Significant Others call them "boy toys". But they're not toys. They're tools. Serious, sophisticated tools that a real man uses to make his way through a savage world. Binoculars, stereo gear, short-wave radios, fountain pens, titanium golf clubs, a boot-load of camera gear. I'm a normal guy with a normal job, but give me my tools and I become Ernest Hemingway and James Bond rolled into one. For some reason, my Significant Other finds this notion highly amusing.
Back in New York, I was master of my kitchen. I had so many tools that my Significant Other referred to the kitchen as a lab. I had a bread-making machine, three kinds of juicers, a blender, a food processor, a pressure cooker, a yogurt-maker. I had potato-mashers, strainers, funnels, high-tech corkscrews. It was a true New York kitchen as well; I had so many knives that I could have stabbed every resident of my apartment building without reusing a single blade. Now I find myself in Dublin with an empty kitchen. Time, as we real men say, to reload.
Kitchen Complements on Dublin's Chatham Street, and Stoneware Jackson in Kilkenny are full of manly tools. For example, there's a French apple parer, slicer, and corer, for only £48 pounds at Kitchen Compliments. It even clamps to the table like something you'd use on your workbench, and the peeler works like a lathe. "But you can peel and core an apple with a peeler and a knife!" Significant Other exclaims. (She just doesn't get it.) If that's too rich, Stoneware Jackson has a device called a Mandolin, an adjustable washboard type vegetable slicer, and it's only £7.95.
In the old days, there was a lot of guesswork when I made pasta. Now, with a spaghetti measurer, I can calibrate how much pasta I'll cook. And I can drain it in a Rosle stainless steel colander, at a mere £90. It's built to last a lifetime. In the event of world war three, I can wear it as a helmet.
Ah, the Germans. If you're building the master kitchen you best have them on your side. Brown Thomas has an arsenal of fine German tools. After peeling and coring my apple with the French workbench tool, I can now chop it into sections in one fell swoop with a Leifheit apple cutter, for only £12. And who can resist the utterly gorgeous Rosle chip scoop. True, I explain to Significant Other, it costs £41, but that's a small price to pay when you consider it has little holes at the back of the scoop for the salt to exit!
While in Brown Thomas, I perused the coffee-makers. A brushed stainless steel Siemens model, designed by Porsche, certainly caught my eye. Bearing a name like Porsche, you'd expect it to make a pot of coffee in 4.6 seconds - but it's no faster than a regular drip coffee-maker. My Significant Other points out that it costs £170 and doesn't even have a reusable filter. This time I'll take her advice; passing on the Porsche for a Gaggia expresso machine - in chrome or 24 karat gold - for only £329. It will be more fun than a chemistry set.
While I'm at it, I'll get a manual coffee grinder. Shops like Stoneware Jackson carry them - they're all the rage - but Brown Thomas has one model in particular that's the stuff dreams are made of. For £40, it has a silver, antique-looking cannister beneath a blue, cast iron grinder. (I don't know if it's really cast iron, but I'll certainly tell my friends it is.) If I could wake up to that every morning (and my Significant Other, of course) I'd die a happy man. The only reason I didn't buy it is that I'm waiting to check out an antique brass and cast iron grinder that Kitchen Complements sells. Though it costs £156, they're already out of stock.
Yes, people really are buying these things. "Many people in their late 30s who had left Ireland are now coming back because there are jobs," says Dave Brown of Kitchen Complements. "Having lived in the States or somewhere else in Europe, they've changed their tastes. They no longer want Nescafe. They want cappuccino. Almond cappuccino. They're into fine cuisine and wine as well."
I guess that's why Kitchen Complements sells approximately 10 different types of corkscrew. My favorite, for only £6.50, is a Tourne Bouchone that doesn't actually have a corkscrew, but two prongs that slide down the cork. It's black steel, has a little metal sheath, and is completely portable for a movable feast. I fell madly in love with it the moment I saw it.
I also want to buy some serious cookware. Brown recommends Woll, a German brand with cast aluminium exterior and a titanium oxide coating, in the £80-135 range. Titanium oxide has something to do with the space shuttle; if it's good enough for NASA, it's good enough for me.
Chef Kevin Thornton of Thornton's restaurant in Portobello in Dublin insists that fine cookware is a worthy investment. He recommends Bourgeat copper cookware, which can last a lifetime, but warns that "you have to respect it". At approximately £200 per pot, I'll do more than respect it. I'll cherish it lovingly and put it to bed in a cradle.
What good is expensive cookware if you forget how long it is cooking and accidentally burn it? I'd better get a Zyliss digital timer, a 24-hour digital one that costs a mere £34.
Speaking of time, modern science has now found a way to eliminate the 30-60 minutes it takes to let red wine breathe before serving. Air Au Vin (£11.85) forces air into the wine through a hose, making it drinkable in record time. I don't know how I've lived this long without one.
"If you're in that much of a hurry to drink red wine, you should just leave work a half hour earlier," Significant Other says. But how am I going to pay for all these tools?