The pan gets hot enough to do the bottom side browning, and food almost never sticks. If I’m roasting chicken pieces or fish, I do use foil or parchment, but it isn’t necessary. It just makes clean-up a little easier.

One of my favorite uses for the black pan is broiled fish. The pan gets super-heated under the broiler, and I just slide the fish (on foil) onto the hot pan and never have to turn it (more about that in the next post).

The pan in action getting preheated for perfect broiled fish

This is certainly one of my most-used kitchen tools, and my batterie de cuisine just wouldn’t be complete without it.

(And I’m sure Coco would be pleased with my French — encore.)

Kelly McCune © 2010

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(Slightly scary) Mr. Clown smiles down benignly

“Never use two when one will do!” That was the oft-intoned phrase employed by my mother, meant to control our rampant use of paper towels. I thought that for my mother, the issue was cost. She must have hated seeing us roll off two or three just to dry our hands. But she informs me that she was also a follower of the “Save a Tree” movement going on in the 70s, and drove her newspapers to a local resident who recycled, long before there was any citywide service. Way to go, mom!

So the tables turned on a recent visit with the folks when I found myself talking about paper towel conservation. M & D had become fond of the super-deluxe (like a t-shirt, practically), quicker-picker-upper style of paper towel. In the spirit of “never use two…” I suggested they might try the ones made from recycled paper. I told them they would not necessarily like these recycled towels, but to hang in there — they’re improving.

Paper towels are one of my favorite kitchen tools, so I was motivated to find a recycled brand. I also recycle several newspapers, which seemed hypocritical if I wasn’t willing to buy products (like toilet paper, also) made from them. Recycled paper towels have been, until recently, disappointing — they shredded easily and fell apart when wet. But the products have measurably improved. Most importantly, the more we buy and use them, the better they will get.

Pictured above are a few brands available now. Marcal and Seventh Generation are available in nearly any grocery store, including the one my mom goes to in Oklahoma. Seventh Generation first distributed the brown, unbleached variety, which I love, but now my grocery store only sells the bleached ones. Trader Joe’s has a house brand. Most are 100% recycled paper, 80% of which is post-consumer.

Guilt-Free Foil

At last another of my favorite kitchen tools, foil, has shed its evil ways. My fingers used to tingle with remorse every time I tore off a sheet. Reynolds has finally rolled out an aluminum foil from recycled aluminum, and that is a really big deal. Regular and heavy-duty, even, and no discernible difference between the new and the old. And why should there be? Metal is metal — melt it down, use it again.

Producing foil from recovered aluminum requires 80% less energy. Cha-ching for the environment. Bauxite ore, the rock that contains aluminum, is surface-mined, which leaves behind scarring and a sludgy polluted mess. Smelting the ore is energy-thirsty on a colossal scale. So recycling aluminum and using recycled aluminum products — Reynolds has gone one step further by making the box out of recycled paper and the inks are water-based — make that circle we’ve been waiting for.

Right now recycled foil may cost a few cents more, particularly than the generic brands, but at $2.99 for 50 square feet (Target) I was quite happy. And if we all buy it…well, you know the (w)rap.

Kelly McCune © 2009

©2010 Kitchenelly. All Rights Reserved.

A simple pump and your favorite olive oil turns the oil into über-PAM®

When PAM® first made its appearance on grocery store shelves back in the 1960s my mom was certainly an early adopter. It piqued her natural attraction to fun-new-food-items, but mostly it eliminated the ornery chore of greasing the cookie sheet for the endless chocolate chip cookies she made back in the day. Simple! Just spray it on! Oh, and by the way, PAM® stands for “Product of Arthur Meyerhoff,” its inventor. Yep.

I have resisted cooking spray for decades. Just can’t really see where it would be needed. A couple of years ago, however, I succumbed to one that was labeled “Organic Cooking Spray Extra Virgin Olive Oil” — all the right buttons pushed. The ingredient list kept putting me off, though: organic extra virgin olive oil, yes, but also organic grain alcohol, soy lecithin, and propellant. Now I’m not accustomed to propellant in food, because isn’t that something that pushes something else? When does that ever need to be in food? Alas, that same can still languishes on the shelf. In fact, I think I’ll go in there right now and throw it out.

Spraying and food don’t usually go together, unless you are a Easy Cheese® person. Good news, though! I finally brought home an olive oil mister, and I’ve been falling in love with it ever since.

The olive oil sprayer works without propellant. The lid acts as an air pump, pulling air into the chamber and creating enough pressure to force the oil through the fine mist sprayer. The Cuisipro (under $20) recommends filling the container 1/3 full and pumping the lid 12 to 15 times, or until it becomes difficult to depress. The sprayer will work for 15 seconds or so, adequate to oil a pan, coat vegetables, or flavor salad greens. If you haven’t finished your task, just pump it up again.

This is a Cuisipro sprayer, easy to fill and clean and is well-constructed

Leaving the contents “pressurized” may wear out the sprayer seal quicker than necessary. Be sure to loosen the sprayer top to release the pressure after using it. I find that twisting the top back on rather than a straight down push keeps from adding pressure before putting it away.

What do I use it for? I like to “rub” vegetables lightly with olive oil before grilling or roasting them, but it’s a nicer task with the mister. I think I might be using less oil, too. Here I’ve made the difficult job of lightly oiling kale by a quick spray with the mister.

Rinse and pat dry the kale, lightly spray with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt. Shown here is Tuscan kale (also called Cavolo Nero, Lacinato kale, Dinosaur or Dino kale) and Purple kale

Roast kale in a 275°F oven for about 25 minutes, or until it is crispy and holds its shape. This makes a great cocktail snack. Purple kale, which has a thicker, stringier spine, can be cut into ribbons.  First cut out the spine, stack the leaves and cut crosswise into strips, arrange them haphazardly on a baking sheet, mist with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast, tossing the strips midway through cooking, until crunchy, about 20 minutes. They make a nice garnish for soup or pasta.

The Tuscan kale works best if you want to cook whole leaves since the spine is very narrow and not too stringy, though I've used some younger purple kale leaves here, split down the middle

©2010 Kitchenelly. All Rights Reserved.

Lightweight, agile, sharp (like some people I know...)

A knife is one of the most primitive and fundamental of all the kitchen tools. Meat, knife, fire: dinner. Since knives exist in the bull’s-eye of the kitchen I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about them. When I’m visiting my mother in Oklahoma, I approach the “knife situation” very carefully. I don’t want to hurt any feelings! She has one amazing and deadly all-carbon slicer that I use for its edge but it doesn’t do for chopping or mincing. Her other knives are of varying strange shapes and designs, but none of them has quite the muscle I need.

So here’s my plan. Next time I visit (and I happen to be checking my bag) I’m going to take her one of these 6-inch Victorinox/Forschner chef knives. Yep, and since my dad is lately into cooking, he’ll especially appreciate the surgeon-like keeness of the blade. It goes back to that meat, knife, fire impulse.

Yes, I’ve cut myself with my kitchen knives. But it’s the dull knives that slip and jump and fail to dig in, often aiming instead for a finger. Sharp knives are paradoxically safer in the kitchen.

This knife is my all-around champ. It’s light, sharp and I can mistreat it by getting it wet, which I have to be careful of with my wood-handled knives. I reach for the 6-inch blade more often than the larger ones because it is a little more maneuverable. And the price of it is hard to beat at around $20 to $25.

You can get a fine chop with a sharp blade

I use a steel to straighten the edge on my knife every couple of times I use it. I don’t set out to do it, I just run the knife over the steel right before I need it. The effect is that the blade will seem sharper and cut better. Every few months put a true edge on with an electric honer, if you have one. Then once a year have it professionally sharpened (I probably do this less often because I forget to — the seasons blend together in Southern California and that’s my final excuse).

The best place to store knives is upside down in a knife block and the worst place is knockin’ around in a drawer. If they do have to live in the drawer, keep a cardboard cover on them so they don’t get nicked by the vegetable peeler or the grater. Speaking of the grater, it’s wreaked more havoc on my hands than any knife!

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