Terrible Kitchens

[Snadra]

In a few weeks I start my new career as a teacher in country NSW. The place I've been appointed to has a dearth of rentals (quality or otherwise) and I was rather happy to find a place outside of town with a large house-yard that will allow pets and has enough storage space to keep us contained for a while and has really lovely owners. Unfortunately it means I will leave behind my beautiful european kitchen with its beautiful appliances for an original 70s kitchen with few countertops, little storage and no oven (I can't imagine what sort of person would build a kitchen in an Aussie farmhouse with nothing to make scones in...).

The rest of the property is pretty darn original too, and I believe the former owner had a mania for spa baths, but that's another story... The owners are keen to see us happy there and keep us there, until they're ready to retire into it, they're doing some work on the place now to bring it a bit more up to scratch, and eventually I'm sure we'll get an oven in somehow, but in the meantime...what to do? How to cope?

I have some plans: a large table in the middle of the kitchen to serve as an eating/working/counterspace island will be a start. I also plan on asking if I can paint the cupboards some other shade (paint work is yet to be completed elsewhere), and we're going to see if it's possible to fit a second-hand oven under the bench. I also suspect the house might be easier to deal with if I stock that brick-fronted bar properly! An outdoor wok burner might also be a viable new appliance.

I know plenty of people in eGullet-land not only cope with non-dream kitchens, but seem to flourish in them. So here's my question: how do you cope? Do you have any special tricks or methods? What kind of cooking do you find easiest in a poorly-laid out kitchen?

[ChrisTaylor]

A bit ago, I used to volunteer with a program that offered academic tutoring to Sudanese kids. They'd run all sorts of special activities these kids were mostly too poor to participate in--soccer clinics and whatnot. I ran regular cooking classes and tasting sessions (i.e. I'd bring in some interesting pieces of meat or seafood and we'd cook them and taste them).

Thing in, this program ran out of a church. The church's kitchen had no oven or anything like that. What I had to work with was basically a portable electric stove top. If you wanted to boil some water, say, you could start it right now and head off for a while--get a cup of coffee, take a nap, maybe watch a movie, maybe catch up on the washing and cleaning and other domestic chores, maybe make a stained glass lamp--and come back and it'd just be starting to simmer. The technical term for this stove was, I believe, a 'piece of shit.' It's what I was stuck with unless the weather was nice and the minister/pastor/whatever-he-was-called was willing to let me fire up the BBQ. We shared real estate with people who were cutting up bread rolls and dishing out salads for the kids' proper lunch. On that crappy electric stove, and in its cousin the crappy electric frypan, we cooked everything from camel meatballs to kangaroo steaks to a big pot of mussels. I had armies of primary school children cleaning steamed blue swimmer crabs and groups of kids daring each other to swallow oysters. 'Is it alive?' 'Yes.' 'Is it a boy or a girl?' 'Which would you prefer--if you want it to be a girl, I'll say it's a girl.' We butchered a pheasant and an 11 year old ran around with the head, chasing his friends and some of my fellow tutors. We had failures--a big pot of chicken curry on that stove was a bad idea and so too was attempting to segmet and pan-fry a duck.

I should add that back then I didn't have a car. When I went to the program each Saturday, I'd be sitting on the train with a stockpot laden with utensils (including--and this is crazy illegal here--my cook's knife) and other cooking implements.

Edited December 9, 2011 by ChrisTaylor (log)

[Jenni]

The kitchen in my family's home back in the UK is huge and has ample storage, a 7 burner stove and tonnes of room for food prep plus a double sink.

My current kitchen here in Allahabad is miniscule. There is almost no space for preparing ingredients, so I mostly do it outside or in my living area. There is no oven, but that is default here - ovens and baking at home are a new fancy thing. I like my stove. I replaced the crappy miniscule two burner one that the last occupant left with a nice four burner. It runs off a gas cylinder though, as most peoples' around here do, and I'm crap at telling how full the cylinder is, so sometimes I run out of gas mid-meal.

There is almost no storage space and the sink is slanted badly so it doesn't drain properly. My kitchen is home to one of the only plugs in my house, but most of the time my water filter is plugged in. If I unplug it to use my washing machine (which is sat outside the house by the door that goes to the kitchen) I cannot filter water so I have to make sure I keep loads in various vessels. My small fridge is in the lounge area. Due to poor electricity supply, it is not that useful.

Honestly though, I don't mind. The reality is that you need very little to cook a good meal. I make breakfast (one starch and a side dish), lunch (rice, dal, vegetable, salad, yoghurt) and dinner (bread, two side dishes) very easily. Everyone else in my building has a kitchen basically just like mine, and they are cooking at least 3 full meals (as in my example, we are talking traditional Indian, so multi dish) for at least 4 people every day. More people are starting to take short cuts when it comes to cooking, but in my neighbourhood people are very traditional so they tend to make everything from scratch. Also, religious festivals are common and often involve producing a vast amount of food.

To the left of my building there are a couple of rough huts where a tailor and a press-wala live, and they only have one room "houses" so they cook outside on small stoves they have fashioned themselves. And then there are people further into town who don't have a house at all. Some have a tent, others sleep outside with no cover. They all cook on fires and small stoves outside.

And of course there are also basic food outlets here that are churning out tonnes of amazing food with very basic equipment. People crouch on the floor outside to do prep and cook. Litti-chokha stalls basically consist of a huge "bowl" full of burning cow dung in which litti and vegetables for chokha are all roasted. Some stalls are mobile and have very basic stove facilities. The food is often outstanding.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Jenni (log)

[Keith_W]

No oven? Perfect excuse to buy a Kamado!

[pep.]

Get a sous-vide rig and a torch. Of course, this won't help much with baking/pastry. But for that, one of those counter-top microwave/oven combos should work fine. Not good for bread, though.

I've got a really tiny kitchen (~ 6 m2) with a crappy old gas oven that is unusable for anything but bread baking (no light, no convection, heat only from below), but since getting a Polyscience immersion circulator and a good microwave/convection oven combination, I have not had cause for complaint. Of course, the equipment spills out into the hallway, so maybe I should say that my kitchen has started to expand ;-)

[Shalmanese]

It looks like you have ample outdoor space so I'd try and take advantage of that. A good grill can turn into a serviceable oven and if you dig a firepit, you can do rotisserie or kabobs. A wok burner will let you get a good sear on foods and then you can use electric skillets or slow cookers to cook food the rest of the way.

[rooftop1000]

I agree with the tabletop convection and a nice rolling storage cart. I used to run a cafe in an office building lobby and we had one to bake off pastries and cookies...I even made meatloaf in it. My boss didn't want to spring for the 3000 dollar commercial one, we just got a standard household 300 dollar one and it worked great.

tracey

[Anna N]

I lived without a conventional oven for years and never missed it. I had a counter-top convection oven and a m/w. Now I do have an oven but could count on one hand the number of times it is used in a year. Just got the Breville Smart Oven to replace a Cuisinart convection oven and cook everything from bacon to bread in there. I would be stymied if I was into cooking 20lb turkeys I suppose but I don't like turkey!

[nannipigg]

Hi,

I can certainly see what you mean...I am no chef, but I do love to cook meals at home and would be totally lost without an oven!! how out an outdoor bbq/bread oven in the yard? I have seen them on Jamie Oliver shows and think they are fab,he seems to be able to make them work in the UK so I think it should be no probs in OZ!

PS I used to design kitchens for a living and believe me, this one is not bad...it looks sturdy and prob just needs some tweaks...ie installing a free standing cooker and a bit of tlc and a paint job!

good luck with it and repost some pics showing your progress!!

[Snadra]

nannipigg - welcome!

How great to read stories about not just making difficult kitchens work, but really thriving in them.

Chris, it looks like you really enjoyed yourself with those kids! There's a similar program in my part of Sydney and I wanted to volunteer, but I could never be sure enough of my work schedule to commit. It's a fantastic program and it's great to know someone who's taking part.

Jenni, it sounds like there is a lot to take inspiration from in your current neck of the woods. An unreliable electricity supply must be so frustrating to deal with, but how amazing to walk around and see people making fantastic food with little equipment. It's really a reminder that all this fancy-shiny stuff is new, and people have been feeding themselves very well for a very long time without it.

Getting new equipment is always a possibility. A rolling cart is a good thing - I was thinking I might find a sturdy table and put castors on it to make it easier to move about when I need to. Sous-vide is probably a step too far for me at the moment, but it's something to consider in future. Funnily enough, I was thinking that the owners might be willing to fund an outdoor brick oven as this will eventually be their retirement home and they seem the type that might enjoy it. I do have a Weber BBQ and was absolutely planning on utilising it, but a Kamado would be even better.

The only reason I'm not keen on a benchtop oven is that it will basically take up all of the bench, leaving nowhere to put a jug and toaster...otherwise, as Anna's experience shows, it is a viable option!

But I'm keen to hear more about your experiences too, so keep sharing!

edit: reword for clarity

Edited December 9, 2011 by Snadra (log)

[Mjx]

I'm currently cooking in my boyfriend's parents kitchen (his parents were so sweet, and asked us to stay with them while we house-hunt), and while it's not the worst kitchen I've ever worked in (it's got lots of space and storage), it's be the most frustrating.

The main problem is that it is the kitchen of people who don't really like to cook.

The stove is from the 80s, so the burners are a bit wonky with regard to the relationship among the various heat levels, and the oven runs hot and cool, nowhere near the temperature optimistically suggested by the knob. The sink looks nice, but the smaller compartment is so narrow, it's hard to wash anything without water splashing all over; the large compartment is shallow, so gives a lot of splash too, unless you use the tiniest trickle of water. The tap is set back just far enough to make it impossible to wash anything under the stream without water flowing over the counter, in part because the water opens too forcefully. And something is going on with the pipes/water heater, so unless you run the water fully open for about ten minutes (and I'm not comfortable wasting that many litres of water every time I wash up), the water stays cold, and since it's also hard, washing up takes surreal lengths of time.

And there are so many implements! Mostly plastic ones, the use of which is uncertain, and at which my boyfriend's mother hazards amused guesses (she can't quite recall where most of them came from, or why they're there). At the same time, things like cake pans that are not made of silicone, or a dutch oven aren't present. Pawing through a tangle of odds and ends while looking for, say, a metal ladle (there isn't one, I discovered), is really frustrating. I've unpacked a few things that I really need, but since I can't reasonably clutter up someone else's kitchen with our stuff, so I've kept a lid on things.

I'm really, really looking forward to having our own kitchen again, to a large extent because I hate feeling irritated when I just want to feel grateful. On the up side, some of the arrangements have made me aware of certain things that I mightn't have thought about otherwise.

[Shalmanese]

I believe nakji wins the prize for worst kitchen when she was living in Vietnam. No hot water, single gas burner.

[tikidoc]

Keep them coming, I'm eager to learn more about how to cope with a crappy kitchen. My current kitchen is not the worst I have ever had to deal with but it is by far the worst in a home I have owned. We moved fairly recently from a house that we built. We left because my job had become miserable but when I took that job, we thought we were going to stay there until retirement. So the kitchen was my dream kitchen. Tons of custom natural cherry cabinets, 48" commercial style gas range, granite counters, huge farmers sink, gigantic walk in pantry. I loved that kitchen, and tons of thought went into everything in it. Then we moved, and the new kitchen is the cheapest builders grade everything, with very little counter and cabinet space, and no thought in the placement of anything. Built by people who used the kitchen to heat up their frozen dinner in the $50 microwave.. There is quite a bit of floor space though, and the gas range, although tiny, works well enough. We will eventually redo the kitchen (when the house with the dream kitchen has sold) but in the interim, creative ideas for dealing with a crappy kitchen are very helpful.

[Mjx]

I think one of the most helpful things you can do is to ruthlessly purge your collection of kitchen items of those that you never really use (and find good homes for them), even if they seemed like great ideas when you got them. This makes it easier to manage, when storage and counter space are limited. You may also want to hang some things on the walls, so that only things that must be stored in cabinets or drawers occupy that real estate. I have to admit that I've taken to bunging a lot of things in the freezer, so they don't take up our currently very limited refrigerator space.

[Edward J]

My worst?

Probably the restaurant that we bought. P.O.S. would be more accurate. We knew what we were getting into, of course. As soon as the purchase was done, we started to clean up the place. Mis-matched cutlery and china ware--in the dumpster, but the equipment!! I honestly don't know how the previous owner cooked. I brought in several used food eqpmt guys in, and begged them to just take anything they wanted, 4 refused. The 5th, "Lucky Dave's Used food equpt" got lucky.

Poor old Dave, salivating over an ancient 3 door Kelvinator fridge, hardwired to a juction box. Ol Dave opens the box to disonnect and finds it crammed full of what appeared to be rice crispies. Nope, dehyrdated roaches. The cabinet fan in that fridge looked like something out of the "X files". Scary thing.

Next was teh d/washer. An ancient MDM 500. Solid s/s mind you. The interior was corroded. Previous onwner stopped buying sanitizer by 1980 and used houshold bleach.

With the d/washer and fridge safely in his truck, Dave tackles the Kwali range--two burner wok stove. All the insulation shot, woks rusted almost through. He pulls it away from the wall, wall is 6" square (once)white tiles, except there's a flattened oil can nailed to the wall. Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled the flattened can off. A huge big burn hole, tiles around the hole all crazed and falling off, studs in the wall almost half way charred though.

Onto the range, 4 eye Garland with oven, 30" griddle and a salamander under the griddle. Oven completly rusted out-- I mean I see London, I see France peeking out of the side walls. Dave tries to pull if off the wall, it doesn't budge. Dave returns with a length of greasy 2x10, inserts it between the range and wall and levers it. No budge, 2x10 re-arranged for maximum leverage and the range moves with a sickening sucking sound. Greased into place....

Dishpit was last. Dave was reluctant to take that one, rally bad shape. Farmer-welded together from several components, and what wasn't welded was siliconed into place.

Tables and chairs were loaded up, one last final sweep for any stray salvagable item,and Ol' Lucky Dave was gone, and I was on my way to tearing apart and rebuilding my kitchen.

[Snadra]

Edward, your story terrifies me. I've seen some dirty commercial kitchens (and my father, who was a refrigeration tech for a while told me about a few more), but that is beyond...erk.

With regard to my soon to be kitchen, I am happy to report that I have found better and less expensive accommodation closer to town - and the kitchen has a proper stove AND a dishwasher, although apparently it is of the same fabulous style and colour as the one I posted up thread (nothing like renting sight unseen). Leaving me with nothin to complain about!

But once I had thanksgiving with a fabulous group of people in a back country cabin. We had to hike most of it up the mountain (thankfully the mules took care of the really heavy stuff) and the entire, traditional spread was cooked in a wood stove that looked like it came straight out of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. It wasn't all hardship though - there was a hand pump inside so you didn't have to go out for water in winter. Personally I found it enchanting, but it did give me a new respect for people who had (and may still have) to chop their firewood for cooking on a daily basis.