Good Sunday morning! I’m drinking instant espresso with what my family calls “raver creamer” and for which I make no apologies.
I am very fortunate to get to cook in a variety of kitchens, in Airbnbs and other people’s homes. These can be magnificent experiences, walking in to find everything you need and where it should be. More often, it’s like a treasure hunt, and not a fun one: Is there a cutting board? Where are the measuring cups? Will I find a paring knife underneath the 400 sets of takeout chopsticks? This slows everything down.
Just as inexperienced cooks sometimes overuse garlic (ditto, cinnamon), it is my opinion people buy too many kitchen tools. This is like having 14 cars that don’t work, leaving you no room in the garage for one that does. It is way preferable walk into a kitchen and find nothing* than to open the utensil drawer to a decade’s worth of old Baggie ties and broken bottle stoppers but no carrot peeler.
Yes I am sounding picky! And I appreciate that people have different methods. I once watched a dead-drunk girl make the best potatoes and gravy I ever ate. But on the chance that you’re either building a kitchen, or looking for permission to streamline yours, I offer the following. Plus! The dinner menu I’ll be whipping up tomorrow night for two spectacular writers xx
*This would be the kitchen in the Airbnb we rented in Vieques in 2001, whose utterly bare cabinets and drawers smelled of raw wood and rotting shrimp. This was the same trip where one night at 2am our Croatian rocket scientist friend decided to take a dip, not realizing that also in the pool were dozens of…
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