Yesterday, as I was getting misty eyed about my new Dansk Kobenstyle, the foreign man emailed me Stuff White People Like and, oh, how I chuckled, because it is so true, white people (such as my pasty-ass self) do like expensive sandwiches and knowing what’s best for poor people. Then I came across #54 and went a bit quiet. It had me pegged. I am a cliche. I am a white woman gagging for a KitchenAid:
But, in order for them to truly enter into whitedom, they need to own the holy grail of white kitchens - the kitchen aid stand mixer… They will match this mixer to their kitchen’s color scheme and it will make up the focal point. And much like many religious artifacts, it will remain untouched for months and even years, sitting on the counter to be admired as a testament to their lifestyle… If you find yourself in a conversation about these things, a good way to say a little but mean a lot is to mention that you “find the consumer models to be poorly built, my friend, a chef, brings me with him to a restaurant supply shop that’s not open to the public. The stuff there is real quality, it’s where I get all of my pans.”
Because… oh dear. Ahem. To be honest, the majority of my kitchenalia comes from either Big W or the supermarket, and it’s usually bought when, oh shit, I totally don’t have a box grater and I just threw a block of parmesan into the trolley, might as well buy one from the aisle with the paper plates and powdered stock. Still, my whiteness is beginning to assert itself. I bought a set of shiny stainless Anolon saucepans last year, my mum got me a Le Creuset French oven for Christmas, there’s a $25 pastry blender in my top drawer even though we have tiled counters and I can’t roll out pastry, and I have vivid fantasies of Wüsthof knives and KitchenAid.
Oh, KitchenAid. The sad thing is I really don’t think Australia has the kind of stand mixer culture America does. My mum used a hand mixer, and her mum used one of those hand cranked rotary mixers or, y’know, a spoon. She had a stand mixer but I never once saw her take it down out of the cupboard. I have a hand mixer and it hasn’t steered me wrong, but still. Oh, and I have such a yearning for a food processor it isn’t funny. In short, oh, how I am white.
Which brings me to my latest obsession: the Cook’s Illustrated video podcast. Cook’s Illustrated is another part of American food culture we don’t really get here. I mean, we had Margaret Fulton’s sensible, common-sense precision, but I doubt she ever attached electrodes to cast iron pans to measure how they conduct heat. The carefully spoken nerds of Cook’s Illustrated are humourless and careful, and I love it. In a time of gurning celebrity chefs and Donna Hay-style art directed, out of focus faux casual, there’s something refreshing about a woman in a white coat measuring cookies with a ruler.
All the videos are gold, but my favourite is definitely the almost no-knead bread. Being white, I’m totally gay for the no-knead bread craze, but have so far held off on actually making it. Out of anything I don’t really know what I’d do with a loaf of homemade bread. I don’t really eat much bread, and I can imagine the look on the foreign man’s face if he comes upon me in the kitchen, crazed and covered with flour, pointing excitedly at a loaf that will undoubtedly resemble a uterine fibroid. Now I’ve seen the video I’m determined to get my bread on. I think I’ll save it for a cold night when I can make soup of some kind and invite people around for a soup and bread night, and the loaf will be Cook’s Illustrated precise, and I will be whiter than ever before.
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New favourite blog. Oh how I love cooking, and fancy utensils &c.
I am totally going to try the no-knead bread, despite the fact that I love kneading dough on our granite(?) benchtops. (I also have one of those scraping implements to get the scraps of dough off; it makes me feel like a proper pizza-maker.) I find it quite therapeutic.
I love the Kitchenaid mixer and one day I’ll have one. I agree that it doesn’t seem to have the same history here as the US. Although my aunt in NZ has one and will easily whip up a sponge by essentially throwing flour/eggs/other things into the bowl from the other side of the kitchen, not measuring anything. Perfect cakes every time - she’s a fabulous cook. She wants to open a cafe called The Ship’s Cat and I encourage her in this.
I want to be that kind of aunt when I grow up.
I long for a kitchen aid. and yes I am white
haha. but I think I’d actually use it, unlikes those suburbanite moms who just add it to their plethora of unused kitchen tools meant to impress their neighbors.
i am white, and i have a kitchenaid standing mixer. the professional 600, no less. and i am NOT ASHAMED. i love that fucking mixer and it will be cremated with me and our ashes scattered over the french laundry.
i also totally admit that i love arrested development and public radio. i’m here, i’m white, get used to it.
Amanda the first - I would also like to be that aunt when I grew up. We weren’t a sponge cake family, but we were a date and nut roll family, but the baking method you described was the same. I think I could be that aunt even if I had an orange KitchenAid cluttering up my counters, though, too.
Amanda - I lived in the States briefly, where I discovered a latent hipster gene enabled me to drink Pabst willingly and without gagging, and encountered these KitchenAid suburban moms. I did not care for them. They all appeared too orange. Here the KitchenAid is limited only to the inner city houses of the types of women and men who have subscriptions to ‘Delicious,’ throw dinner parties where, no matter what, a roasted cherry tomato on its stem is always involved, own a lot of mid-century teak furniture, and pointedly make pain d’epices for their friends every Christmas rather than nothing. In other words, the sort of person who makes me quiver with jealousy.
Michelle - I listen to Public Radio, too, and I also like expensive sandwiches. And Mos Def! We’re like sisters!
I’m like Michelle. I have a KitchenAid mixer, pro-series. It’s red. It was my first KitchenAid. I now have the red food processor, toaster, and blender. I have pretty much designed my kitchen around that beautiful thing.
P.S. Just discovered your blog. Love it.
My very uneducated guess and based on observations alone would be that Ktchenaid has only been marketed heavily in Australia in recent years. Thanks to in part the internet, marketing spending, lower import costs.
Whereas has hand mixers/Sunbeams/Brevilles and on the higher end Kenwoods have been the Australian standard. My mum has a Kenwood, my babysitter had a Kenwood, my aunts have Kenwoods, my grandmother has a Sunbeam, Maggie Beer on TV uses a Sunbeam, out of the circle of family friends/acquaintances that I know what sort of kitchen mixer they have and this would be a group of easily 15-20 people none of them have Kitchenaids, most of them use a Sunbeam/Breville/hand mixer and one or two have Kenwoods.
I have an idea the lack of Kitchenaids might be that they were never made in Australia unlike the Kenwoods, Sunbeams etc that were all made in Australia. Especially since the Kenwoods and Kitchenaids of the past were very comparable on power, features etc, retailers would pick the Kenwoods over the Kitchenaids due to the price difference between made in Australia or imported from the USA.
That is my idea at least.
Though I would love a Kitchenaid in Ice or Apple Green or Pink or Pistachio … or perhaps I will just get a second hand Kenwood 701 off ebay (the new Kenwoods don’t have the ommph of the old ones).