Cooking in Other People's Kitchens

[tammylc]

Okay, okay, call me a food snob, but cooking in other people's kitchens almost always reminds me of how much I like my own. I worked in a kitchen store for a year right after I got married, so a) learned a lot about cookware and knives and b) had a discount to be able to buy a bunch. I don't think too much of my kitchen until I cook somewhere else, and have to contend with bad knives, warped pans, and the lack of key utensils. Some good friends are really quite good and creative cooks - but don't have a wooden spoon anywhere in their kitchen!

What are your pet peeves about working in other people's kitchens? Any thoughts on what the basic requirements for every kitchen should be?

[Malawry]

I can handle almost anything but bad knives. So I bring my knife kit if there's any chance I'll be cooking away from my own kitchen. (If I'm flying somewhere this isn't always possible, obviously, but most travel I seem to do in the car these days.)

The one other thing that drives me batty is pans that can't go in the oven. Plastic handles suck. I almost always prepare fish by pan-searing and finishing it in the oven...I remember making a huge side of salmon for Passover at a friend's in CA once and having to transfer it from pan to baking sheet for finishing. Grrrrr.

PS: You food snob!

[Pickles]

I make my living working in other people's kitchens. I am a Personal Chef. Although I bring all my own equipment with me (everything from pans to dish-washing soap) I have to often put up with lousy stoves and ovens. Which is amazing because the people for whom I cook are not poor. I guess they figure because they hardly ever use their kitchens, it doesn't matter that the back burners of the stove don't work properly, or their ovens cook about 50 degrees lower than they what they're set at. You make do with what you have but yes, it's often frustrating. Especially when you've told them of the problems and they're still "getting to fixing that...I promise! We've just been sooooo busy!"

[Katherine]

Trying to cook in my mother's kitchen, there were the paper-thin stainless pans she bought as a lifetime investment when I was 8, the cheesy department store knives she bought even earlier, which my father dutifully sharpened.

It got so I brought a knife or two with me when I traveled there. Eventually I bought her a Pampered Chef breadknife, which was so much better than her old one, she practically worshipped it. Then the main problem became the supporting ingredients, like her collection of ancient spices and useless spice blends.

[fifi]

I do run into the underequipped kitchen. Like the rest of you, I find the deficiencies are usually in the knife and pot category. I don't have that problem with my foodie friends.

What I usually miss most are all of my jars and bottles of condiments. That includes some staples that I make myself. Some say that I have taken that to an extreme. I often think... "A dash of chile paste would sure wake this up." Or... If only I had some of my tomatillo sauce that I have in the freezer, this omelet would be so much better."

[bloviatrix]

There are only two other kitchens that I cook in: mom's and my mil. My mother has crappy knives, pots from the 50s, and doesn't have wooden spoons, tongs, etc. Plus she doesn't keep a well-stocked pantry. Fortunately, it's highly unusual that I cook there anymore.

My mil lacked all the necessary untensils, but I solved that by buying a lot of stuff for her as gifts. Plus, she upgraded her pots to All-Clad and Le Creuset. I cook at her house every year for Passover and although it's taken about 4 years to get her fully equipped, it's now a pleasure to cook there. I still hate her oven, but I'm not about to buy her a new one. For some reason, when she re-did her kitchen she put in a 27" stove, which is tiny. Plus the door gets stuck.

[bleudauvergne]

I carry my own knives whenever we're on the road, and my own vegetable peeler.

But I have to give my mother-in-law credit - despite her hazardous lack of sharp knives, no vegetable peeler, strainer, or proper cutting board, oh how I fell in love with her fabulous programmable vitroceramic cook top with combination halogen direct and her Scholtes Ikone oven! We recently put in a new kitchen and these were major investments that we chose mainly because we'd had a chance to try them out in her kitchen. We spent more on the oven and cooktop than we spent on anything else, including all of the cabinetry combined. I'd always cooked with gas, but these appliances - they take cooking with electricity to an entirely new level.

[fifi]

This thread reminded me of the adventure that my sister and I had on the trip to Hawaii. We had a condo on Kauai and had a really good time in a very basic kitchen. I would say that we adapted pretty well. Going to places where you can get a kitchen is definitely high on my travel list. I don't really mind the limitations if the local foraging is good. I can even forgive the dull knife.

Vacation cooking, the condo on Kauai

[Alex]

I only cultivate friends who have well-equipped kitchens and who know when and how to assist and when to stay out of the way. (Now that I give it some thought, this actually is true. I didn't do it on purpose, but that's how things turned out.)

Basic requirements, imnsho:

-1 chef's-type knife, 1 paring-type knife, 1 bread knife

-1 stock pot, 1 medium-sized pot, 1 small pot

-2 large skillets, 1 small skillet

-a couple of spatulas (turning + scraping), a couple of wooden spoons, tongs

-a good peeler, a good cutting board, kitchen scissors, ice cream scoop

-a baking dish or two

-a timer, or a stove with one

-thermometers (instant-read, oven, fridge)

-up-to-date spices, herbs, oils, etc.

-a beverage for the chef to enjoy while cooking

Great questions, Tammy!

[balmagowry]

Lucky me, I have no trouble at all cooking in my mother's kitchen; it's where I learned to cook, and feels as natural to me as my own, perhaps even more so. Both are eccentric in roughly the same way. My closest friend and my closest cousin both have huge kitchens compared to mine, each overflowing with implements - unexpectedly ill-supplied for my tastes, however, though I must admit I do covet my cousin's huge gleaming prep table. (As well I might, my own kitchen being far too small to hold anything like it.) I kind of enjoy the challenge of improvising, though.

The two things I miss most - and really ought to start bringing with me - are my tiny tiny paring knife and my wooden spatulas (that's probably not the right term, but you know what I mean, they're flat paddle-ish things with an angled tip - I adore them and use them for stirring/scraping just about anything as it cooks). The knife was a present from my mother when she bought her own (so there's one in her kitchen, making me feel right at home), and I think that was shortly before they went out of production. You can't get 'em any more - I haven't seen one like it in, oh, about 25 years. My husband calls it "Dr. Paring's Prototype," and he clearly understands that it is simply off-limits to him. It has a 1-1/2-inch blade and just the right curve in the handle, and I always feel a bit lost if I have to peel an onion with anything else. Once it accidentally went into the garbage, and I spent an interesting hour in the basement of the apartment building, rooting through the garbage compactor. Found it, of course - they'd have had to demolish the building around me before I'd have given up the search. My mother's vanished too, for several months, and she went into intense mourning; eventually it turned up in the compost, unscathed if a bit smelly, oh happy day.

But what this thread really reminds me of is the occasion when my mother and I were invited to give a lecture and tasting at the San Diego Maritime Museum. Since that's on the opposite coast, of course all arrangements had to be made by proxy. The museum director, a good friend, had written to ask me what "special equipment" we would need for our preparations - big pots, serving dishes, utensils, etc. - and I had sent back a comprehensive list and was pleased to hear that everything on it would be available and ready to hand. What I hadn't realized, however, was that the one item they didn't have for us was... a kitchen!

It turned out that the whole operation was to be conducted aboard the paddle-steamer Berkeley (permanently docked on San Diego Bay, it forms the main part of the museum), and our "prep area," for lack of a better term, was the afterdeck of the steamer itself. The museum had borrowed a couple of those huge propane camping stoves - four powerful burners - and there *was* a small faucet nearby (cold only); and they had borrowed everything on our list from the hotel across the street. But of course it had never occurred to me to specify any of the ordinary everyday stuff that you just assume will be available in even the worst of kitchens: spoons, knives, bowls, little dishes, whisks, cutting boards, measuring cups, doodads, odds and ends to improvise with. Nothing!

The blessed docent came to our rescue - scurried off to her own house and brought back a large bouquet of miscellaneous kitchen utensils - and in the event we managed very well. One of the funniest pictures I've ever taken of my mother is of her improvising a mortar and pestle out of two odd-sized pan lids, giggling uncontrollably the while. We had another near-panic when an adventurous gull tried to steal a bag of cubed ham from where it was thawing on the deck - this crisis too was averted in the nick of time, the two of us flapping dementedly at the bird until it dropped the tasty morsel and retreated. Whew.

And the event was a huge success.

Can you tell that this theme chimes with something I'm working on? A piece not only about cooking in other people's kitchens but also about the kind of people with whom it's possible to share a kitchen. I haven't met very many of them, but there are a few out there, and it's wonderful to meet a new one and to know instantly and mutually (this happened to me a few weeks ago and it really was kind of like love at first sight) that you won't have to explain anything, that you'll just fall into each other's rhythm and tastes and know instinctively where to look for the Tellicherry pepper.

[tammylc]

I love those angled wooden stirrers too! My housemate always uses my flipping spatulas for stirring and sauteing, and it makes to cringe to watch, when the perfect implement is right there waiting. I think I need to buy a bunch and give them away to everyone whose kitchen I have to cook in.

[balmagowry]

I love those angled wooden stirrers too! My housemate always uses my flipping spatulas for stirring and sauteing, and it makes to cringe to watch, when the perfect implement is right there waiting. I think I need to buy a bunch and give them away to everyone whose kitchen I have to cook in.

I thought the same - and then found I couldn't get them any more! If you know where they're to be had, please tell. I want to stock up. Broke one in half once - kept the pieces, though I don't really think it can be fixed. Alas. Maybe I could make them - shouldn't be too hard. I got lucky at a garage sale a couple of years ago, scoring three or four of them. But when I go to look for them in shops I've only found that poor approximation, the paddle end too big, bent, not angled enough. Most disturbing. Whose law is it that only the best things are guaranteed to become unavailable just when you learn you can't live without them?

[fifi]

Welcome balmagowry. Thanks for the great post. What an adventure. Sounds like a really good time with your mom. The gull got me though. On offshore fishing trips, we would often make ceviche from a fresh caught mahi-mahi. If we tried to eat it while sitting on the back deck, we would have to fight the gulls off.

Sometimes I go to a someone's house to make gumbo by way of teaching the techniques. Whenever I have to make gumbo in someone else's kitchen, I have to bring my wooden spatula. There is nothing like it for making a dark roux. It reliably sweeps the bottom of the pot so there is no little bit hiding in the corner getting ready to burn and screw up the whole thing. If I am not satisfied about their pots, I will have to bring the big Le Creuset as well. Of course, if I am flying the LC gets left at home and they have to go buy a pot if they don't have one. But the spatula is in my luggage. I need to buy a bunch of them. Mine is getting a bit "toasted".

[balmagowry]

Welcome balmagowry. Thanks for the great post. What an adventure. Sounds like a really good time with your mom.

Thank you! Yes, the best time imaginable - we were the most perfect of colleagues and collaborators. There were quite a lot of adventures like that, and every now and then we had to look at each other and stop laughing long enough to gasp, "Can you believe they're actyually *paying* us to have this much fun?"

Whenever I have to make gumbo in someone else's kitchen, I have to bring my wooden spatula. There is nothing like it for making a dark roux. It reliably sweeps the bottom of the pot so there is no little bit hiding in the corner getting ready to burn and screw up the whole thing.

Ain't it the truth - and not just for dark roux. I really don't understand how people make béchamel or velouté or gravy or - well, anything thickened like that - without them. I mean, obviously they do it, and obviously I too must have done it on occasion (though I've blocked the traumatic memory), but... talk about wanting to have the right tool for the right job! nothing else feels right in my hand. What creatures of habit we are.

[Malawry]

I don't use those wooden spatulas...I use silicon high-heat spatulas, at home and at work, or a wooden spoon. I never seem to miss things in the corners of pans either.

I agree with Fifi that I like the challenge of cooking on vacation, and really love those vacation-condo meals. I have learned through experience to at least bring some basic spices, herbs and condiments on such trips though. We visit the beach twice a year; in winter we rent an apartment with a kitchen, in summer we camp...and both times we usually just buy food from roadside stands or a nearby market. (We bring the treats, better cheeses and such hard things to find in smaller towns, from home.)

[bleudauvergne]

I love those angled wooden stirrers too!

I call it my pusher. Where is my pusher?! I yell from the kitchen.

-Lucy

[balmagowry]

I don't use those wooden spatulas...I use silicon high-heat spatulas, at home and at work, or a wooden spoon. I never seem to miss things in the corners of pans either.

Fair enough. Does individual mileage vary more in anything than in cooking? I doubt it, somehow. That's the thing about cooking in other people's kitchens: if they care at all about cooking they have their working environments set up to suit all their own little quirks and habits. Walk into someone else's kitchen with your own set of quirks and habits, and no wonder you feel like you're on the wrong planet. Creatures of habit we really are, and not all of them make any sense at all - some of them probably never did. But we cling to them and feel uncomfortable without them; they are part of us. As it happens I don't consider my weakness for wooden spatulas to be particularly irrational, given the application, but I know a lot of the other things I do probably are. But it doesn't matter: they're what makes me comfortable in the kitchen. and they work for me. Which is precisely what makes one's own kitchen such a deeply personal environment, no? And that's also why you feel that delighted little thrill of recognition when you spot, in a new acquaintance's kitchen, that same unusual and indispensable whatsis that you have in yours but have never seen anywhere else. With my above-mentioned close friend it was the Colony Cup, another of those brilliant gadgets that far surpass anything on the market now and that therefore inevitably are long gone, discontinued, unavailable. I treasure mine, and hers is the *only* other one I have ever seen, so the discovery sparked one of those "Aha!" moments. I figured, clearly there's something very *right* happening here. And there was.

[balmagowry]

I love those angled wooden stirrers too!

I call it my pusher. Where is my pusher?! I yell from the kitchen.

Great name. Unfortunately I can't use it because it belongs to something else: the little silver rake thing that I had when I was a baby just learning to eat at table; used to shove things like peas into the matching spoon. Talk about nostalgia - hardly anyone uses those any more, either. (The good thing is, if I give one as a baby present I can generally be pretty sure it won't be competing with half-a-dozen similar gifts!)

[Alex]

I love those angled wooden stirrers too!  My housemate always uses my flipping spatulas for stirring and sauteing, and it makes to cringe to watch, when the perfect implement is right there waiting.  I think I need to buy a bunch and give them away to everyone whose kitchen I have to cook in.

Hey, Tammy or balmagowry -- could you possibly post a picture of your wooden stirrer?

[chezlamere]

my sister's knives are a joke. hate cooking at her house. But I love eating there.

my mother has an amazingly equiped kitchen being retired from the business an all. but she put in CARPET when she renovated. Just because she didn't want to put in a new sub floor. Can you believe it? Carpet in the Kitchen ugh.....

[NickMach007]

Well, every time I cook, I'm cooking in someone else's kitchen. I just graduated from college last may and moved back in with my dad (hey I've got to pay off some student loans before I can afford my own place!)

My knives, my large and small nonstick pans, my 18 qt. stockpot as well as various other utensils, and spices (lie my stash of saffron) live in my room and in a cabinet outside my room. No one in my house but me touches my knives...

So when I cook, I have to haul all my stuff into the kitchen before I start. Annoying, yes, but worth it? Definitely. All my stuff stays in great condition, like I said, I don't have the $$ to be replacing my knives and cookware...

Basically I've just gotten used to it. And I dream of the day when I'll have my very own kitchen... oh yeah and apartment.

[edsel]

What I usually miss most are all of my jars and bottles of condiments. That includes some staples that I make myself. Some say that I have taken that to an extreme.  I often think... "A dash of chile paste would sure wake this up." Or... If only I had some of my tomatillo sauce that I have in the freezer, this omelet would be so much better."

For me you'd have to expand that to include spices, herbs, extracts, and various supposedly "staple" items.

When I fly to Dallas to visit my sister for the holidays I bring a backpack full of stuff I "might" need in the kitchen. Knives and heavier items like the ISI Profi-Cream go in the checked luggage.

On my Thanksgiving flight the TSA guard determined that my pack needed further examination. Don't know if it was a random thing. Maybe she thought my bag looked a bit suspect on the X-ray machine...

After pulling out the baggies of fresh bay leaves, marjoram and sage (all snipped from plants on my windowsill), whole nutmegs (with grater), cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, she said

Oooh! Cooking Thanksgiving dinner, are we?

Then come the pecans (from my Aunt's tree's), golden syrup, maple syrup, vanilla extract. I explain:

Pecan pie.

Uhm-huhm.

Then come the little baggies of kosher salt, fleur-de-sel, fresh bread crumbs...

You forgot the turkey.

Seriously, I could get all this stuff in the Dallas area, but who wants to shop during the holidays? I just bring my own.

[tirgoddess]

Great thread-it has been a while since I've checked in and it was just the conversation I was looking for. NickMach007 don't worry, you'll get your kitchen, just keep cooking! We are sort of remodeling my kitchen right now and I miss it.

Knives are number one for me-when I am cooking away from home, I try to find a sharpening device, some people just don't get the difference between sharp and dull knives, and then when they use the sharpened knife, they say, "Could you please sharpen them all?!"

My mother-in-law-has a lovely kitchen with huge rows of windows, like 6 feet high, beautiful work spaces with great halogen task lighting. A lovely place to cook-BUT she follows me around with a towel and sponge and I am really not messy. She is OCD on clean and to her cooking is something that needs to be expedited quickly. Get it done, move on, what's next, tomorrow's mail that hasn't even arrived yet. So when I am doing something that takes time, she wants to know why "I go to all that trouble". We were making a lox/cream cheese hors d'ouerve on toasts with capers, about 80. She was spreading the cream cheese on and toast crumbs were coming up. I was trying to place the lox in a "V" on the toasts w/ capers placed on the bottom of the "V". You know- for a nice presentation. The toast crumbs were driving me crazy, then she started helping w/ the lox and capers 'cause the spreading was done. I was so tense. No harmony what so ever. Now I know that I just have to go w/ the flow or stay out of it. There is so much to be said for that special flow that takes place when two people work together in the kitchen.

[Rachel Perlow]

If you are having trouble finding a wooden spatula, check at your local Asian grocery. I recently bought a wooden chan and I love it even more than my other flat wooden implement. The handle is longer and the wood is a little thicker, so it feels more substantial in the hand.

Things my mother's kitchen doesn't have and I don't know how we grew up without: Sharp knives (she has cooking knives, but I remember using a steak knife to cut most things), Olive oil, Garlic (fresh, she has powdered lol).

[sacre_bleu]

I rather enjoy cooking in other people's kitchens. I bring my knife, and ingredients, and the right pan, if I think they might be lacking. Then I "let" them clean up. Bliss ...