The Stainless Steel Table

It's a game changer. Really.

The lovely Amy found the commercial stainless steel kitchen table I wanted on craigslist for a phenomenally good price. Devoted partner and I drove into the city, disassembled it, and miraculously fit it into the back of the Subaru. Devoted partner reassembled it in the basement, and I've been in love ever since.

I realize this needs some explaining.

If you go into any commercial kitchen, you will see these tables. They are the workhorses of the industry because little else is as easy to clean. In some of the kitchens where I apprenticed, we literally sudsed up the surface and then dumped buckets of water on top and let the run off go down the drains in the floor. They are nearly indestructible, can support any appliance save a floor-model Hobart, and are sturdy sturdy sturdy. This one had casters which made me nervous, but damn if the locks don't really hold the thing in place.

The table has gotten a bit of a workout recently as I have been producing chocolate and confections in numbers not seen in quite a while. I literally would have been unable to do this without the table. Sure, I could have used the dining room table, but then our lovely dining room rug would no longer be as nice as it currently is. Because it would be covered in chocolate. I am not neat. My apron looks like I performed an autopsy on a 50 pound block of chocolate. But no matter how haphazard I am, the table becomes clean in about three minutes. Using water and a sponge.

I wish everything I owned was like this.

For reasons that can't bode well, I have been watching the Home and Garden network and open-mouthed gasping at how much home renovation costs, and how personal style is frequently subsumed by marketability as the decisions a person makes could grossly affect the resale price of his house. When I dream of the perfect kitchen, I see a lot of stainless steel. And a drain in the floor. This means that should we ever buy a home, we should make sure we will live there forever because, from what I've seen, this is an unpopular decorating choice.

The only thing that could make my downstairs prep kitchen better would be an induction burner and, frankly, given the up and very down nature of the chocolate thing, I can't really justify the investment.

But table, you were worth every penny!

My Two Kitchens

Once upon a time, I had a vision of suburban kitchens, a grand sprawling vision, supported by my mother-in-law's kitchen in the house where devoted partner grew up. There was an ample island and a breakfast nook which actually fit a circular table 6 feet in diameter, making it a room-sized nook. Sure, when I looked at that kitchen, I had different ideas of placement and utilization, but the size was just about right. So when we started looking at houses for rent, I was a trifle disappointed that the kitchens were significantly smaller than my expectations. Don't get me wrong, the average Manhattan kitchen is still dwarfed, but the average Manhattan kitchen is a 3'x2' L off the living room making the average Manhattan toilet bigger than the average Manhattan kitchen.

The house we have moved into, though, did have one of the smaller kitchens of all of the houses we looked at, and since my one deal breaker in this whole process had been ENORMOUS KITCHEN, one could wonder what changed my mind. While I should not be showing any pictures of our house at the moment because it is not fully unpacked, this is a good indication of the space I'm working with in my kitchen:



So, a decent sized kitchen, but not an Architectural Digest-type kitchen. But this house has a hidden secret. Apparently its builders were very very very dirty people. Because nestled in the basement is a laundry room the size of my dining room and kitchen put together - with its own shower and toilet. A veritable palace of clean clothing. But in the room itself was one washer, one dryer, and some cabinets. That was it. And so, the laundry room was planned out from the beginning as a second kitchen; a prep kitchen if you will.

Having interned in kitchens this past year, I learned it was common to have a prep kitchen where most of the work got done, and a service kitchen where the food made it to the plate and out to the waiting guest. I chose to model my kitchens on this theory. Downstairs will be where my work table is, and all my appliances, and most of my specialty equipment. I will be able to make and roll pasta, prepare batches of puff pastry, make chocolate, all without leaving the room. I have already debated getting an induction cooktop in case I really need to make things hot downstairs. Upstairs will be the oven and the stovetop and the place where dinner finally gets assembled - the disparate pieces perhaps having been made below and simply finished upstairs - this was how I ended up in a house with a smaller than preferable kitchen: I got two kitchens. Here's a sneak preview of the downstairs kitchen shelving:


So this is going to be a much different kitchen experience from what I'm used to. Devoted partner has developed a solution for the upstairs kitchen pot storage problem (the problem being there was no good place to store pots where they would be easily accessible) and it involves this awesome piece of apple green pegboard:


Sadly, I didn't take a picture of the pegboard color tryouts which were funny, but since the only orange available was traffic cone orange, I settled on apple green because all of the wood paneling in house does lend it a bit of a darkness I wanted to dispel. Once the pegboard is up, there will be almost nothing left to put away, and almost every item that is associated with cooking will have a designated home. I consider this a monumental accomplishment and I simply cannot wait to cook something a little more sophisticated than grilled chicken. I will supply pictures of the finishes products as they arrive.