I suppose, the proper question to ask would be, "what do you do with it?" There are many, like myself, who view the kitchen as a place of experimentation and learning, where art is made and your disasters get fed to the compost bin. A few others look at the kitchen as the place to keep the microwave and coffee maker. Still others don't even bother with the place at all, only using it as a way to get from the living room to the attached garage.
Aside from not being the healthiest choice (assuming your meals are coming from a multitude of restaurants), the latter is exceptionally wasteful. Why let an entire room of the house, let alone one that can be so useful, lay fallow while you clog yourself up with who knows what? We moved into a rather nice 3 bedroom home in downstate Michigan in August of 2000 that was equipped with little more than a galley-style kitchen. The previous owners, neat-freaks to the Nth degree, never used the kitchen at all (actually, they used it once, but that discovery is a story for another day).
Like everything else we do in life, the preparation of food is as simple or complex as we want to make it. You can heap your kitchen full of all sorts of ridiculous gadgetry, or just make due with a few pans and a knife set. I prefer to be simplistic, though I have, over the years, learned the value of a garlic press and a few other little contraptions that help speed things along a bit better. Microwaves are handy to have around, for quick defrosting and some prep tasks, but I shy away from them when it comes to outright cooking, since it is so easy to render food down to the consistency of shoe leather. It should be noted here that I have, on occasion, used a Microwave to poach eggs. They rarely turn out perfect, but it is a good way to scare the tar out of the family pets.
If your kitchen is out in the wild (whether 'wild' for you means the woods or your back yard), you really only need two things: fire and a utensil for moving the food around (yes, you do need food as well. I can't spoon-feed everything to you, can I?). Grills, whether gas or charcoal, are one of the most under-utilized items the American backyard enthusiast owns. Most of the time, they are used for just brats, dogs, and burgers. The adventurous soul will sometimes attempt chicken with marginal success, but when it comes down to it, the thing that scares people the most seems to be the fact that food can cook so much faster over fire. It is very easy to take the life right out of poultry and scorch hamburgers to the point that it looks like you poured the charcoal on the cooking grill. In Cooking for Adventurers, I outlined a tried and true method for determining the temperature of your fire called the "hand thermometer". The idea is to hold your hand in the general area the food will occupy and count the seconds it takes before you have to move your hand. Generally, anything less than 4 seconds is too hot to efficiently cook any protien, unless you are going for a seared outside and a wiggly center.
When it comes down to it, fire pits are greatly under-utilized, as well. Why build a perfectly good fire just to let the kids wave marshallows on sticks over it, while you're cooking on a cramped propane stove? One of my signature dishes on the fire pit is grilled salmon. It can be done, you just have to watch what you're doing.
Like I mentioned yesterday, simplicity is going to be the mantra here. Yes, we will explore some more-involved methods from time to time, but learning how to do more with less will be our goal.
For tonight, take care. Come our next post, we're gonna get cooking!
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