Mystery Lovers' Kitchen: pizza pans

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Cleo Coyle's Most Useful (and Useless) Kitchen Gadgets and the Perfect Hot Dog

As with most crowded, urban areas, New York is a place where affordable space is darn expensive, and that includes storage space.

After twenty years living and working in NYC, my husband and I have developed strategies for dealing with limited closets, no basement, and no attic. Suitcases, for example, are always packed in the Coyle household, and this has nothing to do with our travel schedule. We pack away summer clothes in winter (and winter clothes in summer) then slide the suitcases under our bed. See, we didn’t need that extra closet after all.

Cleo Coyle, appliance-challenged
cook and author of
The Coffeehouse Mysteries

The kitchen is far from immune to the Big Apple space issue. Now I love our kitchen. It’s cozy. It’s sunny. It's functional. It's also tiny, which means I have to exercise extreme willpower when catalogs arrive in the mail: Williams-Sonoma; the Chefs catalog; Bed, Bath and Beyond, et al.

At this point in my life, flipping through those glossy pages is a little like fantasy football. I dream of a state-of-the-art kitchen with bread machine, gelato maker, meat grinder, coffee roaster. Yes, I said coffee roaster. Roasting your own green coffee beans at home is now possible with a tabletop maker. The one I dream of owning is pictured at the right. Designed for small coffee shops to roast their own beans -- and only $4,500.00! :)

I swear, a few of these dream items will make it into my kitchen one day. In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to ask you…

What "dream" kitchen appliance do you want to own someday?

And while we’re at it…

What’s your most useful
kitchen gadget or appliance?

And what’s your most useless?!

I’ll start…

My Most Useless Gadgets:

Slicers (apple and egg)

Yes, I know. They're supposed to save time. I just don't ever use them. They sit in my drawer while I tackle my eggs and apples the way my grandmother and mother did -- with a nice sharp knife.

Rice cooker

A gift I thought would keep on giving. I used it once or twice then put it away and never looked back. These days my rice cooker is six feet tall with a deep voice. Nobody beats Marc at cooking basmati in the battered old pot my beloved late Aunt Mary left me. I swear that pot makes everything taste delicious. And the shiny new appliance remains in its box.

Bacon press

This thing is cute as all getout. We used it twice. Once for bacon. Once to press a sammy. Now we might as well convert it to a paper weight. Who needs perfectly straight bacon, really? And we're back to using our spatula for grab-and-press on grilled sandwiches. Sigh.

Chestnut cutter

If you've ever roasted chestnuts at home, then you know how difficult they can be to X properly so that they (1) release steam and don't explode in your oven and (2) allow you to breach the skin easily after roasting. This baby is perfect. I love it. I just don't use it unless I have chestnuts, which is maybe once or twice a year. Then, of course, it moves to my "useful" list. And speaking of my useful list...

My Most Useful Gadgets
(lately, anyway...)

Dualit hand mixer - It's fast, efficient, easy to clean, and packs away in very little space. I highly recommend this brand. For a home kitchen hand mixer, the motor is one of the most powerful I've ever used.

Collapsible steam basket - A little water and this basket turns any pot into a steamer. Veggies, dumplings, you name it. Use it all the time.

Box grater - Six-sided and I use at least one of them every day.

Soon to be added - Vertical Chicken Roaster! Click here to read Krista Davis's Monday post and see if you aren't convinced to add this one to your gadget list, too. :)

Pizza Pan with holes (ours is Wilton)

While we absolutely love New York's pizzerias, we sometimes save money (and time) by doctoring a frozen pizza at home.

Click here to read my past tips on becoming your own Frozen Pizza Doctor. One of the things that will make your frozen experience a good one is using a pizza pan like the one pictured. The holes in the pan prevent the frozen crust from baking up soggy. Instead, you'll get a nice, crispy crust every time.

Or visit our good bud Dave at A Year on the Grill blog and get some fantastic tips on making your own homemade pizza sauce. Click here to read Dave's winter pizza post.

While I don't have a traditional recipe for you today, I do have a fun cooking tip. Like our suitcase solution to our NYC storage problems, Marc and I often look for ways for one gadget to serve two or more purposes.

Case in point: our pizza pan with holes. Scroll down to see how we make use of it when we cook hot dogs...

Cleo's Tips for Cooking the
Perfect Hot Dog...

Into a saucepan of water toss 3 or 4 cloves of whole, peeled garlic, 1 teaspoon of yellow mustard powder, and some ground black pepper. When the water begins to boil, add the hot dogs. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes.

The garlic, mustard powder, and pepper add nice flavor to your average dog. The boiling will plump them up and you can eat them right away or throw them on a grill for a few minutes to add even more flavor and put some nice pretty grill marks on them.

Here's the pizza pan trick: During the last minute or two of boiling the dogs, set your pizza pan with holes over the saucepan's top. Place your open hot dog buns face down on the pizza pan, and in just one or two minutes you'll have nice, warm steamed buns to go with your flavorful dogs. Just slap on a little mustard, relish, onions, and...

Eat (and read) with joy!

~ Cleo Coyle

New York Times bestselling author of

The Coffeehouse Mysteries