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Sunday, January 03, 2010

Beginning the New Year With a New Kitchen

“The larder is looking a little bare,” commented Honey P. “No, my darling,” I retorted, “what you see is clean and well-lighted place.”
You wouldn’t know it from a cursory glance--a lot looks the same--but I’m beginning the year with a new kitchen.

When we moved into our townhome roughly six years, I spent a good deal of time thinking through how I wanted to configure the space. The kitchen was--and continues to be--the room in the house that most belongs to me. And I think I did a pretty good job back then, but things change. My style of cooking evolved, and with it, my tools and the ways in which I used them. Also over time, I allowed what was originally a very organized space to accommodate the sprawl of foodstuffs, toys, and other miscellany. In a room almost twice the size of my last kitchen, I was starting to run out of both space and order. I was determined to meet the new year with a re-calibrated kitchen.

I began by opening all of the cabinets and drawers in the room to take stock of what was in the them, all the while asking myself three simple questions:

1. What do I use most?
2. What do I find most frustrating?
3. What would Michael and Molly do? (A few years back, Michael arranged for Molly Stevens to teach a class on braising in his kitchen. During her tutorial, she asked Michael where he kept a certain utensil--he told her, and she smiled and said something along the lines of “that’s where I’d keep it, too. This is definitely a cook’s kitchen.” I want to go to that place.)

The first to get emptied out, two cabinets devoted to bags (mostly brown paper bags from Whole Foods and the really nice shopping bags I’d gotten from little boutique stores over the years and thought were too nice to get rid of) and wicker baskets and trays from catered events years back that I’d also felt the need to save.

Then, the appliances. Taking into account the relative weight of each machine (the juicer’s pretty crazy-heavy) and the frequency with which I used each piece, I moved them all into the now-empty cabinet and arranged them in rows to allow quick reminders of their existence and easy reach, should the need occur.

I cleaned out the junk drawers by grouping all of the user manuals and restaurant menus together respectively, and stacking all of the recipe clippings I’d grabbed over the years into a gigantic pile that I relocated to my desk. (I later went through the pile, and pulled the electronic version of each recipe--most of them were online--into Evernote for the future.)

Next, the kitchen island, with its massive drawers crammed with all manner of gadgetry. I regrouped utensils by type or purpose (clips with clips, muddler with mallet, chinois with colander) and moved the items I used most so they’d be only an arm’s length away from the sink and the island, where I do most of my prep work.

Three piles began to form in the adjacent dining room: things I thought that friends and family could use, things to be donated to The Brown Elephant, and things to recycle or discard.

Storage items: Tupperware, Gladware, mason jars, and the like. This was mostly a matter of matching and stacking the containers and lids together--so easy, and it brought me such a sense of peace.

Pots, what to do with all of the pots and pans? I took the opportunity to burnish all of the All-Clad back to brilliant bright with the help of some Bar Keeper’s Friend before I redistributed the pieces into drawers closest to the ovens and cooktop. Note, Bar Keeper’s Friend is absolutely fantastic for removing stains and blemishes from stainless steel!

Next, the foodstuffs. Quickly discarded, anything past its freshness date, which reduced the pantry by a third. Then, I changed the shelve configuration around so I could reach items without the use of a stepladder.

And finally, the counters. I hear stories about counter wars: debates over what stays out and what gets tucked away can often be contentious. Thankfully, Honey P. lets me decide solely, and I decided that less is more. I kept only the food processor and Kitchenaid mixer by the sink. And on the island, a cookbook in its stand (for now, it’s Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home), my OXO kitchen scale, and an instant read thermometer. The book is currently open to Thomas’ recipe for a New England clam bake, which I intend to make as soon as I can get my hands on a 20-quart stockpot. Seven hours and eight bags of donations later, I can honestly say I’ll have room to store that pot, once I find it. Sante.