Teleidoscope

Fri, Jan 11, 2008

More Cookware

Posted at 9:47 pm MST to Technology

My current customer is really annoying: I've been working there since Thanksgiving week, and the contract ends at the end of this month, and they have just started the paperwork to get me a proper badge and logins. Without those, I have to be 'escorted' constantly, so I can't get anything done unless they have people available to type passwords and be physically near me.

Today I got to the front lobby at 8:30. They didn't come out to escort me in until 9:00am, and then they said "Oh, we forgot, there is an all-hands meeting from 9:30 to at least 10:30 and we are going to a department lunch at 11:30, and there will probably be no one in the cubes this afternoon."

Gah. I spent 20 minutes checking last night's builds and tweaking an integration config spec. Then I went out to my company's office (which is only a few blocks away) and spent some time discussing the state of the company with Shawn while I waited to hear if I should go back to the customer site.

The answer (at about 11 o'clock, their meeting ran long) was "No" so I went shopping. Malls are actually rather pleasant at lunchtime on a Friday in the off-season. I stopped at a cooking store and a local appliance store before I went to the mall. I found out about the existence of the appliance store because one of their vans was just ahead of me at a stoplight on my (supposed) way to work earlier in the morning.

I had pizza slices in the food court for lunch. I think I was reacting to yesterday when I did not dare buy pizza because I did not think I would be able to swallow it successfully when eating in a hurry. Today I was able to take my time.

Last time I bought decent quality cookware I wrote that I wanted to add a good enameled-cast-iron Dutch oven and a saucier to my equipment.

It turns out that chef Mario Batalli (one of the American Iron Chefs on Food Network) has a line of enameled-cast-iron that includes a 6-quart oven and a 4 quart saucier/risotto pan that are good quality but much more reasonably priced that the alternatives. (As in, about half the price of the LeCreuset ovens and All-Clad sauciers I had looked at.)

The Mario Batalli oven is the same diameter as the 5.5 quart LeCreuset oven, just a little deeper, and it has little condensation tips sticking down inside the lid for even basting, which the French oven from LeCreuset lacks. The one I got at What's Cooking is a color called 'chianti' (because cinnamon isn't Italian). It will look nice in my green and white kitchen. The green shade ("pesto") that is available for the Mario Batalli cast iron is too yellow-y and would clash.

I got the saucier (in white) at Crate & Barrel. It's larger than I had been thinking of, and will be a little slower to react to burner changes because of the cast iron. But if I switch my cooktop to gas the difference in responsiveness should more than cancel out. And risotto is actually something I make regularly, and it will benefit from the deeper pan to prevent spattering. (I need to defrost to defrost some of the turkey and turkey broth I froze after Thanksgiving... It's time to make turkey risotto.)

My acquaintance Caroline (she's the mother of a classmate of one of Nanette's kids) keeps saying that she needs an extra deep lasagna pan. She needs to go to Crate and Barrel: the Mario Batali line has a 9x13 lasagna pan that's an inch deeper than normal.

While I was at Crate and Barrel I also picked up a coffee grinder to use for attacking whole grain spices. My order of spices from World Spice Merchants arrived Wednesday, but they were out of stock on the grinders they offer. I ended up with a CuisineArt grinder which was a bit less expensive than the Kitchenaid model offered by World Spice.

I also have received a supply of tins from Specialty Bottle that I will use to store the spices away from light and air, and last weekend I stopped in at Michael's (velcro and other mounting supplies) and OfficeMax (a label maker). So this weekend I am planning a kitchen craft project to put the spices in the tins, label them, and set up a mounting system like the one Alton Brown uses.

Some people use magnetic strips to mount spice tins, but I spent too many years working with floppies. I don't like having random magnets around. I prefer Alton's velcro approach. But I'm going to try to mount some of my tins outside of my cupboards.

Now if I could just find the size and shape of free-standing pot-rack I need, so my pretty new enameled cookware would have a place to live.

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