Cooking By Hand In A Modern Kitchen

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

There was a death in my life this week, something so tragic that I have been left feeling rather… impotent. Okay, this death was not a living thing, per se, but such a part of my life that without it, I feel is if a limb has gone missing. My Dell laptop died a sudden, soundless death. I am still in mourning.

For many of us, not having technology at one’s fingertips in the form of a cell phone, iPad, GPS system, and so on, we are often left to wonder how we once survived without the modern conveniences we now take for granted. Take what you are doing right now, for instance. Unless you are a personal friend, or my mother, you were probably searching for recipes online, on your computer, when you happened to stumble across this article. The World Wide Web is indeed an extremely useful tool for many informational needs including finding recipes.

Even beyond the computer, modern conveniences in the kitchen abound. Contemporary recipes rely to such an extent on modern technology that most assume certain tools, such as a food processor, will automatically be available in every home. Of course, there are certain conveniences (a mixer, standing or hand-held) that I can’t imagine living without. But others (two words: bread mixer) may not be as necessary as some would have us believe. So in the age of pre-cut vegetables and time-saving tricks that lean heavily on the tools of convenience, if a few of those gadgets were to go the way of my laptop, what could we do without and still put dinner on the table in minutes?

While I've long been a believer in the importance of a blender, after reading an article in the LA Times about immersion blenders, I was recently inspired to add to my collection. Making sauces, emulsifying salad dressings in a hurry, and creating creamy soups, all these seem impossible without the use of at least one of these electronic tools.

To think about life without a blender, I decided to consult a cookbook from before the contraption’s time. In Fanny Farmer’s Boston Cooking School book from 1896, I found to my surprise that soups seemingly always have been served creamy and smooth. I had figured that without a blender of any sort, most cooks would be too lazy or pressed for time to create the same smooth consistency by hand that the mechanical device achieves in a matter of seconds. But no, it would seem that soups were passed by hand through a sieve, pressed and worked until becoming a liquid that flows as smooth as water. I gave it a try, and not only is it time consuming, but the results are just not as good. In this case, I’ll take the blender.

Having discovered that I really don’t want to live without a blender, I tried to think of recipes where the modern tool never produces a result quite as good as the one that is done by hand. Biscuits are that one thing where the hand might always beat the tool. A lot of people’s favorite trick for biscuits lies in the refrigerator case in the grocery store. Not much is quicker than opening a vacuum packed tube and placing the biscuit on a baking sheet. But biscuits are all about being homey and if you can’t make a homey food at home, than it might not be worth making.

You can’t really make biscuits in a mixer, a bread paddle would overwork the dough, resulting in a tough and flat biscuit. A pastry cutter or two knives can be used to cut the butter into the flour mixture, but honestly even two knives take decidedly longer than working it with your fingers. The finger method is quick and you have greater control over how the butter is blended into the flour mixture. Then to do the final mixing of liquid into the flour, little else works better than a good old-fashioned fork.

Computer-less and learning to live without similar modern inventions in the kitchen, I go to bake my handmade biscuits. God bless modern technology, but the pilot light in my oven is out… again. But biscuits can’t sit waiting for me to re-light the pilot light and pre-heat the oven. A flaky biscuit requires cold butter that will result in a flaky biscuit when put in a hot oven.

Not having an oven was not initially part of my technology experiment, but here I was improvising in just that scenario. So I fired up a cast iron skillet with a shallow layer of vegetable oil and decided to see how stovetop biscuits would turn out. Two to three minutes per side in a covered cast iron pan resulted in a biscuit than was, surprisingly, great! Perfectly flaky and golden brown, plus they had actually cooked faster than they would have in my oven.

So, what have I learned about technology? I can’t live without my computer in this day and age, but I might just survive without all the gizmos and gadgets crowding my kitchen. Impressed as I am by those who would take the time and arm strength to whip egg whites with a whisk, I’ll keep my standing mixer. But it turns out that cooking can be faster, and if you are a biscuit, flakier, when you learn to live, and cook, with your own two hands.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 2 cups flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons cold butter
• 3/4 cup milk PLUS
• 2 tablespoons milk
• vegetable oil
• 1/2 pound Black forest ham
• 8 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 3 scallions, white part only
• 1 plum tomato
• 2 ounces smoked cheddar
• black pepper
• salt
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil