I’m one of these people who has lots of kitchen equipment, usually just about everything that I need. It’s the same way as the stops that we have on our San Francisco Food Tour of North Beach\Little Italy and Chinatown. Being restaurants, there is usually not much that they don’t have. Right now, if I need something, it’s not a good time to go out and buy some more equipment. For example, just yesterday, I decide to do some baking. I’m not much of a baker, so I tend to follow the recipe. I also don’t have a lot of baking equipment at home either. The recipe called for sifted flour. I looked around the kitchen and realized that I either didn’t have a sifter or I could not find it. I ended up taking a colander, putting the flour in a large bowl and then shaking the flour into the bowl. The good part is that I used a large bowl, so the flour did not go everywhere. The other part is that I used it in the recipe, and it worked.
On our San Francisco Food Tours, most of our stops are professional restaurants that have professional kitchens and almost every piece of equipment that they could every need. Unlike most of us, they usually have lots of space to store equipment, way more than most of us have in our kitchens. Additionally, it can be expensive to buy equipment that you are only going to use once or twice. I frequently look at recipe and if it calls for a piece of equipment that I don’t have, I’ll think about how to use something that I already have, rather than going out and buying it or not make the recipe. Frequently, I come up with alternative. More often than not, the recipe comes out okay.
