Old School-New School

Like many, over the last year of the pandemic I took advantage of the extra time at home to become rather obsessed with cooking. I've done a good deal of the cooking for my family over the last twenty years, but became rather bored with my limited repertoire of dishes So I started picking up recipes here and there, mostly online, and set the goal of preparing at least one new recipe per week. This might become a little more complicated as I'm about to return to being at work full time, but so far so good.

One nice thing about new passions is buying new stuff. Being a photographer means there's never a lack of new stuff to buy, especially in the digital age when cameras and other gear, lenses being an exception, are practically obsolete by the time you open the box. 

That certainly wasn't true when I was coming up in the days of silver based media, otherwise known as film. Back then, if you chose carefully and were willing to make the financial commitment, you could buy a camera and lens that would last your whole life.  

Of course there are still the old school folks God bless them, who haven't yet given up on film and keep the old practices alive.

Although I'm not as well versed in it, it seems that just like in field of photography, there are two schools of thought among cooks about what tools to buy, the old, reliable ones that require work, love and care, but will repay you with years of faithful service, or the new fangled gizmos that require little attention and work just fine until they don't, at which point you throw them away. 

Pictured here is my new pan, a traditional French omelette pan made of carbon steel. According to the advocates of such a pan, carbon steel is one of the most efficient materials as far as transferring heat to your food. And the act of cooking with it creates a natural polymer that creates an almost "no stick" surface. 

Now when we think of no stick pans, the word Teflon comes immediately to mind,  the material applied to cookware that was introduced commercially in the 1940's, as so many products were after the war. Teflon became wildly popular in the sixties and seventies, the era when so many time and effort saving devices were introduced into the kitchen. And the word Teflon has taken on a meaning of its own describing a person to who gets away with all sorts of mischief because "nothing sticks to him." I can think of two former presidents who fit that description. 

I distinctly remember those days when there were two running schools of thought regarding cooking, one was that it was a chore that should be made as painless as possible, and the other, that it was an art where every bit of effort was valued The former was personified by a woman by the name of Peg Bracken (whose name has never escaped me after all these years), who among other titles revolving around American contemporary life at the time, wrote the "The I Hate to Cook Book" 

The paradigm for the other school of thought was Julia Child. 

Need I say more? 

Both authors were tremendously popular and both served an important purpose. 

Bracken's work was created in the time when the traditional roles of the "breadwinner" man and the "housewife" woman were breaking down. As more and more women entered the workforce and households with two working adults became the norm, there was less time to cook, and every time-saving device was gobbled up.  

At the same time, a new found interest in cuisine from other cultures took a foothold in America, largely thanks to Child and her classic two volume set "Mastering the  Art of French Cooking", written along with French master chef, Simone Beck, and especially her classic PBS series, "The French Chef."  

Also in the photo, placed inside my lovely new pan, is my new fangled digital meat thermometer, which gives readings almost instantly in either Fahrenheit or Celsius. It works with both roasts, or tiny slivers of meat on the grill. Try that with your old fashioned analog thermometer. Plus it has a bottle opener to boot!

I bought it along with a digital kitchen scale which is vastly more accurate, convenient and easy to use than my old spring scale. 

And yes, when these things break, as they most certainly will, into the garbage they will go with no second thoughts. 

Barring catastrophic damage, the pan on the other hand will last me for the rest of my life and if they choose to hold on to it, my children's as well. That's quite unlike a Teflon or other "no stick" pan, whose useful life is only rated for a couple years at best before the surface ceases to be stick free. Then of course, it ends up as landfill. 

Beyond that, my new pan is beautiful, at least I think so. Over time it develops a patina that will be an image how how it was used, what was cooked in it, and the love that went into those meals. 

After all cooking, especially for one's family or friends is a labor of love isn't it?

What more can you ask of your tools?