A few years ago, I saw an advertisement by some cookery website that showed several pictures of one fork under each image of which a caption described the fork as a garlic press, pancake turner, whisk, or barbecue brush. Well, I thought, using a fork for a barbecue brush is a bit of a stretch, but heck, I’ve mashed garlic, flipped things, and whisked stuff with a fork. What’s the problem with that?
The problem with it is that our culture loves gadgets and there are more specific little tools out there than you can shake a stick at. Truly great cooks can do wonders with two knives: the large one for chopping, slicing, even flattening said garlic in order to pop it out of its papery covering, then smushing it into paste with the blade. The small knife for fine work like peeling and paring, dividing potatoes, carrots, or apples. I am not so great a cook that I can do everything with two knives. But a gadget has to be pretty wonderful to win my heart. And my favorite kitchen tools are often 50 years old. You can tell you are getting old when you can complain that “they don’t make things as well as they used to,” and I am at that point for sure.
Here is an inventory of my favorite old tools.
The three-tined fork. People used to eat with these, and some fairly decent stainless steel models are made, but the best are old ones with a little flex in them. They are pretty good as whisks, for spearing something that needs turning, for testing the done-ness of potatoes or carrots. I have one that was my gram’s but as I have bumped into them, I have squirreled away extras in case.
A flat, carbon steel turner. This was Gram’s, too, and is characterized by an extraordinarily thin blade. It is flexible but strong enough to encourage stuck-on things to become unstuck. The blades on modern ones are way too thick — they jam into the side of a pancake like a snowplow into a drift. I found an extra one of these and acquired it right away, because a tiny crack has developed in Gram’s and I just know one day it is going to snap in two.
A carbon steel spatula. This tool is a first cousin to a case knife, the wide, straight-bladed knife used a great deal at the table in the 1800s. It has the same kind of thin steel as the pancake turner, and it, too, was Gram’s. In fact, the end has already been broken off once but Jamie ground it down and it is just as useful, if shorter. It gets a big workout at the holidays taking cookies off a pan, but it slides under a slab of pie pretty slickly, too, and spreads frosting. When a large cake is in the making, I use an equally elderly carbon steel spatula with a longer blade. I don’t like modern ones because their blades are too thick, and don’t have enough flex.
A potato masher: My favorite is a simple red-handled little number from the 1940s, with a zig-zag masher. I also have my mother’s with its woven wire masher. It, too, is very effective, but oddly, the zig-zag one seems to do a better job.
A manual egg beater. I can see why many people gave up and switched to electric beaters. There are a lot of really lousy manual ones out there — cranky, jerky and annoying. Mine was my grandmother’s and has the most beautifully balanced wheel and smooth operation I have ever seen. I can hold it up in the air, touch the handle lightly, and it whirrs around effortlessly. It is fun to expend a few calories beating whipped cream before replacing them by licking the flat blades.
Before I buy a new tool, I have to use it at someone else’s house to be convinced it is worth having. Among the new items that have worked their way into the kitchen, the one I might grab if the house were burning down is a peeler with a short, square handle and fierce little blade that bites into the tough skin of pumpkins, winter squashes, rutabagas, and if used with less force makes short work of peeling potatoes. I also have fallen in love with my micro-plane grater. So sharp, it is so good to have the handle and long blade. It spares my knuckles formerly nicked on the old box grater.
The ad that poked fun at using a fork four ways went on to say that it is frustrating to use the wrong tool for the job — I think it is more frustrating to use a poor tool. Sometimes the wrong tool is just the ticket. For example, I have a melon baller. I hardly ever make melon balls, but I use it to core apples. Now, when you cut an apple you can see the core, with its tough little shell, is actually round. The baller’s round shape digs in and scoops out the core of the apple where a standard corner just slices out the center of an apple. Ballers are also terrific for taking seeds out of cherry tomatoes in case you want to stuff them. I suppose in some kitchenware store in some mall somewhere in this great inventive country of ours, there is a cherry tomato seeder selling for $6.95, waiting for someone looking for the best tool for the job. It will wait a long time for me.
Sandy Oliver cooks and writes Journal of an Island Kitchen on Islesboro.