Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/1213254
10 BY LORRIE BAUMANN It's almost 1:30 p.m. on the third day of Las Vegas Market, and Mary S. Moore, O wner of The Cooks Warehouse in Atlanta, Georgia, is here to demonstrate a couple of recipes. We've been handed a handout with those recipes, so we know that what she's going to demonstrate is a hummus made with black-eyed peas and a carrot-ginger soup. On a riser in f ront of the room, a John Boos island is set with a Freiling two-burner induction hob, a Vitamix blender and a loaded knife block. An Epicurean cutting board is set next to the blender and knife block. It's between a Microplane grater and a citrus squeezer on one side and a Microplane 3-in-1 Ginger Tool on the other. There's a garlic press and a silicone scraper on top of the cutting board. Ingredients for the recipes are measured out into plastic cups – some are the kind of plastic tumblers we see at parties, and some are condiment cups – the kind that might be used to ser ve Communion wine at one of the churches where they don't use the fancy miniature wine goblets. On the electric hob, there's a gray Le Creuset Dutch Oven. When it's time for Moore's presentation to begin, she starts by honing her chef 's knife with the steel while she waits for the audience members who are still drifting into the room to settle into seats. She puts the point of the steel onto the cutting board and holds it vertically, gives the knife a few deft swipes on each side of the blade. Then she puts the knife and steel back into the block, checks the messages on her phone while keeping an eye on the doors, then dashes out and returns with a GelPro mat that she drops down between the island and a folding table behind it that's mostly filled with bottles, jars and cans of ingredients. She starts her presentation by telling us that she's the proprietor of The Cook's Warehouse. " We like to say that we have every excuse to cook," she says. "I call it my tool store." She says that just as better ingredients lead to a better dish, so better tools also lead to a better outcome. She picks up the two-burner hob and introduces it as a Frieling Casa Induction Burner, which is much more efficient than an ordinary electric burner. It operates at 1,800 watts, which is shared by both burners, and it comes to the correct heat immediately as the control knob is adjusted. "It's like cooking with gas," she says, adding that it's hard to find cookware today that isn't induction compatible. She starts by making the soup, pouring an aliquot of liquid into the dutch oven. "I always season as I go," she says. She is using a French Fleur de Sel f rom Salt Sisters, a gray sea salt. " We carry her line of products," she says. She puts down the salt and picks up a pepper mill. It's a Kuhn Rikon Rachet Mill, she says. " We use these in our cooking school," she says. "They're super easy to use." She holds it up in f ront of us and rachets the handle back and forth a couple of times, letting the microphone pick up the sound of it clicking. " To this, we're going to add our lentils. I'm using red lentils, and I've already given them a quick rinse," she says, and then she picks up an apple. "I use the Microplane Box Grater to shred the apples," she says, adding that it has a little trap door on the bottom to hold the shredded product, but today she is just setting the grater down on the cutting board. Then she says, " While this is starting to cook – it's going to take about 20 minutes – I'm going to show you how to chop a few things." But first she shows us her Kuhn Rikon Garlic Press. "I use my garlic press a lot because I'm always in a hurry," she says. She says that it's cool because you can press the garlic cloves without peeling them and just pop the peel out of the press at the end. She says that it's very easy to clean. "I'm cooking in this beautiful seven- and-a half quart Le Creuset Dutch Oven. It's the lightest and thinnest cast iron on the market. I love cooking with my Le Creuset," she says. "I make soups and chili a lot during the winter." She tells us that the gray color on the outside of the pot is called Oyster. A woman in the audience asks her if she also likes Staub dutch ovens. She says that, yes, Staub is also a good brand, but she prefers Le Creuset because it's the lightest and thinnest cast iron on the market and she likes the light- colored interior, which is very smooth, so it cleans easily. "I like that," she says. Then she turns back to the cutting board and picks up the steel again. She tells us that she sees a lot of television chefs honing their knives in the air, but she thinks that's a bad idea because there are two opposing forces there. She prefers to hold the steel vertically with its tip on the countertop to stabilize it. That makes it much easier to sharpen the edge at the correct angle, she says. Then she picks up an onion, which she will chop up for the hummus. "For the onion, I always cut the stem end off and leave the root end on to hold it together," she says. "Knife skills is our number-one class for 25 years." Then she picks up a knob of ginger and trims off the sharp knobs. "If you ever feel like you're getting a cold, some f resh ginger and cayenne pepper and lemon, and you just boil it," she says. After the ginger has been trimmed and then peeled with the back of her knife blade, she picks up the Microplane ginger tool. "It just makes a beautiful pile of f resh ginger," she says. "You can use the ceramic ones too, but I've found that they can be hard to clean out." She sets a saute pan on the induction hob. "This double burner f rom Casa is an 1,800-watt burner," she says. "It's a nice thing to have for overflow cooking." She is going to heat the aromatics that she's going to put into the hummus, even though she could just dump them into the Vitamix jar and blend because she has found that she gets more flavor f rom the aromatics when they've been warmed. Because the two burners on the Casa hob share the 1,800 watts, the power to the burner with the soup pot on it will automatically be reduced once she turns on the burner under the saute pan, she says. Then she shows us how to chop a shallot and adds that to the pan. She turns off the burner under the saute pan and turns to the blender. "I'm using the Vitamix A1350 Blender," she says. "It's new. I have a Vitamix at home that I use every day. I love it." For this recipe, we could cook f resh black-eyed peas, or we could use a package of f rozen peas, or we could use canned ones. For the sake of speed today, she is using canned beans, which she pours into the blender jar along with the aromatics f rom the saute pan. She shows us the fond on the bottom of the pan and shows us how to deglaze it. "Deglazing is f ree flavor," she says, "And it makes the pan much easier to clean, too, which I love." She shows us how nice and clean the bottom of the pan is now, and then she turns back to the blender and turns it on. "You just want to blend it until it's nice and smooth," she says. Then she stops. "Did I leave any ingredients out?" she asks. "I'm famous for leaving out one ingredient. Sometimes it matters, and sometimes it doesn't." She checks the recipe, and then, satisfied, she pulses the blender again. She picks up a lime and cuts it in half, and then picks up a citrus squeezer. "Do you all have citrus squeezers?" she asks. "You can get all the juice out, and it's so easy to use. This one is RSVP's." A woman in the audience raises her hand and asks what kind of onion she used. "It was a sweet yellow onion," she says. "I like to cook with those the best." The soup isn't quite ready, so she goes back to knife skills. "If you keep your knife connected to the cutting board, you always know where your knife is," she says. "It takes a whole lot of practice to retrain your muscles." She hands off the hummus and the soup to a couple of assistants to serve samples to the audience, and then she says that demonstrations are the best way to sell kitchen products. " We do demos all the time," she says. She likes to demonstrate the Fusion Brands Cover Blubber, she says. She just puts it out on a counter with a bowl of water, so the people can see how they work. " We couldn't keep them on the shelf. They just sold," she said. One of her best sellers is the Thumb Scraper from Fusion Brands, which people use for scraping off price tags. "People would buy three or four at a time," she says. She asks the audience who's a kitchenware retailer. "I would definitely bring those Thumb Scrapers in and not waste another minute," she says. "It's one of those items that pays the light bill because it's awesome, and people buy three or four at a time." "I also use the silicone scrapers f rom Tovolo," she says, picking up the scraper she'd used earlier to scrape coconut milk out of the cans and into the soup. " They're heat- resistant," she says. Someone in the audience asks about those knife skills classes. How much does she charge, and how long is the class, and how many people can be in a class? "It's $69 a person for the knife skills class, and it's a three-hour class. It's learning about the different blades. We go through how to store, how to clean, how to care for and what knife to use for what and then spend an hour and a half practicing," she says. "We have samples of all the different knives that we carry in the store. A knife is really personal, and it's all about what feels good in the hand." "The majority of our classes now are hands-on," she adds. "It used to be more demonstrations, but now people want to get into the kitchen." She comments that she's enjoying the Las Vegas Market. "It's a great industry. It's a fun show here – Las Vegas has a lot to offer," she says. " We get to come and share with our colleagues. We're not really competing with each other. We're better together." KN KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW • MARCH 2020 • www.kitchenwarenews.com Mary Moore Demonstrates Kitchenware "Knife skills is our number-one class for 25 years." "I use my garlic press a lot because I'm always in a hurry." "I would definitely bring those [Fusion Brands] Thumb Scrapers in and not waste another minute. It's one of those items that pays the light bill because it's awesome, and people buy three or four at a time."