Minnesota
A couple of weeks ago I was at Kitchen Window in Minneapolis and saw for the first time that Epicurean, which is normally associated with cutting boards, is now producing kitchen utensils. They have a series of spoons, ladles, turner spatulas, pasta servers, and saute tools that come in two lines and colors. The Kitchen Series is completely made out of their trademark composite wood and comes in natural and slate, just like their cutting boards. The Gourmet Series also comes in natural and slate but incorporates a high-temperature nylon head.
I ended up purchasing the Gourmet Series slate-colored spoon and large spatula to try them out (shown above), and though I haven’t used them that much, so far I like them a lot. The handles are very comfortable, the construction is stiff and sturdy, and the nylon heads seem to be firmly attached. The utensils do feel as if they will be durable – though it is hard to tell at this point. As for heat resistance, the wood handle can manage up to 350 degrees and the nylon head up to 400 degrees, and they are also dishwasher safe.
Additionally, I think they look better than other plastic utensils, and the spoon has measuring ridges on the interior for 1 tbs, 1/8 cup, and 1/4 cup. It isn’t something that you would use for precise measuring as you need to have the spoon very steady and level to get exact amounts, but this feature may come in handy for a quick-and-dirty measure if you need it. I could see myself using this feature when adding olive oil to a dish, broth to some risotto, or if you need to add some pasta water back into a dish.
The price is also reasonable at about $9.50 per utensil from the Epicurean website, or you can buy selected items at Amazon
In the quest to tackle my top-10 cooking goals for the year, I decided to lead off with making cheese. I recently found a home delivery dairy service from a nearby town in Minnesota that will give me fresh local milk. The dairy is called Stoney Creek Dairy, and they currently offer non-homogenized milk, but they they will be discontinuing the product line in November. Too bad.
So I put in my first (and last) order for my non-homogenized whole milk and just ordered a cheesemaking kit online for making ricotta and mozzarella. In the future I will just have to use regular milk instead of non-homogenized, but I thought I’d try it while supplies last. Getting milk delivered at home is also going to be interesting in an old-school sort of way. They deliver to small towns in the area, and I love the fact they offer to personally put it in your fridge if you are not at home. Now that is small-town service. I just hope the kit and the milk get here about the same time.
I decided to go with a kit instead of buying the supplies locally as I wasn’t sure I could find all of the ingredients on short notice. For instance, I need rennet and I had no clue what that was. After a quick wiki search, I learned that it was a complex of enzymes produced in a mammalian stomach to help digest mother’s milk. You can also get vegetable rennet if you are a vegetarian. At grocery stores you can find a brand of rennet called Junket usually near the Jello, but some say that it isn’t strong enough as it is used in making ice creams and custards instead. And to top it all off, a lot of recipes call for special cheese salt, citric acid, lipase powder and calcium chloride. So it was an easy choice: I bought the kit and now I wait for everything to arrive.
If you wish to purchase cheesemaking supplies you can shop online at cheesemaking.com, leeners.com or thecheesemaker.com. All three have a large selection of products, kits, ingredients and offer help for the novice cheesemaker.
After making making ricotta and mozzarella, I am going to move on to chèvre as there are two goat dairies near to where I live. I will just have to call them up to see if I can buy some milk off of them. I also want to make goat-milk butter, but that is down the road and for now I need to focus on my intro cheeses. Just reading through the eGullet forum gives me an indication that these cheese making kits aren’t quite as easy as they seem, so this should be interesting.
Dave Benson, one of the founders and the CEO of Epicurean Cutting Boards Inc., has been coming on strong with knife friendly and ecologically friendly cutting surfaces in the last few years. His cutting boards are now sold worldwide in over 4,000 stores, but the lineage of this kitchen product comes not from chefs or restaurateurs but from skate boarders. Greg Benson, Dave Benson and Tony Ciardelli, the founders of Epicurean Cutting Boards Inc., based out of Duluth, Minnesota started off by producing innovative skateboard ramps and parks throughout the US under the name TrueRide, but as of 2007, they have been focusing on Epicurean cutting boards and their outdoor furniture under the Loll brand, which has been featured in Dwell magazine.
Loll Design Chair
Dave Benson and gang started off making skate parks out of composite wood and after having scraps left over (as the story goes), they offered squares of the ‘leftover’ board surface to family and friends as cutting boards. And the rest is history I guess. Now they are one of the major cutting board makers in the country, and they are in every major kitchen store to include Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, Bed Bath & Beyond and more.
So here is my take on their boards: I absolutely love them, and when I have a knife in hand and look through all of my cutting boards, 7 times out of 10 I go for an Epicurean. They are light, easy to clean, friendly on your knives and good for the environment.
Recently, I did a post on cutting boards and listed some criticisms of the boards that have been raised on Amazon.com and the various cooking forums. Some have complained about an odd smell from the sealant or resin, yet others complained that they scarred too easily, and some said that the slate boards left ‘dark bits’ in the food.
A review of the company’s website gave the following responses to these issues:
About the scarring they say: “Yes, it is normal for your knives to score your surface. Because our surfaces are knife-friendly (unlike glass or stone), it means they are soft enough that they will not bend the edges of your knives, but knives will score the surface.”
I must admit that the critics that mentioned the scoring of the surface are a bit odd to me. I have used light-colored boards and you can’t see the scoring as much with light as with dark boards, and yes, softer boards will score more than harder woods, but harder woods are also harder on knives — especially if you use expensive Japanese knives. And just today I used a brand new board from their line of recycled cutting surfaces, and I found that there was actually something very satisfying about scoring it. Just as you need to season a cast iron skillet, you need to cut up a cutting board.
About the smell they say: “Our cutting surfaces can have a ‘newly manufactured’ odor when they are used for the first time. We recommend washing your Epicurean® cutting surfaces in the dishwasher or with hot soapy water. The odor will dissipate after approximately 3-4 washings.”
I have to say that I have almost never smelled any foul odor when using these cutting boards. I am sure there is some smell at first, but I have never noticed it.
About wood particles coming off in food they say: “Over time, you may find that tiny particles from your cutting surface are appearing on food being prepared. This can occur due to the nature of the product and is more noticeable with our slate surface color. Your Epicurean® cutting surface is certified by the National Sanitary Foundation to be non-toxic and will not cause harm if particles are ingested. You may use a fine grit sandpaper to smooth and resurface your board, giving it a new and smooth finish. This will decrease the likelihood of particles appearing in your food and give you a fresh, smooth surface for your food preparation.”
Once again, I have never noticed this happening, but I have always used lighter colored boards. The new recycled boards are described (in color) as toasted nutmeg, and they are definitely darker, so I will let you know if ‘nutmeg-colored’ debris comes off in my food.
There was another criticism that seemed to come up fairly often on Amazon.com and that was that the boards slipped around a lot while cutting. This is true if you use the boards without the grippers or any other ad hoc item such as a wet paper towel to prevent slipping, but as the company has been focusing on their cutting boards in the last couple of years, there are many more options for those worried about boards slipping. There are light colored boards, professional boards, gripper boards, grooved boards, recycled boards and many other designs too.
In terms of cutting boards, I think this company is as good as it gets. Yes, they are from Minnesota, and I am too but I just learned that they were based out of Duluth last week. I used their boards long before I migrated up north. I am also not part of the company nor do I get any compensation from them. I just like their boards. Happy cutting.
You can buy Epicurean boards at Amazon
1850 Map of Minneapolis
As I have recently moved to Minnesota, I thought I would take a tour of the kitchen stores in Minneapolis. Once I reviewed Chowhound, I identified most of the better kitchen stores, and there are several good options in the city. I also identified a couple of wine/cheese shops and a knife sharpening place too.
First Stop: Surdyk’s. This excellent wine and cheese shop was having their thrice-a-year sale, so that was good luck. I was able to get some good deals on their great selection of wines and their cheese shop was the best I came across all day. As for cheese, I picked up some Minnesota award-winning cheese. I will be back.
Second Stop: Let’s Cook. This kitchenware and cooking class establishment was no longer ‘established’ and out of business. Of all the kitchen stores, this was the one I had the lowest expectation for, so I wasn’t that disappointed. Move on.
Third Stop: Eversharp. This business used to be part of the Wusthof knife empire when the knife company had one of its main import/distribution warehouses located next door. It has since moved to New York state, but the Wusthof tradition has continued. The shop claims to have the largest selection of Wusthof knives in the United States, and I believe it. Eversharp is also one of the only stores to have refurbished Wusthof knives, and they are probably the best knife sharpening service in Minneapolis. I highly recommend this place if you want to buy or you already have Wusthof knives. And they also have a good selection of Epicurean cutting boards and the prices are really good. I found this Epicurean Recycled Cardboard Cutting Board
Fourth Stop: Hockenberg’s Food Service and Restaurant Supply Company. This store is open to the public, but is mostly geared towards restaurants — obviously. They did have good deals on wine glasses, and I also picked up some Cambro containers/brining buckets and a Lincoln Foodservice rimmed baking pan. Both were very good deals, and the Cambro was much cheaper than the exact same product in a kitchen store I later visited. The cutlery was comparable to what you can find on the internet though.
Fifth Stop: Kitchen Window. I have heard good reports on this store, and it didn’t disappoint. The range of products is vast, and it feels as much like a good hardware store as a kitchen store. They seem to have almost everything one would need to cook any dish, and they clearly are reading cooking magazines and knowledgeable about cookware. The knife selection is large, and they even had some other kitchen-related items I have featured on this site. In December the store will be moving just up the block into a larger location, so I will have to go back in a couple of months as the store did look a bit crowded. They also offer cooking classes that are very popular, but I haven’t taken one as of yet.
Fifth Stop: Kowalski’s Market in Uptown. It is a very good, higher-end grocery. I picked up some Cowgirl Creamery cheese (hard to find in Minnesota) and some nice imported butter from Italy. (Note: my car smelled of stinky cheese from this point on.)
Sixth Stop: France 44 Wine & Spirits. This was a very good wine store and probably had one of the best selections of French and Italian wines I have seen in Minnesota. It was very well organized and displayed wine information in an orderly way with ratings and staff recommendations. There is also a good cheese shop connected to it that also had Cowgirl Creamery cheese. Maybe it is easier to find than I first thought. I picked up a few bottles of wine and some Comté cheese and moved on.
Seventh Stop: Cook’s of Crocus Hill. This is another independent kitchen store in the city that has been around for a long time. It had fewer products than Kitchen Window, but it was very well organized and less overwhelming. They also carried Iittala glass and cookware there, which was a nice surprise. The Iittala skillets were beautiful and they even had the Finnish casserole I wrote about on this site. I haven’t tried the cooking classes offered, but I hope to in the future.
Eighth Stop: Sur La Table. This is a high-end boutique chain store out of Seattle and is right down the street from Cook’s of Crocus Hill. The store was predictably well-organized and they had some very good sales. All-Clad and their bistro dishes were on sale, but I only picked up some smaller items. It was also great to see the Bob Kramer Shun knife series in person. These knives were stunningly beautiful, and the picture doesn’t do it justice in the link.
Last Stop: Williams-Sonoma in Maple Grove. Ok, I admit that I know what these stores mostly carry, so I didn’t really check it out for that, but it was the closest store to where I live. It is located in a mall-like town on the west side of Minneapolis in the burbs — think Disney Mall Land. Compared to the other stores, this one just didn’t cut it. The other stores attracted foodies and were filled with people who cared about food and cooking, and this one had a mall browsing clientele. Now with that said, I have been to very nice Williams-Sonoma stores in other urban areas, so they do carry some good items and it is worth checking out if a store is convenient.
