You may think me senseless, but I have just purchased my first non-stick pan . . . ever. The only cookware that I've owned up until this point has been my full set of All-Clad MC2, Le Creuset, and Chicago Metallic bake ware. You see in restaurants, they don't use non-stick cookware, at least not any restaurant I've ever worked in. Even the most expensive non-stick pans don't last forever. Besides, amongst my foodie friends using non-stick is kind of like "cheating". I clung to my snobbery and shunned non-stick for as long as I can remember.
A delicious macadamia-coconut encrusted mahi mahi defeated me. I tried searing, the coconut burns and the mahi does not cook. I've tried low and slow, the coconut still sticks and the breading becomes saturated with butter and oil. My crust was compromised. Finally, this Christmas I gave in. My thoughtful father in-law gave me a creme brulee torch from WS. (So generous of them, but I use a standard propane blow torch for creme brulee. Much cheaper and more powerful. Besides, you get the refills at the local hardware, not on a trip to some mall or kitchen store to find tiny cans of expensive butane.) My mother in-law gave me a GC from WS. I combined the return and GC along with an after-Christmas sale and got a new non-stick All-Clad French Skillet (d5 line) from WS for free! (More on French Skillet vs. fry pan later.) And behold, the mahi browned and released beautifully. Reminding me, I need to write a post on properly searing salmon. My wife will only eat salmon when it as been perfectly seared.
I feel like I gave up, compromised a little. I've even used it a few times in the mornings for omelets. Now, don't get me wrong I can cook an omelet perfectly on stainless steel and get it to slide out every time, but sometimes I'm a little, ummhhh, hungover . . . in the morning. Well, if there's anyone else out there who takes great pride in never needing to use non-stick, but have resisted, drop me a line. It'll be our little secret and you can put on a pair of sunglasses, a trench coat and head off to your nearest kitchen store.
Oh yeah, "French skillet" versus "fry pan" . . . you know how when you watch confident cooks and chefs toss the food in the pan without using a spatula? Well, this process is aided by the different angle that the side of the French skillet is set at. Fry pans have a shallower lip angle. French skillets have a steeper angle that is closer to a right angle. When you do that neato toss and clean jerk back on the pan to turn your food, the sharper lip aids this process, throwing the food more aggressively back into the pan. Some criticize the French skillet design for being a little thinner, but this is purposeful and the pan heats and cools faster, sometimes a very good thing when you doing delicate proteins such as fish or eggs. I'd like to leave you the recipe for that Coconut/Macadamia Encrusted Mahi Mahi, but I can't, I buy it from Whole Foods. I'll cut corners, once in awhile!, if it doesn't affect the final product. It's right there in the title of my blog.
Look forward to your thoughts.
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