Some of the tools in my kitchen get used on a regular basis while others are used only on specific occasions. My mandoline falls into the latter category.

I originally purchased my mandoline in Paris on our last visit in 2004 from a store called E. Dehillerin. E. Dehillerin is a kitchen supply store in Paris that has been around since 1820 and mostly caters to professional cooks. I have found that their selection of kitchen products is really quite diverse and they carry items that I have never seen in any other kitchen store in the world that I have visited.

The mandoline that I bought is made by a French company called Bron Coucke (made in France, of course) and is made of sturdy all-metal construction. It came with a small red case which contains 4 different sized cutting blocks which can be inserted into the mandoline so that you can julienne cut (ie: cut into match sticks) into different widths.

Without using one of these blades in the mandoline, you will only cut flat and a lever at the bottom of the mandoline allow the thickness of the cut to be infinitely adjustable. By reversing the direction of the cut and flipping a lever, you can use the wavy shaped blade instead of the flat one.

All of the blades in the mandoline and the inserts are incredibly sharp and while this would seem like a useful feature, it poses it’s own set of challenges. The mandoline has a round plastic guard that is supposed to be used to slide the food back and forth and protect your hand. However, I have generally stopped using this as it just doesn’t offer the same control as using my bare hands – especially when you are getting down to the last few slices. Consider that as you are sliding food back and forth (getting progressively closer to the razor-sharp cutting blade with each pass) that the thought of slicing my fingers open is pretty high on my mind.

Most of the usage of my mandoline seems to be around the Christmas season as a regular task that I use it for is to slice the red cabbage that we have with our December 24th Christmas dinner. The red cabbage (a fairly hard vegetable) needs to be sliced into even sized pieces. I also made a dish on the 25th made up of sliced butternut squash and yams. Both of these jobs were perfect tasks for the mandoline and were all completed in minutes with a minimum of effort (other than concentrating on not slicing my fingers off).

There are many different brands and styles of mandolines on the market and if you are interested in buying one you don’t need to go to Paris to buy one. In fact the model that I have is available in stores in Vancouver as well are much simpler (and less expensive) models. Depending on who much you think you may use a mandoline you can decide on how much you would want to spend on it if you wished to purchase one.

Personally, I can’t wait to visit E. Dehillerin again and see what other great things that they happen to carry that might be a good addition to my kitchen.

Baden

As the weather was starting to cool down, the fall season just seemed so appropriate for making things like a hearty soup. The first few recipes that I had tried out (like Squash soup, Creamy Garlic and of course the Spicy Caribbean Chicken soups) turned out to be all winners and Barb seemed to enjoy them so they quickly became a regular part of our dinner menu.

One of the consistent themes in making many of my soup recipes was that once the vegetable ingredients had simmered to the point of being soft, the contents usually needed to be puréed. This process typically involved transferring the extremely hot contents of the soup pot to the blender (in batches) to be puréed before being transferred into a different pot.

After about the 5th or 6th time doing this, I began to think that there must be a better way of doing this that didn’t leave me with an extra pot and a blender to clean at the end of the night. I won’t even talk about the possibility of getting burned with boiling hot soup going in and out of the blender.

As with many things in life, there is kitchen technology to the rescue: the immersion blender.

The immersion blender is simply a handheld blender with a long stalk that can be immersed right into a pot on your stove. No more transferring soup back and forth from the stove.

When researching different immersion blenders, I ended up choosing a Kitchen Aid model due to two of its main features: first it had a stainless steel stalk. Since this is the part of the blender that actually gets put into the liquid, I figured that it being stainless would make it easier to clean and it is absolutely the case. The second feature that I liked about it is that the stalk disconnects from the motor making it easy to throw it into the dish washer if needed.

Using an immersion blender takes some getting used to. It’s really important that the spinning blades at the bottom of the stalk stay completely immersed in the soup. If the blades come even close to the surface of the liquid, it will start whipping soup all over the stove top and back splash. Believe me when I say that this will only happen to you once before you get the point.

Depending on how deep the liquid is in your pot, you may have to move the blender up and down slightly but I’ve found that just tilting the blender a little and moving it around the bottom of the pot is more than enough to draw all of the soup through the spinning blades to get all of the vegetables all blended up.

Right after I have blended up my soup, I unplug it and carry it right to the sink and rinse the blender under some water. If necessary, I’ll disconnect the stalk from the motor and put the stalk into the dishwasher.

My immersion blender gets used fairly regularly (although not as often in the summer). I think that once we’re back from our upcoming Italian Adventure and the weather becomes a bit cooler, the soups will be prominently back on the menu again.

Baden

Once everything was completed and I started to use the new cooktop, I realized that the 15-20 year old hand-me-down pots and pans just weren’t doing the job. Most of them were made from a variety a cheap, thin materials that just weren’t suitable to the high heat cooking that I was starting to use on the gas range. Because I was also planning on hanging up most of my cookware on our pot rack, I wanted them to not only function well, but look good too.

I did a bunch of research into different brands of stainless steel cookware and continued to find that a brand called All-Clad was always rated very highly. The main distinguishing feature of a stainless steel pot is the ability of it to evenly distribute heat across the bottom and up the sides as well. Top brands use a multilayer approach having an aluminum core sandwiched between layers of 18/10 stainless steel on the inner and outer walls of the pot. Some of the cheaper types only do this on the bottom but it really needs to go through the entire pot to get even heating.

The first couple of pots that I bought were from All-Clad and they worked really well. Food heated up quickly and the long handles kept cool. Everything was tops notch construction.

The biggest problem that I had with All-Clad was that they cost a fortune. Seeing how I eventually wanted to replace up to a dozen different pots and pans, I started to look at different options at a more reasonable price.

In the end, I found two brands that I really like that I find are quite close to the performance of All-Clad but on average, about 1/3 the price for the equivalent size. The two brands that like are:

   - Cuisinox Elite
   - Meyer Analon Clad (this is different from their Advanced Clad line)

Of the two, I have bought more of the Cuisinox line as I find it easier to find. In the Vancouver area, the Cuisinox line can be found at Ming Wo and the Meyer line at The Bay. Both lines seem to be perpetually on sale at both stores.

The features that I have found that make up good quality stainless steel cookware are are usually things like:

   -Weight. I’m usually looking for a heavy pan. Light materials means cheap construction and uneven heating.
   -Riveted handle. The handle should be securely riveted to the pan and not spot welded.
   -Uniform thickness. The bottom of the cookware should be the same thickness as the sides for even heating.
   -Tri ply construction. Good cookware will be made with three layers (an aluminum core and 18/10 stainless steel on the outer walls. in general, the thicker the metal the better.

On the issue of non-stick coating vs. not, I like to have a couple of non-stick pans on hand but generally like to use the uncoated pans. I have found that bare uncoated cookware gives a better sear to food when I have the heat up and that the non-stick coatings generally start to flake off over time.

If you take the time to look at the availability of cookware that you have in your local kitchen stores, you can probably find good quality stainless steel cookware that will not only look good, but will perform nicely as well.

Baden

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Sidebar: I have found that referring to anything as a technology pretty much opens the door to go completely nuts about it. This may have something to do with me working in Information Technology as my “day job”.

One day I’ll tell you about my automotive technology collection. Don’t even ask about my computer stuff.

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In my first article in the series on Kitchen Technology, I’m going to talk about something that has been getting lots of use lately: my KitchenAid stand mixer.

While I’ve only had my mixer for about 2 years, this is actually my second KitchenAid mixer. The first one was a Classic model mixer and the current one is a Custom Edition (for some reason, the Custom Edition model is not listed on the KitchenAid web site. The Professional 600 is the closest in features to the Custom Edition).

Like many people who cook, I had heard of and dreamed about owning a KitchenAid stand mixer for many years. I ended up getting one through Save on Food’s rewards program Save on More.

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Notice: Save on Foods is part of the company that I work for. However, please don’t let this minor detail get in the way of you spend lots of money at our fine, fine stores.

Save on Foods: So Much more in Store.

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When I got my shiny new KitchenAid home and first started using it, I was in heaven. With 250 watts of mixing power, it would surely be able to handle anything that I threw at it. Mixing anything became so easy and effortless. I could start mixing something and walk away to work on something else knowing that the mighty KitchenAid was effortlessly doing its job. Sitting on my counter top it became the symbol of my growing mastery over the drudgery of the cooking. Everything was perfect and my life was complete.

All of this ended when I started to make bread.

At first, it was OK and the small batches of white bread dough that I was making mixed nicely in the 4.3 litre (4.5 quart) stainless steel mixing bowl. As soon as I started to get into making whole wheat and rye doughs, the honeymoon was over. Anything more than that very smallest batches of these kinds of dough would cause my KitchenAid to start making all kinds of horrible noises and often literally stop turning while the top of the unit (near the motor) started to become hot and emit the beginnings of a bad burning smell. Clearly, this mixer was insufficient for the job of making bread.

It was around that time that I had an opportunity to get a complimentary KitchenAid product due to the fact that we had bought new (expensive) KitchenAid appliances for our entire kitchen. I ended up choosing the much higher-end Custom Edition stand mixer in Metallic Chrome finish.

The difference between the Classic and Custom Edition mixers are striking. The biggest difference of course is 500 watts of power compared to the 250 watt motor in the Classic. In addition, the Custom Edition comes standard with a huge 5.7L (6 quart) stainless steel mixing bowl with a built in handle. It’s amazing how much easier it is to hold the bowl when laden down with heavy dough by using the handle. The bowl on the Custom Edition secures to the mixer frame by fitting into two studs that attach to the matching holes on the side of the bowl. This keeps the bowl much more secure and also allows you to place and remove the bowl very easily. On the Classic, the bowl fitted into a holder at the bottom of the bowl by turning it a quarter turn. Removing the bowl was sometimes a chore especially when it got wrenched on during heavy mixing.

Overall, being able to unleash 500 watts of mixing power is a thing of beauty. Other than when mixing double batches of whole wheat dough or my grandmother’s Love Cake recipe, the motor mixes effortlessly.

Summary

To close, I suggest that if you are looking to purchase a stand mixer like the KitchenAid you consider the type of uses that you will be putting it through. If you are going to do any bread making, I would avoid the lower end models and seriously consider models with the more powerful motors. Of course, like many things, the price must be factored in and the KitchenAid Custom Edition mixer is almost twice the cost of the Classic. If you do go with the Custom Edition though, know that once you’ve used it once, everything will be perfect and your life will be complete.

Baden