A faulty stove
Raffi Melkonian at 11:07 PM
Don't you hate things that look great, but don't work worth a damn? Like chiseled boxers with glass jaws, or beautiful looking tasteless food? I do, at least. And I'm feeling that way about my parents' new stove.
It looks astonishing, I have to admit. An array of buttons festoon the front, promising to do things I didn't even imagine stoves did. The griddles can be electronically expanded and contracted, while the stove can be programmed to the single degree. There's a professional looking ventilator above, and an equally complicated microwave (boo) attached to the top. There's even this needle you're supposed stick into meat, which shuts off when the internal temperature reaches the FDA approved standard. Incredible. And expensive.
Oh, and also completely useless. You can't use cast iron on the griddles - it might crack the glass, or whatever it is. The repair man who came to look at the scratch our completely normal pot made said that you have to take a carpentry level when you're out buying cookware, since the heat is apparently inefficient if your pots aren't exactly flat on the bottom - "don't bother with those expensive pans", he said - "they don't work". To keep the complex electronics cool (for which, by the way, you have to buy a warranty, otherwise they're essentially guaranteed to break down to expensive effect), the oven almost constantly emits a giant fan noise. Oh, and that ventilator? It's so weak that the steam from your cooking degrades the microwave handle to the extent that it eventually falls off. Seriously.
So what is this oven possibly for? Well, just like a lot of gadgets that people buy, the point of this stove is apparently to invite friends over, show them that your credit rating is still high enough to afford the gleaming monstrosity, and then send them home again having eaten food bought furtively at the Price Club and passed off as your own by the addition of some aerosol whipped cream. We're taking it back to the store when I return from Wilmington. And buying an honest stove with a few knobs, and some coils that can heat cast iron and normal pots alike.
5/24/2005
I've not been keeping up with writing up my 50 book challenge entries - suffice to say that I've been reading diligently, except for a short gap around exam time. Hopefully, I can catch up over the next week or so, mostly posted on my own web site.
But my thoughts on Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires are appropriate here, even though Will has written on it previously. I'd only disagree with Will's assessment in that I find this book's lighter emphasis on personal drama when compared with Reichl's previous memoirs a tremendous strength. Give me formalized, Handel-opera like emotion any day.
Amid a real flood of good writing, however, one passage did strike me particularly. Discussing New York's famous Le Cirque, Reichl writes, "I had meanly ordered risotto, a dish few French chefs can master". (37). First of all, of course, the author is right - my suspicion is that French chefs see risotto as a convenient, superficially elegant sop for the awkward vegetarians that fashion has forced them to accomodate. Consequently, the number of wall-paper paste risottos I've eaten in otherwise competent restaurants is a little startling.
But much more interesting is Reichl's real point, about ordering dishes "meanly". I too have been known to take part in this bizarre game, ordering dishes I know the restaurant can't cook. Of course, to some extent this one sided exercise is silly, rather like the pitched academic rivalry we at St. Andrews maintained against Cambridge, and about which the latter knew nothing. And it's also somewhat masochistic - I know for a fact that the Cheesecake Factory isn't going to produce a creditable pasta carbonara, and it's idiotic to order it just to prove to myself that they couldn't. But I do it anyway, because I feel like part of what you're suposed to be doing at a restaurant is finding out if the menu is serious. Unless someone is paying for me to eat the entire menu, like a proper critic, the best I can do is make sure the most unlikely entry isn't a joke. And yet, this technique obviously results in me eating a lot of junk I don't want to eat. So who is really being mean, and to who? At least in Reichl's case, she was at a good restaurant, and the meal was great regardless. That doesn't often happen for me.
But my thoughts on Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires are appropriate here, even though Will has written on it previously. I'd only disagree with Will's assessment in that I find this book's lighter emphasis on personal drama when compared with Reichl's previous memoirs a tremendous strength. Give me formalized, Handel-opera like emotion any day.
Amid a real flood of good writing, however, one passage did strike me particularly. Discussing New York's famous Le Cirque, Reichl writes, "I had meanly ordered risotto, a dish few French chefs can master". (37). First of all, of course, the author is right - my suspicion is that French chefs see risotto as a convenient, superficially elegant sop for the awkward vegetarians that fashion has forced them to accomodate. Consequently, the number of wall-paper paste risottos I've eaten in otherwise competent restaurants is a little startling.
But much more interesting is Reichl's real point, about ordering dishes "meanly". I too have been known to take part in this bizarre game, ordering dishes I know the restaurant can't cook. Of course, to some extent this one sided exercise is silly, rather like the pitched academic rivalry we at St. Andrews maintained against Cambridge, and about which the latter knew nothing. And it's also somewhat masochistic - I know for a fact that the Cheesecake Factory isn't going to produce a creditable pasta carbonara, and it's idiotic to order it just to prove to myself that they couldn't. But I do it anyway, because I feel like part of what you're suposed to be doing at a restaurant is finding out if the menu is serious. Unless someone is paying for me to eat the entire menu, like a proper critic, the best I can do is make sure the most unlikely entry isn't a joke. And yet, this technique obviously results in me eating a lot of junk I don't want to eat. So who is really being mean, and to who? At least in Reichl's case, she was at a good restaurant, and the meal was great regardless. That doesn't often happen for me.
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