The Unplugged Kitchen

     When asked about his favorite kitchen tool, award-winning San Francisco chef and writer Daniel Patterson said that two things found in every kitchen can give you more information, more accurately and more consistently, than anything else:  your hands.

     In the simplest of all illustrations, he says to think about the difference between tossing a salad with tongs versus using your hands, and innocently asks, "How can the tongs tell you when the leaves are evenly coated?  Only your fingers can do that."  And to that I would add the wisdom only your hands can provide to know when dough has come together to just the right consistency.

The Unplugged Kitchen written by Viana La Place takes up that theme, as does the book, Cooking by Hand, by author Paul Bertolli.  And when you think about it, nearly every high tech gadget in today's kitchen replaces a tool that existed long before the electric outlet was even dreamed of.  Before the food processor there was the food mill, before the blender it was the manual ice crusher.

     Over a decade ago we were all caught up in a frenzy about the potential effects of Y2K when all our digital electronic devices were supposed to stop functioning.  I went out and purchased a hand operated can opener to keep my kitchen up and running.  Using our hands and manual tools hones our instincts and our common sense.