Dancing Spoon

Handcrafted Kitchen Knives

Kitchen Handcrafted

by J. Michael Wheeler
Kitchen Art That Starts in Your Hand
It doesn't matter what your passion is: when you've got it, you've got it. We recently had the pleasure of meeting Adam Simha, a master at handcrafting kitchen knives. He is very passionate about his craft. He makes superlative bench-made knives. We are honored to be one of the only venues where MKS Design knives are sold.

Knife designer Adam Simha designs and handcrafts absolutely superb bench-made high-performance steel blades for his knives. These designs feature body geometry influenced by the best of both Asian and Western traditions. His blades are tempered to a Rockwell 56 hardness to provide toughness, easy sharpening, and remarkable edge holding. Steels used in the different blades are 13C26, 440-C, 154CM, and SF77 stainless.

The unique grip: MKS knives come with an injection-molded bicycle grip that is tightly fitted over a naturally bacteria-resistant stainless steel tube. The bicycle grip, with its deep grooves for the fingers, provides a perfect balance of shock absorption and control.

Each knife is tuned precisely for weight, balance, and control. They are visually remarkable and functionally exquisite and have been featured in many publications including Atlantic Monthly, the Boston Globe, City, and Kitchenware News.

Foodie's Emporium is proud to be an exclusive online retailer of Adam's amazing knives.

MKS Design Knives are produced in limited quantities and are available at Foodies Emporium.

For a very limited time we are offering our readers
10% OFF any MKS Design Knife Selection or Knife Set.
Use Promo Code MKSPRCNT at check out.

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Kitchen 2.0

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Adapted from Gourmet magazine 11.07
by J. Michael Wheeler

Gourmet magazine usually makes our appetites roar, but this time the hunger is for the appliances rather than the food. They’ve created a list of 21 innovative new appliance options that you’ll want to check out if you’re building a new kitchen or remodeling your old one. In fact, after seeing what’s now available, you just might decide you have to remodel now!

Here’re some of my favorites from the article:

The Space hood by Elica (pictured above — yeah, that's an oven hood on the wall!). The three-dimensional aluminum filter makes this oven hood 35% quieter than other hoods. But the design is so stunning you might consider just hanging it in the living room. elica.com.

Our Kitchen Store Grand Opening!!!

 

We're really excited to announce the GRAND OPENING of Foodie's Emporium, our new online kitchen store. It's filled with thousands of hard to find kitchen and cooking gadgets, products, and ingredients.

In Foodie's Emporium at DancingSpoon you'll find those perfect kitchen things, like chardonnay smoked sea salt, bamboo cutting boards, Dutch Ovens, truffle oils, knife sets, an oh-so-cool French Press, gourmet pastas, and every whisk* you might ever need!

And to make buying quick, easy, and secure, we've teamed up with the most trusted name in online shopping, Amazon.com. You can shop and purchase with confidence using your existing Amazon.com account, or create a new one right in our store. Buy with Amazon.com security.

Shop  Foodie's Emporium where you'll always find that perfect kitchen thing you've been looking for! Check out  Foodie's Emporium. Click here! And right now we're offering FREE shipping on orders over $25 on qualifying items: and most items qualify.

PS: We'd love to know how you like our store and how we can improve it for you. Please add your comments, click here.

Thanks, J. MIchael Wheeler

The Palm Peeler

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A better mousetrap? We think so. We've got a drawer full of vegetable peelers, and frankly, they all leave something to be desired. Meet your newest kitchen gadget: the Palm Peeler.

It's a peeler that slips over your middle finger with the peel blades beneath. That means that the peeler is an extension of your palm, hence the name. And that gives you great control over the peeler.

Peeling slices of ginger is alway tricky. Last night I took a two inch slice of ginger and within moments, using the Palm Peeler, I had a perfectly naked slice ready to be minced. ( I was making a marinade for grilled chicken: minced ginger and garlic, some mirin (rice cooking wine), soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, a touch of molasses and Tabasco.)

The Palm Peeler is an inexpensive and very cool kitchen tool. It comes in three colors: avocado (shown), cherry, and stainless. Try it and it will become your peeler of choice!

 

Make Your Own Wine

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You Even Design the Label

If you thought making wine in your kitchen was exciting (see Is it Wine Yet?) how about becoming a real winemaker without the fuss of actually having a vineyard. There’s a company in California called Crushpad, located in the heart of San Francisco, where you can do just that.

While making your own wine will be fun and exciting, at Crushpad it's also serious business. You won't be alone when you set out to create that perfect cult wine: Crushpad provides grapes from California's top vineyards, they have their own winemaking team, and a state-of-the-art winery. You choose your level of involvement and they “do the rest.” Their very robust web site is great at getting the juices flowing (sorry, couldn’t resist that one), whether you’re a new winemaker or an experienced one. They tell us:

Weigh In

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No, no, don’t use your measuring cup to scoop your flour! You need to pour the flour into your measuring cup so it doesn’t compress. Then be sure to take the back of a knife and level the cup. Oh, by the way, you probably should take that knife and stir up all the flour before you start scooping; it settles during shipping. And yeah, you need to do this whole procedure with each cup you measure out.

Or, you could use a scale.

While the rest of the world weighs most ingredients, we, here in the States, measure them. And measuring is not especially accurate. Is a cup of bran the same as a cup of whole-wheat flour? Not by weight. In fact, a cup of unsifted white flour will weigh five ounces, while a cup of sifted flour will weigh only four ounces. And if you’re baking bread that uses eight cups of flour, then you’ve just added one full cup of flour. In baking that leads to disaster.

Is It Wine Yet?

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Winepod: Wine Geek Meets, Well, Geek
Forget the bucolic scene of the wizened old French winemaker with his dusty beret, stubble on his chin, and a cigarette plugged into the corner of his mouth. Think of what a child of R2D2 and your Sub-Zero refrigerator would be like. Well, it would be like a WinePod.

The Wine Geek Part
The WinePod people tell us that, “The WinePod is a state-of-the-art tool for small lot artisan winemaking. The WinePod integrates fermentation, pressing, and ageing in one elegant unit yet it is simple and easy to use. The WinePod controls the heat of fermentation and maintains appropriate ageing temperature using electronically controlled thermoelectric heating and cooling. Your wine ferments and ages in a variable-capacity stainless steel tank with an integrated wine press.”

Keep Your Knives Sharp

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At its foundation, cooking really only needs a few tools. They should be as good quality as you can afford and you should take care of them. This is especially true of your knives.

Here're the basics of knifedom. Knives are for cutting. To cut they need to be sharp. When you use a knife it becomes dull. You need to sharpen your knives.

Here's what happens. Through usage, a knife's edge actually wears away. To bring back the sharpness to the knife you must remove a small amount of material from the sides of the knife. That's what a sharpener does.

Dean & Deluca Chef's Apron

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Okay, I cook a lot, therefore I drop a lot. Mostly on me. Luckily, someone more clever than I invented the apron. And then DEAN & DELUCA had these great aprons custom-designed. They've got an extra-long front panel, they're made of sturdy canvas-weight cotton and they hold up to many washings. I need that.

Now, if they only had something for my floor...

Shopping List
Dean & Deluca Chef's Apron

 

Foodie Khaki Hat

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Are you a better person just because you're a Foodie? Of course you are! Let the world know! Buy a Foodie Hat!

Shopping List
"Foodie" Khaki Hat