I have found a few undeniable truths from my time on this rock. Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, Amtrak runs late and scientists like numbers. Good news for the scientists, though. They just got their very own cooking method: Sous Vide. If you are not familiar, sous vide is a technique where food items are sealed in vacuum bags and slow poached in a circulating water bath. This method is ultra precise. Maniacally precise. The chat site eGullet has a thread on the subject that is over 119 pages long. People comparing notes on bag thickness, meat density and evaporation rates.  Care to know how to cook asparagus in one degree/one second increments? Not me.

The unit I was testing, Sous Vide Surpreme, worked perfectly. It held it temperature. It was big enough for a home hobbyist to play in. Wasn’t too expensive. It was shiny… and totally emotionless. I’m not against any piece of equipment that gets the job done but, I need some sexyness. Hot cast iron = Sexy. Percolating immersion water baths = pocket protector. I don’t want to cook by spread sheet. There were no smells, sounds and no visual cues regarding what the meat and vegetables were doing. Cook for 8 hours, cut open the plastic bag and hope for the best? Maybe it’s the caveman in me, but give me an open flame, heavy metal, splattering grease and I am a happy man. I’m not ready to cook in a vacuum.

Sous Vide Surpreme : $450

There is a little company named after fruit that just came out with a small gadget which just might catch on. The company is Apple and the gadget is the iPad. I think they sold around 300,000 of them on Saturday when they went on sale. Who cares? I might, because I think it could be an outstanding kitchen tool. When I start testing a new dish, I usually search the Internet for three examples of the recipe. After comparing and contrasting them, I derive the ingredients and techniques that are similar and deem them the recipe’s core principals. That is my starting place. My iPhone is too small for this and I don’t like getting flour in my laptop keyboard, so I usually do my online research at my desk, not in the kitchen, where I would rather be.

A few weeks back, I was invited by Kathryn Stevens to eat at Apple’s new employee restaurant on their North Austin campus. A self confessed anti-gadget person, Kathryn was excited about the iPad, “I have already picked out a place on my kitchen shelf with my cookbooks to put it.” She has a great point. You can store your personal PDF recipes, watch cooking videos and check Rachael Ray’s Twitter feed. At the end of the day wipe it off and slide it next to Larousse’s Gastronomique.

What can’t a iPad do in the kitchen? Sorry, Stephen. It isn’t, in fact, good at making salsa. I tried (I’m a loyal minion). A Ginsu knife it is not.

Wired.com has a writeup on a home-version of a immersion circulation cooker. Or, for the more fancy-pants: Sous Vide. Basically, it’s a cooking method where you put a protein (or just about anything else) in a vacuum sealed bag and cook it to perfect done-ness in it’s own mini hot tub.

The price of entry is still steep: $450. I think Sous Vide Supreme should rush me one for personal testing to see if the price is worth it.

Wired.com : Sous Vide Machine Takes Pressure Out of Cooking
Sous Vide Supreme

If I was limited to one tool in the kitchen, it would be the fork. Not unlike the golfer who plays nine holes with only a seven iron, he is both envied and mocked. I’m not sure what that means, but let’s talk more about forks.

First of all, it’s standard kitchen issue. There is a metal fork in almost every kitchen. I say almost, because I knew a couple of guys in college and all they had in their kitchen was a plastic fork, a 18 lb. frozen lobster and sixty seven packets of Soy Sauce. Those guys aside, most every kitchen has a basic, metal, four prong fork. I use them to scramble eggs, flip chicken, pull pork, mix salads and more. Common fork, I salute you.