The Greasy Spoon

French Egg Baskets

 

 

Traditional wire-work egg baskets are good looking and relatively affordable. I happen to think that they are an infinitely preferable way to keep your eggs- although, of course, there are some odd people out there who insist on keeping them in the 'fridge.

They were popular in France during the 19th century, and the style is still in production. "Antique" baskets are a good buy, but you need to be a bit careful. I suspect that many of the baskets advertised as "antique" are in fact of a relatively recent date, and in any event, how can one tell the difference between a basket made in the 1940s' and one made in the late 19th century?  How easy it would be to take a brand-new basket and bury it in the garden for a month or so!

The time-honoured definition of "antique" is anything made over one hundred years ago, and American customs still use it as a formal definition, even though there are many honest dealers in America who consistently use the term "antique" for stuff made in the 1960's. In England, we're a bit fussier, and I would expect any honest dealer selling me an "antique" to believe that his ware was made before 1912.

I'm very amused by the term "vintage" which, I reckon, has now been with us for about fifteen years or so. You see this at those awful celebrity premieres: so-and-so "in vintage". Frankly, it's meaningless, and a wonderful euphemism for "second-hand". Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Being in the antiques business, my whole raison d'être revolves around the second-hand, and there's nothing like a sudden cold snap to bring on new business.

By the way, salad baskets or saladiers are also very similar in design, though are more likely to have a narrower open space at the top. French ebay is going to be an excellent source for the older baskets- if you're prepared to pay the postage. If you're after a modern basket, this one (pictured above) is available from the worm that turned, priced at £15.25.

 

This one was recently sold on Etsy by the loosegoose. There's also another one up for sale at The French Country Home, priced at 38 Euros. The seller has very sensibly described it as "old" and left it at that.

 

This basket was sold by Curate & Love on Etsy for $42.00. Nice basket, but when do you think it was made?

Measure for Measure

 

 

 

In Perfidious Albion, we can be a bit schizophrenic about measurement.  I was brought up in the era of decimilisation, and as a result, can tell you all about centimetres and grammes, but confess utter ignorance when it comes to hectares, litres, metres or kilometres.

I was thinking about this sitting in the traffic jam in Cheyne Walk on the way to work this morning.  We're supposedly a metric country, but even today, the road-signs and speed are still measured in miles, bitter is still measured in pints, and land is still quite decidedly measured in acres. Temperature is odd, too. Every summer in London, hot weather is considered worthy of a news headline, and there's a picture of some topless bathing belle on the front page of "The Sun" or "The Mirror", stripping off in the Trafalgar Square fountains, with the headline "98 F!!!!" And yet, freezing temperatures are measured in centigrade, not fareinheit. It's always minus two, or minus one on the radio, not 30∘Farenheit.

When I started "The Greasy Spoon", I made the conscious decision not to write down the exact measurements for each recipe.  Far too Delia Smith for my liking.  Destroys the spirit of experimentation. I know that I have broken this rule now and again, but generally the philosophy has stuck.  Obviously for certain things, like say,  pastries and cakes, measurement is important, otherwise your cooking could go seriously wrong.  But, otherwise, I resent being told that you need to use two tablespoons of olive oil for frying, or 3gm of butter.  This smacks of control freakery.  And it's often a matter of taste, isn't it?

Has anyone out there read Julian Barnes's "A Pedant in the Kitchen" ?  I've been meaning to read it for months now. It's on my ever growing amazon wish-list, but I gather that it is now out-of-print.  I'm looking forward to exploring the opposite point of view.

Hideous gadget, so kindly meant...

Are you fed up with Christmas yet?  Want me to go on?  For this post, I thought I would have a look at kitchen equipment, especially as it's the sort of thing that you might be giving as a present. 

I'm fascinated by the concept of kitchen equipment- the sort of stuff that people buy for show, and then never use.  I suppose Terence Conran invented the whole caboodle, back in the Sixties, with his innovative market stall-like displays at Habitat in the King's Road, Chelsea. You know the sort of thing: blue and white striped Cornish ware, copper pans, red enamel coffee perculators, 19th century French dial clocks, and scrubbed pine tables. All offset by a framed Toulouse-Lautrec poster of the Folies Bergère. This was a new non-aristocratic, democratic look for the upper middle and professional classes, with a nod to the Welsh Methodism of Laura Ashley. An amlgamation of Mrs Bridge's "downstairs" kitchen, and the rustic charms of the imagined French countryside.  It said "I'm a sophisticated urban person, but I don't have servants".

One of the highlights of the Christmas season used to be my annual Christmas Eve visit to The General Trading Company  in Sloane Street. Here, a guaranteed quota of gormless, spaced-out men wandered around like Neanderthals, while dippy alice-banded girls flirted with their hair, and flogged them useless ethnic nick nacks from Sri Lanka. You see,  typically, I always leave my Christmas presents to the last minute.  

Incidentally chaps, probably about the worst present you can give to a girl is kitchen equipment. It's a funny thing. For some reason, women seem to think that it relegates them to the status of kitchen slave, by appointment. A few years ago, I very generously gave a pasta machine to my then girlfriend, and she went ballistic.  The ultimate Christmas present nightmare would be a Magimix stuffed with kinky lingerie.

I would be delighted if anyone gave me some kitchen stuff- even a humble wooden spoon. Tom Parker Bowles wrote an excellent article recently, in which he urged readers to dispose of their gimmicky gadgets, and, instead, buy a few, high quality (albeit expensive) kitchen utensils. Brands of note are: Wusthof (knives), Le Creuset (pots), Stellar (pans), Mauviel (copper cookware), and Anolon Professional (non-stick). You have the advantage that these will probably last you a life time.

Chinois

 

 

I've realised that so far on The Greasy Spoon, I've written absolutely nothing at all about kitchen equipment. Well, it's about time that I started. I'm not a fan of the sort of people who pay many thousands of pounds for a swanky kitchen, and then never cook in it. It's the same with kitchen equipment. I recently threw away a trendy French "mayonnaise maker"- it was completely redundant, as it only made small amounts of the stuff, and I prefer to mix it up myself the time honoured way, in a large bowl.

The late Elizabeth David had the sort of kitchen I respect: everything in it was well used, scrubbed, and as a result, had a genuine aesthetic. What was it that William Morris said? "Do not own anything that you do not know to be beautiful or useful", or something like that.

Anyway, have you got a chinois? This is a conical sieve with a very fine mesh. You'll find it extremely useful if you're into making sauces. As it's so fine, it will remove all the nasty bits of fat and gunge, which could make your sauce bitter. And classic kitchen equipment like this needn't be too expensive. Okay, it's great fun to oogle the latest Divertimenti catalogue, but if you're clever, you should be able to find the same thing on the net, for half the price. Good Luck.