18 Photograph by William Mebane
Letter of Recommendation
Four to fi ve times a week, I reach into the
cabinet to the left of my stove and pull out
my ugliest, least-pedigreed pan. Actually,
it’s two pans: a double boiler. The bottom
is scuff ed and darkened from decades of
use; the insert, which is never meant to
come directly in contact with heat, has
swollen because someone who prefers not
to be named put it directly on the burner.
No one else seems to consider a dou-
ble boiler an essential piece of equipment.
You won’t fi nd it on the lists compiled
by even the most down-to-earth food
writers. I can’t recall the last time I saw
one mentioned in a recipe. Yet it’s essen-
tial to me, because I’m a work-at-home
writer who likes to reheat leftovers for
lunch and make brownies on the spur of
the moment. (Every work-at-home writ-
er needs a way to procrastinate; mine is
baking, although cleaning the baseboards
with a Q-tip will also do in a pinch.)
Reheating leftovers in a double boiler
produces a superior, if slower, result when
compared with food heated in a micro-
wave. I have met people who want toDouble Boilers
By Laura Lippman
argue this point, who claim that my taste
buds couldn’t possibly tell the diff erence,
but you don’t actually need a great palate
to fi nd the dead, cold spots in leftovers
that have been microwaved. And while
a double boiler takes longer, it requires
virtually no oversight. It’s hard to burn
something — unless, ahem, you put the
insert directly on an open fl ame.
Yet the thing I most appreciate is that
a double boiler is not a microwave. I hate
microwaves. I didn’t grow up with one,
and I’m not going to grow old with one. In8.4.How a pot that
no one uses
becomes essential.