The Tool Bar: Everything Old Is New Again...or Vice Versa?
I have never considered myself to be on the cutting edge of anything. In fact, I am the opposite of an early adopter, she says as she types this out on a four-year-old iBook. And I regularly draw big laughs when I pull out my big fat kindergarten pencils to take notes at a meeting.
I’ve never owned a car where a CD player came standard — my current rig, built in 1992, is among the newer models I’ve owned — and I stare open-jawed when riding in friends’ cars with a GPS screen.
But sometimes when I describe the concept of BehindTheKnife.com to someone, and particularly revel over the point of the You’re Kidding, Right? tools, invariably I hear how modern and cutting-edge I must be.
I choke back a laugh, not always successfully.
I recently heard from Iri Greco of Panforte Productions, a Brooklyn-based food media producer and stylist, who wrote about the fact that the public’s eyes are just being opened to the You’re Kidding concept, and that it is actually an age-old practice. She credits Ferran Adria at elBulli in Catalonia, Spain, with sparking the interest.
“This trend has been going on for so long and mostly unnoticed by the general population until Molecular Gastronomy hit the big time,” says Greco. “Chefs have been using non-traditional implements for cooking and preparation since the dawn of time.”
Needless to say, she continues, many kitchen tools we think of as normal nowadays started out as something else, usually a woodworking tool or a medical instrument.
“The food ‘syringe’ for injecting poultry and meats before roasting, and the microplane are two such cases,” she says.
Greco also thinks that today, with the cutthroat competition among chefs and restaurants to attract the interest of foodies and the media, chefs will be forced to get even more creative with their tools, regardless of their original purpose.
I say, bring it on!
