{^ Essential kitchen gear^ }

There’s a lot of nonsense to wade through out there

when trying to stock your kitchen. Do you really need that
$300 knife? How often are you gonna pull out that salad
spinner? And exactly which one of those things they sell on
TV is really going to take the place of every other piece of
equipment in my kitchen? (Hint: none of them.) The
problem with most of the people telling you to buy things is
that they’re usually the ones selling it. Who can you trust?
Well, this chapter is a no-nonsense, no bullshit guide to
point you toward what you really need in the kitchen and
what is just noise.
Any Eddie Izzard fans in the audience? According to him,
“The National Rifle Association says that guns don’t kill
people—people kill people. But I think the gun helps.”
Funny joke. But what’s it got to do with cooking?
I remember a time back when I first started working in
restaurants. One of my jobs was to reduce a couple quarts of
heavy cream down to a couple of pints. I’d get a big heavy
pot with an aluminum base, pour the cream into it, and cook
it over the lowest possible heat so that it’d reduce without
even bubbling. I’d do this every morning, and it would take
a couple hours, but no big deal; I had plenty of other tasks
to keep me occupied—peeling potatoes, peeling salsify,
peeling carrots (ah, the life of a green cook). Then one