Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Holy Santoku, Batman!

Something I have been thinking of for many weeks now is to blog about my food/cooking "goals." Also included in this would be a wish list of necessary cooking apparatai (no, that's not the real plural form of apparatus, but I like it better).  Chief on that list would be an immersion blender. Sigh. What anniversary year would that be? (Update: since originally writing this post, I have indeed acquired an immersion blender- Christmas 2010!)

Other items I am pining for: a cast-iron skillet, a mortar and pestle, a pasta maker attachment for my kitchenaid, one of those mashed potato squasher things (somehow we don't have one), a Japanese knife from Henckels, glass mixing bowls, getting my knives sharpened, a pizza peel and wheel, a giant cheap stockpot for steaming crabs or sanitizing jars for preserving, a restaurant-grade floor mat since tile kills my back after a few hours of cooking/dishes (in a dream world, I'd have a restaurant dishwasher that could do a load in 60 seconds. sigh...), a chinois or food mill, a mandolin (even though they scare the bejesus out of me), a full size food processor, a french bread pan, silpat mats, a martini shaker (for more uses than hosting a Mad Men party) and a knife roll, for travel. The list could keep going, but that would just be excessive.

On my to-do list, (basically my idea of Iron Chefing myself)

Homemade Pate and Sausage with my new meat grinder
Infused Olive Oils/Balsamic Vinegars/Vodka
Orange Marmalade or Fig Preserves
Homemade Caramel Turtles
Buying a side of beef and cutting up my own meat for the season
Learning real knife skills
Learning to BBQ with charcoal
Clarifying Butter
Perfecting Nani's Indian Recipes
Homemade hamburgers
Make the perfect crab cake (sounds basic, but I have had more failed attempts at this than you would believe. Starting to border on the definition of insanity)
Find a way to take natural light food pictures in my windowless kitchen

And then there's this. If Alton Brown weren't married (and I weren't either), I'd be one of those stalkers who would propose through handwritten letters. He is like a food magician and if he opened a culinary school, I'd be in the first graduating class.

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