New West Knifeworks: New-ish and Noteworthy

A relatively new line of kitchen knives with a mind for both function and design doesn’t come from Japan or Germany. And no, it’s not a French or Italian brand, either.

New chef’s knives, santokus and other pro-quality blades come from Wyoming-based New West Knifeworks with help from a wood craftsman in Vermont, a New York steel supplier and Lamson and Goodnow, the classic manufacturer in Massachusetts that takes care of the finishing work.

For starters, photos cannot do the distinctive handle designs justice. (Neither can videos.) New West offers a variety of fancy color combinations that can grow quickly on users. On two models from the company’s Fusionwood series—a 7-inch santoku and a sweet 9-inch chef’s knife—the handles are also longer than those on comparable knives like a Global santoku and a Mac Mighty chef’s knife. New West’s Corey Milligan says his handle design helps deliver a better sense of balance for each knife.

Second observation: Both of these New West knives have fantastic edges that may be sharper than surgical tools. Right out of the box, the santoku and chef’s knife move with precision through onions, herbs, carrots and peppers. Each has a scalloped Granton edge that works well for carving meats and fish, too, with reduced sticking. Both home cooks and culinary professionals will also appreciate the edge-holding advantage of blades with this profile and high-carbon steel. Regular honing and occasional sharpening by a knife professional are still critical for optimal cuts, but New West’s steel seems to maintain a much better edge after a few weeks of heavy use when compared with any classic Wusthof or similar brands.

Consider too that, unlike the Global and Mac knives referenced earlier, the New West blades seem to be somewhere between ultra-thin Japanese blades and the club-like German blades that bludgeon their way through food. The New West blades’ relative heft seems like a useful middle ground; that extra bit of weight makes chopping through thick root vegetables as natural as slicing ribbons of basil.

Prep food just a few times with a New West knife. It’s clearly a tool that deserves strong consideration in the $100-plus category. The company’s build quality, design and blade shape are just a few of the features that easily put these knives in the same conversation. As such, New West is a fairly recent entry by a U.S. manufacturer into the high-end knife market. Plus it’s a home-grown product. What’s not to love?

Milligan and his crew even package the knives with useful leather guards that protect blades during shipping, inside knife rolls (a plus for professionals), or when stored in a drawer. Be warned, though: As nice as those covers are, these are knives that beg to be left out on cutting boards or displayed on magnetic bars. They’re too pretty to store out of sight.

Now how’s that for a design-forward tool that inspires a round of cooking?

The forecast calls for vegetables

This is it, the last of the harvest for 2010, shot on a sunny fall afternoon. Glorious Red Chard. It was as delicious as it was beautiful.

Sure, late fall and winter may yield some sturdy root vegetables. But they’ll look nothing like this.

Access to such great produce is a reminder of how well one can eat without meat or much money. (Decent olive oil, cheese and sea salt don’t hurt, either.) Heading into winter, that theory is easy to swallow as long as the winter farmers’ markets and grocery runs have reasonably good stuff.

This winter should be one that tests the supposedly widespread trend behind people switching to plant-based diets. Home cooks and chefs are moving there in record numbers, and not just for ethical reasons, either. Mark Bittman and others are making sense of this in popular media. Besides, hydroponics are supposed to emerge as the next big thing for feeding the world as populations explode and soils erode.

Maybe it’s a good time to get an early start.

Green Mission Not-So-Impossible

His name is Mark, but most people call him “Coach.” And that’s easy to understand, considering he’s a teacher and sports coach who now shows people how to grow food.

Mark Smallwood of Whole Foods holds the official job title of Green Mission Specialist and Local Forager for the grocer’s Mid-Atlantic region. The forager part means he searches Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and beyond to find local producers who can supply fresh goods the stores. For example, Smallwood helped Trickling Springs Creamery begin selling its milk and other dairy products in Whole Foods stores.

The other parts of Coach’s job might be more visible to consumers. Take the new community garden programs that blend his agricultural background (he farmed in Connecticut before he took on his current role) with expertise in composting, gardening and cultivating natural foods.

The gardens Coach manages or assists have sprouted in neighborhoods throughout Baltimore and Washington. A new one in Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood near Television Hill’s broadcast towers grows in a previously unused lot and produces vegetables for local tables. Another garden in Park Heights will supplement students’ meals at the charter school next door.

A few hours south near Richmond, Va., the local company Backyard Farmer works with Coach on a community garden outside a new Whole Foods store in Short Pump. It’s a one-acre plot planned to supply the grocer’s new store there with produce. Some garden spaces there are available for rent for budding gardeners who want to learn while growing food for their families.

Coach also connects the initiative to gardening parables. “Less grass and more food,” he often says. That work includes teaching where food starts, how it grows and how it’s harvested. You see his passion for that work when he asks Woodberry Kitchen Chef Spike Gjerde to stop by and show gardeners how to prep their new vegetables for nutritious meals.

As Coach drives from one community to another to check garden plots and discuss projects with teachers, chefs and community leaders, he seems to bring energy to the neighborhood residents who want to be involved. It takes time and support from a corporate partner like his employer. It also calls for lots of work.

“We’re going to teach you how to grow it, prepare it, preserve it and cultivate it,” he says.

And with that, he drives off in his truck to another town, where he tends to another garden.

Grill or Grill Pan? Maybe both.

Yes—both. That’s as good a place as any to start a grill pan review, only because a grill pan is no regular pan, nor is it remotely a grill of any sort. But a grill pan is somewhere near the middle of the two, and it’s nice to have around, even if it’s unnecessary for kitchen survival.

Grill pans are designed to simulate a grilling effect on a stove top. A recent delivery from All-Clad—that amazing cookware manufacturer in Canonsburg, Pa.— prompted this search for meaning in indoor grilling. The black-and-red box held what All-Clad markets as a “hard-anodized nonstick 11-inch square grille pan.” It’s a typical All-Clad pan with that heavy stainless steel handle but a charcoal-colored aluminum pan base finished with a glassy-smooth nonstick coating. (Anodized aluminum is a reinforced metal with a stronger, more durable surface.)

The coating on the cooking surface of this and many other nonstick pans does beg some initial questions: For starters, what exactly is this nonstick material? Is it the same Teflon by DuPont that raises so many health and environmental concerns? Teflon has been around for decades. It works but doesn’t necessarily last for long, even when cooking with the recommended plastic spatulas and other tools. (For the record, All-Clad calls theirs a “reinforced nonstick system.”) And if the Teflon comes off when you’re cleaning such cookware, it must flake off during cooking, right? Maybe. It’s enough make some home cooks nervous about eating the particles.

If you don’t want to take such risks with a grill pan, or for that matter with any pan, you have options: You can use a regular steel pan with lots of cooking fat such as olive oil and butter. It takes some time to learn how to cook fish, eggs and other delicate foods in a regular pan, but it’s easy to learn with practice. Another option: Use old-fashioned cast iron pans, such as the ones from Lodge, the Tennessee manufacturer that has cranked out cast iron cookware for generations. Cast iron has its own special needs, although it offers other advantages including value pricing, long life and a natural nonstick surface when seasoned properly. Consider too that a 11-inch Lodge cast-iron grill pan runs around $25 or less while this 11-inch All-Clad grill pan retails for closer to $79, give or take a few bucks depending on where you shop.

Also, it’s honestly a bit of a surprise to see that this All-Clad pan is made in China. That’s puzzling when most of the primary All-Clad cookware lines are produced in Canonsburg, just south of Pittsburgh. Surely there’s a good reason for that, one of which may be production efficiencies (read: profitability), but the product is well made with that classic riveted steel handle and the All-Clad name to back it up. It feels extremely solid when cooking with it.

All that said, consumers have options, and the All-Clad grill pan is one with its share of benefits. Here are some to consider if you’re thinking about buying:

• Nothing replaces an actual grill for intense heat, which is critical for searing. A grill generates delicious smoke and allows for grilling with indirect heat, which can be essential for cooking larger cuts of meat or thick root vegetables. Post-meal cleaning is a breeze, too. But a good grill pan like this All-Clad model sears steaks and chops well and produces respectable burgers and grilled vegetables.
• The surface ridges on the All-Clad pan are “softer” and more rounded than those on the typical cast iron pan. The nonstick surface is also so effective that food moves around almost too easily, so it can be challenging to keep a burger or slice of zucchini positioned for making those perfect cross marks as you would on a grill. Fats or excess cooking oils just run off away from foods like they should.
• The All-Clad pan is easy to clean. Nothing seems to stick. It’s an upgrade over some older All-Clad sauté pans and most nonstick cookware on the market. You’ll also use little to no oil, a handy benefit if low-fat cooking is your thing.
• Vegetables grill well on the All-Clad pan—especially eggplant, asparagus and zucchini. Thickly sliced bread for crostini are a no-brainer, too.
• In a pinch, the All-Clad grill plan can be useful for other things. It actually works well for omelets and “grilled” fruit.

So consider giving the 11-inch All-Clad grill pan a shot. Just be sure you know what you need for your kitchen, especially if you already have a grill. If you don’t like it for some reason, the retailers who sell All-Clad lines may be able to help you find a replacement. Otherwise it can be useful as an option on rainy days or for solo meals.

The AeroPress: Not Just a Toy

Those fine people at The Commonplace Coffeehouse & Roastery in western Pennsylvania stand for everything that’s great about espresso and coffee drinks: Freshness, purity of flavor, and the community space created in a great coffee shop.

Commonplace proprietor TJ Fairchild is a genuinely nice guy and a skilled roaster. When you sample his espresso blends and single-origin coffees, including that great Colombian Supremo, you understand why the roaster part matters. Commonplace beans don’t have a use-by date stamped on the bag.

Fairchild teams with business partner David Sutfin, owner of The Espresso Analysts, a provider of maintenance and repair services for professional espresso equipment. Together they serve regional wholesale clients in Pennsylvania and other regional states. Recently they staked out a new retail spot in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

As Fairchild and Sutfin prepare for that new venture, they’re bound to spill even further a not-so-hidden secret about brewing great coffee at home—the AeroPress , a plastic brewer that looks more like a lab beaker than an espresso machine. The gadget comes from Aerobie, a California company known more for its sport toys than coffee gear.

Until now, that is. The AeroPress doesn’t produce true espresso. (You’ll have to order a shot of that from one of Sutfin’s refurbished La Marzocco machines or perhaps that hulking three-grouphead Synesso warming up in the corner.) But an AeroPress does yield a terrific cup that falls somewhere between press pot brewing and espresso extraction. Fiends for single-cup coffee brewing also will appreciate how well an AeroPress works as an alternative to the popular “pourover” method.

The instructional book Aerobie packs into each AeroPress box spells out step-by-step instructions on how to brew. That’s great, but watching this video segment is a better way to sample it in action. That, or stop by a Commonplace cafe to request a demo with the Colombian or whatever else is fresh that day.

Rhody Fresh

Spring is a perfect time to visit Rhode Island, especially after the mind-numbing winter that pummeled the northeast. Providence is great anytime, of course. But when you can get out, walk around and smell the fruit blossoms, it’s especially sweet.

It would be criminal to hang out in Providence without a stop at Nick’s on Broadway. Be assured of that. It doesn’t matter whether you’re stopping there in the morning for Illy coffee, some pancakes and a frittata or a dinner of grilled fish, seasonal local produce and first-rate wines. It’s good. Go for the casual feel of the place and the nice people there.

On your way to Nick’s, or maybe for a nightcap after dinner, try to hit Trinity Brewhouse near downtown. Brewer Sean Larkin will entertain you with stories of yeast and fermentation plus more than a few jokes along the way. You won’t care whether he’s funny or just a weird beer geek when you try his craft ales and lagers. Then you’ll order another.

Then there’s “Cheese Matt” and his wife/pastry genius Kate at the Farmstead Inc. compound in the Wayland Square neighborhood. The Farmstead “store” is a no-brainer stop for any discerning visitor. Matt’s charcuterie—try his ridiculous porchetta di testa, coppa and a pâté or two—go nicely with cheese-reinforced biscuits. It’s food that’s so good it just might make you slap yourself out of a fat-fueled stupor. (You’re forgiven if you don’t make it next door to the couple’s bistro for a full meal.)

If you’ve got a few sunny hours ahead of you, do yourself a final favor and stop by Barden Family Orchard, an honest-to-goodness New England family farm in nearby North Scituate. Guests can visit for u-pick options, seasonal fruits and a farm store near the home of owners Sandie and Gil Barden. They’re great people, and if the chefs are to be trusted, the Bardens grow terrific peaches, pears, apples and pumpkins. Word has it they also make a killer apple cider every fall.

Rhody Fresh is the working name for a Rhode Island dairy cooperative. It might as well be a mantra for visitors planning their itineraries, too. What better way to get a taste of the local life?

I Like Coffee a Latte

I’ve always wanted to learn this latte art thing since I saw a guy at a coffee bar pour a rosetta pattern six or seven years ago. But I’m always in too much of an early-morning stupor to try it at home. It’s all I can do to fill the old Rancilio with water, heat it for 10 minutes and brew a few decent shots.

That’s why I just watch one of these demos on the ‘tubes.

Those people at Hypnocoffee pour some great latte art. And they have a new web site. Tony’s espresso blend makes a lot of crema, so it should make for some great pours. Maybe I’ll give it a shot early tomorrow…

Hypnocoffee: Surprises in the Middle of Nowhere

The best espresso and small-batch coffee roasters are always found in small towns in West Virginia.

Yeah, right.

But when you’re passing through a town like Davis (population 600) looking for a ski resort or a mountain bike trail, you might become a believer.

Things begin looking pretty good if you stumble on Hypnocoffee, especially if you’re thawing out from cross-country skiing at White Grass or recovering from singletrack rides in Blackwater Falls State Park. Even if you just happen to be in or near Davis, Thomas or anywhere else in Tucker County, this shop is worth a stop.

Hypnocoffee has all the makings of a must-see travel detour: Friendly owners, a funny crowd of locals and tourists, and some fantastic coffees. Co-owner Tony Williams runs the place with his wife, Summer, and a small crew of baristi trained in the crafts of fine espresso and latte art.

The biggest draw: Williams roasts coffees daily. He focuses on a blend for espresso, a few other blends to run through your press pot or espresso machine, and single-origin coffees that might work well even if you’re using your mom’s old Bunn brewer. They’re all that good.

A velvet Elvis print hangs on the wall at Hypnocoffee. Coincidence? Maybe. But it won’t be happenstance if you find yourself going back to Hypnocoffee for another shot or placing an order of beans for shipment. This is good stuff.

Sit Down and Eat

The big-time chef of Alinea has an idea as bold as his molecular food: Relax, savor the meal, and document it later in the night with photos and audio captures.

I’ve never been to Grant Achatz’s place. But I see what he means in this story on the way some fixated diners spend their hours at Alinea and other restaurants. It must be odd to watch guests let food cool—or melt, or cease foaming and smoking, as with Achatz’s  menu—to shoot pictures and capture sound from servers as they describe dishes. And I can’t blame Achatz for his reaction to guests who flash cameras in his face. What do you do? Smile and tolerate it, or ban photography like David Chang did?

Maybe it’s just not my thing. Memories do well for me. Savored moments taste as good as the food itself. (Even better, in some cases.) Online step-by-step breakdowns of a night out can’t recall the real thing, as solid as the next day’s post may be. Playing it back course by course—complete with captions—risks stealing the memory.

Diners buy the food and drinks, so they should be able to photograph or wrap each dish in a box to go. But why not just enjoy it and write later? It’s a question worth asking.

Not Too Stupid to Cook—Or Make Pancakes

This PBS production presents a simple but profound idea: With all the feel-good farmers’ markets and organic food trends around, the key to really fueling the scale needed by the local food industry is right in our homes—namely, a widespread return to cooking in the kitchen.

The segment features all the required parts: Michael Pollan interviews, thoughtful skepticism from scholar James McWilliams and lush scenes of rooting pigs. But that nugget about a return to cooking just might be the part that sticks.

This notion popped up again when Michael Ruhlman ranted Part Two about America’s paralysis in the kitchen. And he could be on to something. It might be the right time for a come-to-Jesus talk as food companies and appliance manufacturers market infinite numbers of convenience foods—think boxed pancake mixes—and shiny new ovens with “perfect turkey buttons.” Hey, it’s about time someone took the stress out of Thanksgiving Day, right? How did our parents and grandparents manage to survive the holidays anyway?

So what will it take? Will one trip a month to a farmers’ market make a dent? I don’t know. That trip might be a start. I know pancakes are as easy to make as driving to the mega-mart to buy a box of mix and then drive back. Plus when you make them with your kids or with other people you love, you can actually eat them together, too. Imagine that. Saving the world a pancake at a time. Maybe it’d work. Be sure to pick up berries when you’re buying the eggs and flour, plus some of that Snowville whipping cream. It might save unbelievers, in or out of the kitchen.