Equipping your kitchen

A lot of newcomers learning how to cook non-professionally at home or newly-wed couples entering their first kitchen get turned-off of cooking when they learn the various tools and equipment they need to own. Their so and so friends or grandma, or aunties or the various cook books and cooking shows and advertisements trying to sell them the idea that they need to fortify their kitchen with kitchen-ware as if they need to turn their kitchen into a full-blooded 3-star Michelin restaurant.

The fact is, you only need so much of what you will actually use. I will give you a lowdown of what you actually need, based on necessity and personal experience. Of course the list I about to give you is neither definitive nor exhaustive since what you will cook may differ with what I normally cook at home. But I’m giving you an idea of what you may necessarily be using on a day to day basis. This shall be like your basic tool-box, as you improve in your cooking skill, you may decide you need that shiny equipment as advertise in those infomercial in Channel 118 of Astro.

Knife

Now the first thing you need, the most important most essential tools a cook needs to have, is a knife. Not those bullshit 5-knives set with colorful and sometime printed flowery picture that are garbage and where you’ll definitely end up not using them but a simple, decent, chef’s knife. I could probably spend an entire column discussing about the anatomy, physiology and history of a chef’s knife but I wouldn’t want to waste your time. It looks like this:

 Please believe me when I tell you that you only need one of that in your entire cooking life. Not those full set, serrated things your facebook/instagram friends try to sell you no matter what stories they cook-up about the “magic” those knives can do. Just buy ONE chef’s knife, the length will depend on how comfortable for you to hold and use it.

For brand, depends on your preference. If you have money to burn, you can go for those high carbon stainless-steel German blades like J A Henckels. Those will set you an upward of RM300++. But high carbon blade is hard to maintain and unless you are prepared to spend fifteen minutes every couple of days working that blade on an oiled carborundum stone, I’d forgo them for vanadium steel instead. The best I can recommend is the Japanese made Global, or Kai. Theirs cost between RM100++ to RM200++. You chef’s knife will be used for everything, cutting, chopping, filleting, slicing, boning, loping, you name it. Learn how to handle your knife properly if you prefer to keep all ten fingers until the day you die, there’s a lot of websites and youtube videos that can offer that. If it ever gets dull then sharpen them as per the instruction the company tells you how to, or if you’re extremely hopelessly lazy just buy a new one.

Pots & pans

Obviously you need them to do the actual cooking. Deep bottom saucepan of various depth, at least two, one large and one medium. I can’t stress enough that your pot/saucepan must be thick-bottom. I don’t care if they tell you that it is bonded with copper, rubbed by the hands of 40 virgins, using the material NASA use to send their rocket into space, a thin-bottom pot/saucepan is good for nothing. If you prefer scorched pasta sauce, carbonized chicken, burnt garlic, then go ahead and buy those “cap harimau” pot/saucepan you can find in those Chinese hardware store.

Sauté pan. You’ll need those for a majority of dishes. They also need to be thick-bottomed and very heavy. How heavy you ask? Heavy enough to cause serious injury when smacked against the head of a person. If you are not sure which will dent; your pan or your victim’s head, then throw away that pan into your trash. If you chose to buy non-stick pan instead, treat it nicer that your wife. Never wash it but wipe it clean after every use. And for God’s sake never use metal on it, use wooden spoon or plastic spatula to toss and turn whatever you’re cooking in it. Metal is like kryptonite to non-stick pan, they’ll scratch the surface.

Wok

A wok is the most versatile equipment to cook with. You can use it for deep frying, stir frying, making sauce, even steaming (heat water on it and put your bamboo steamer on top of it!). I always find stir fried vegetables in a wok tasted better that using a sauté pan. It offers width for cooking that pots and pans sometimes could not.

Oven

The difference between normal oven and convection oven is those convection ovens have fans to circulate air around the food being cook resulting in evenly cooked food in less time than normal oven. Any type of oven is fine so long as it is big enough for you to roast an entire chicken in it. Of course, a bigger oven is always preferred and no, microwave oven is NOT an oven.

Pestle & mortars

Before anyone asks, no, it’s not mortar where the army use in the battlefield as support artillery to blow up enemy soldiers into chunks and pieces. What I mean is lesung batu, and no house in this country at least should be without one.

Blender/food processor

Blender can sometimes handle jobs that food processor normally does, but never the other way around. So if you’re strapped for cash, always put priority over buying a blender than a food processor.

Utensils

The most obvious, you forks, knives and spoons; specifically, you’ll need things like can opener, colander, whisker, potato peeler, tongs, grater, measuring cup which can measure up to 500ml@2½ cup. Anything else I’ve forgotten?

Side ingredients

There are ingredients that separate restaurant quality dishes from home cooked dishes that made all the different in the world. Sadly these ingredients are taken for granted that not many people have them ready all the time or know how to us them properly. Always have these ingredients handy and restock ready to be use at a moment’s notice.

Shallots

These little guys are ubiquitous in this country but are always taken for granted. Not many kitchens have them readily or used in cooking constantly. Perhaps maybe because they are small it is quite cumbersome to peel and people always substitute them with regular red onion thinking them of the same. But no, they’re not the same nor serve the same function. Whenever and whatever you are sautéing, despite it not being called for use in your recipe, always add in chopped/sliced shallots into it, or use it in sauce. They will make a difference to your dish.

Garlic

Garlic is God’s gift to human beings. Treat it with respect. Never put it into that presser thingy they called the garlic presser. Whatever spewed out of that thing, that is not garlic. Smash it with the flat of your knife blade, or using a mortar. Roast it entirely while it is still in cloves to be squeezed out when soft and brown. They will taste as sweet. Sliver it onto your pasta, or your salad dressing, into your aioli or vinaigrette, add it into your marinade for fish or chicken, they will all taste wonderful.

Lemon/lime

Ever wonder why everytime you ordered fried mee at mamak’s they always served it with half a lime? It’s not so that the mee will taste like lime, but rather to have contrast in the taste where the lime acted as vinegar. Add some lemon/lime juice into whatever you are cooking to have that contrast and brighten up your dish. Try this experiment, take a spoonful of whatever you’re cooking and have a taste. Then, take the same spoonful only this time add a drop of lemon/lime juice into it and see the difference.

Butter

Butter is my favourite subject. Despite what you think, every dish you ever ordered in a restaurant starts-off with butter and ended with butter. That nice brown caramelize color you see on my onion is achieved by a mixture of butter and oil. I add in butter as a finisher or starter in almost all dishes that I cook. I finish off my pomodoro (tomato) sauce with butter, roasted anything with a touch of butter, all my soups ended with butter, my scrambled egg always starts with butter, my entire life wouldn’t be complete without butter in my refrigerator. Slather some butter onto a croissant and see your world light up like fireworks. Margarine? That’s not food. Never ever substitute butter with margarine, that’s the worst crime anyone can commit. Learn to know how to differentiate between both. If it’s cheap, less than RM5, and you can find the word “palm” and “oil” in the ingredient’s list, that’s margarine. Butter is always made from dairy.

the twenty techniques: #5) Butter

If ever there is a magical ingredient in a kitchen, my pick is butter. Butter is a mystical gift from the cow which makes almost everything taste better. Butter is the most useful and most common fat for cooking and eating, and understanding how to use it makes you a better cook. Fat is good. Fat does not make us fat (eating too much does). Fat is what makes a food flavorful. I suspect that most home cook does not use butter enough. Most of us only associate butter to baking cakes/cookies. We do not truly understand how truly valuable it is.

Thinking about butter allows us to see it, and use it, as a tool. It shortens the dough that will hold your pie filling or form the cookie you baked. It enriches a sponge cake and also becomes part of the frosting on that cake. It cooks and flavors the meat in your roasting pan/tray. Basting the meat with butter simultaneously helps the meat cook and flavors it, then enriches the pan sauce you later make for the meat. The solids in butter take on extraordinary flavors when gently browned. Butter by itself is a ready-made sauce—you use it with pasta, with your steak, with a roast chicken. Add aromatics, such as a little shallot and lemon, and it becomes a more complex sauce. Knead some flour into butter, and the mixture becomes the perfect thickener for sauce. A pastry kitchen ceased to exist without butter. As my mentor and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain puts it, “In a professional kitchen, it’s almost always the first and last thing in a pan.” Butter is a great cooking medium, flavoring and giving color to sautes. Added at the end, it completes a dish, making it more luscious, and it smoothes out the texture and flavor of the finished sauce.

Butter as cooking medium
Raising heat to a butter melts it. The higher the heat the water in the butter cooks off more rapidly. Once that happens, the butter solids browned and coloring and flavoring the food you cook it with. The only thing to do once this happens is to make sure the solids don’t burn. Basting, spooning butter over what you’re cooking, does two things: it flavors the food with the butter fat and the browning butter solids, and it cooks the food from the top down while the hot pan cooks it from the bottom up. For sauteing fish, chicken and beef at hot temperature (try it istead of using oil), use clarified butter. Butter can be clarified by melting the butter over low heat, the solids will rise to the top and are spooned away as the water cooks off until all you are left with is pure butter fat. Poaching is another technique which is wonderful when using butter. Butter is whisked into a bit of water and melted. This dense, flavorful medium cooks food very gently and is thus well suited to cooking ingredients that need gentle heat such prawns/shrimps.

Butter as shortener
If you always wonder why they called it shortener, it’s because they shorten the strands of gluten in the flour which results in tender crumb when you bake the flour mixture, which you want in a pastry crust. Without shortener, they becomes chewy like a bread. Butter is an excellent shortener compared to vegetables shortening or lard, because of the flavor. Try making a pie with both using butter and vegetable shortening and taste the different. Whenever a recipe for pastry calls for vegetables shortening, i always use butter instead. (As butter encourages the formation of gluten, do not knead your pastry too much or it’ll end up too chewy.)

Butter as enricher, thickener and finisher
Most hot, stock-based sauces are improved when you finish them by swirling in a little butter just before serving. This is called mounting a sauce with butter. The butter smoothes out the texture of the sauce, making it more voluptuous and satisfying. It’s a terrific way to enrich a sauce while improving its texture.

Butter as garnish
Using compund butter is a teriffic way to garnish most grilled/barbecued or roasted meats and fish. Simple to make, it can be varied according to your whim. Let the butter soften, then mix in aromatics, fresh herbs, minced shallot, or lemon, rolled into a log using plastic wrap/cling film, then is sliced and placed atop hot meat or fish, over which it will slowly melts. This is a standard practise for most hotel restaurants and it’s a great technique to enhance home cooked dishes.

Salted, or unsalted butter? It’s a matter of preferrence actually. Butter was salted to preserve it, now it’s more because of flavoring. If you do not want too much salt in your cooking and you want greater control of the amout of salt you’re using (especially when making pastry) use unsalted butter. I prefer using salted, due to the flavor and because unsalted butter generally cost more here. What is more important is the quality of the butter. You’ll normally get what you pay, so make your choice well.

The story of fat
Butter is fat, so is oil. When you’re cooking your food, take a spoonful to taste and think. Apart from correcting the seasoning with salt and pepper, and evaluating the acidity, whether you need to add a bit more vinegar/lemon juice, ask yourself if you have the depth of texture and satisfying nature that I’m after? If not, fat may be the solution. Butter is the most common finishing fat used. So does oil. Determine the kind of fat you may requires. Your choice of fat makes a difference in the finished dish. Use butter in a pie will result in rich and flavorful pie crust, use vegetable shortening and your flavor is neutral. Extra-virgin olive oil would be ruined in a hot saute pan. Use it cold or warm for its elegant flavor. So choose your fat according to the results you want.

hollandaise

Hollandaise is basically an emulsified butter sauce. It is one of the five sauces of french haute cuisine mother sauce repertoire. The sauce is one the great transformations of butter. Its appearance is light yellow and opaque, smooth and creamy while the taste is rich and buttery. It has a mild tangy acidic taste, a result of added vinegar (or lemon juice substitute) but not too strong to overpower the flavoured dish it accompanies. The sauce is serve warm but not hot and is excellent with beef, poultry, vegetables and fish. Two phases follow: cooking egg yolks and emulsifying the butter. It’s easiest to cook the eggs over simmering water. If you use direct heat, the eggs might be overcook which will results in lumps instead of smooth and silky sauce. After the eggs are airy and hot, you remove the pan from the heat and whisk in melted butter. Some cooks use whole butter and keep the sauce over heat, but I think you have more control using melted butter.

Creating an emulsified sauce using fat(oil/butter) and liquid(water/vinegar/egg) takes time and practise (i personally broke my sauce in the first two attempts) but that shouldn’t hinder anyone to try it. You’ll be rewarded with a wonderful sauce for your patience and once you get it right, you’ll never go wrong again. The chief danger to the emulsion is not having enough water (which includes lemon juice and vinegars). Water content is essential in this sauce is cooked (and thus continuously giving up its water as it vaporizes during the cooking). So the water quantity is critical. When making a hollandaise, I usually keep some water on hand to drizzle in if needed.

The standard ratio for making the sauce is 5:1:1(translates to a weight ratio of approx. 5 parts butter to 1 part yolk and 1 part water). That is, for example, 50 grams yolk and water for every 250 grams of butter. But if you’re making a small batch, just enough to serve 2 like i always do, it by tablespoon measuring, a standard egg yolk is a tablespoon, and ibuse two egg yolks, so that’s two tbsp water and ten tbsp of butter. Remember the ratio and you’re golden whether you’re making large batch or small. After that, it’s all about flavor: seasoning with herbs, aromatics, spices, and acid.

4 teaspoons water

½ teaspoon salt

50g yolks (or 3 large egg yolks)

250g warm clarified butter

2 teaspoons lemon juice, or to taste

First of all, make the clarified butter. Melt the butter in a medium pan over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook the butter. The water will slowly cook off; skim off the white solids that float to the top of the butter that forms on the surface. When the water is cooked off and you’ve skimmed the solids, strain the butter through a fine-mesh strainer to extract any remaining impurities. You should be left with pure yellow butter fat.

Prepare a double-boiler by partly fill a saucepan with water and bribg to a simmer. Bring a bowl and insert in the saucepan (the water shouldn’t touch the bowl), and whisk the yolk and the water continuously. When the yolks have doubled or tripled in volume, remove the double boiler from the burner and begin whisking in the warm clarified butter in a thin stream until it’s all incorporated and the sauce is thick and creamy. If the sauce becomes very thick and shiny, almost as if the water is being squeezed to the surface, or if you sense the sauce is about to break, add a teaspoon of cold water. When the butter is incorporated, taste and add the lemon juice to desire.

Do not be daunted if the sauce breaks, and it will, all you have to do is fix it. Simply get another yolk and a couple of teaspoons of water, warm them a little, and start adding your broken sauce the way you added the butter. You’ll have your sauce back in no time.